MV newsletter - November 2006

Click here for free tools and know-how materials from the Mud Valley™ strategy & brand marketing community.

This is our first newsletter for a while. We apologise for that, but we were finding that we were hearing the same old things from an exponential growth of pundits, and we had had enough, and so probably had you.

This situation is particularly bad in the realm of branding. Apart from the issue of whether it exists at all and, if so, how you define it, there is not an ounce of controversy in the entire subject.

Fortunately, within business planning, that is far from the case, and our central philosophy is at the heart of one of the most troubled questions: how do you execute your plan effectively?

You have heard us banging on before about the DIY approach to strategy. Here, in our new article The overwhelming case for strategic DIY is our latest crazed attempt to persuade you (if you are not already converted).

Experiential marketing

We are currently going through a root and branch review of all our articles, to bring them in line with time and tide.

We know that there is a huge hole in our database on the nuts and bolts of communications campaigning. That is because we are strategists, and communications execution is for us, entirely wrongly, just a question of detail for expert implementation. It is one of those cultural dialogues des sourds, strategic marketers vs. communicators, IT vs. marketers, sales vs. marketing, marketing vs. finance, marketers vs. distributors etc..

Indeed, you might conclude that, for professional relationship builders, us brand marketers have rather a lot of problems relating to anyone except each other. And you try marketing to a marketer!

Our other gap is in articles around more recent concepts, such as guerrilla marketing, buzz/viral marketing, cause-related marketing, and experiential marketing. Here is our first step in addressing this omission, with a new article on Experiential Marketing, developed with the more than able co-operation of Jerome Joseph, Experiential Brand Strategist to the world. If you want to know more about experiential marketing, we are convinced that Jerome is exactly the guy you should be asking, if you can track him down. We get the strong impression that he is a very busy man who regularly disappears into that professional rival to the Bermuda Triangle, the Consultants' Quadrangle (plane, taxi, hotel, engagement). However, he certainly answers his e-mails, so try him at jerome@jeromejoseph.com, or visit him at his theatre (a wonderfully instructive metaphor for brand development, we-thinks).

Our new tool for November is an Employee Satisfaction survey, out next week.

• Belgium tel: +32 (0)2 747 0945
• France tel: +33 (0)1 76 63 74 09
• UK tel: +44 (0)208 099 7385

or by e-mail at enquiries@mudvalley.co.uk.

© 2006, Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community.

Related answers