bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Of recent there have been posts around Do What you Love, Life Marketing, Those that turn up

What do these have to do with Marketing?

Simple they are all marketing.

If you as a person, are doing what you love, turning up where others are not, thinking of the bigger picture, what do you think this says about you?

What is the conversation going on in people that surround you?

The conversation is going to be much more engaging than otherwise.

Now imagine:

• Your company is built up on people that do all of these
• Your customers deal with these kinds of people day to day
• In rough times what kind of people are going to stick it out?

I meet a company every now and again that say we have no marketing strategy [and therefore we don’t do marketing].

Your wrong.

You do.

You have the No Strategy Marketing Strategy.

In every transaction your organisation engages in you are marketing. Why? you are communicating.

Each of these interactions results in a story being told.  This is a story about you.

Is this bad? Not necessarily.  

However if you are already doing something (without realising it) – surely you can deliver more value by providing a focused strategy.

Sun Tzu’s famous strategy quote:

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”

Everyone can replicate the tactics of your No Strategy Marketing Strategy…..

So flag your No Strategy Marketing Strategy and get to it (you have all weekend!).

Philanthropy in the past has been limited to individuals of mass wealh or huge companies.

However every one does do their bit helping one another out and their local causes.

We view Philanthropy as out of our reach…. for now… maybe later in life.

Causes such as Kiva unlock this and unleash the long tail.  So we can all engage in helping others out (in $25 usd increments).

Kiva provides a platform for people like you and me to provide funds to micro finance companies in developing and third world countries.  On this platform you invest in their project or business and in return they provide blog updates and knowing you’ve had a direct hand in helping someone else out.

Your investment doesn’t end there.  Once its repaid you get the money back and can reinvest it in others.  Yup you get every cent back.

As a bit of a hobby economist this concept is awesome, using the multiplier effect (looking at how additional investment will flow in an economy) you can find how many times your investment will flow through the economy.  Simply 1/percentage of savings ie in Peru the savings levels are 17% so 1/.17 = 5.9.  Meaning your investment will add ~ $125 to the gdp of Peru.

Thats only on a basic level, there are further flow on effects.

So my idea to you is:

• Create a philanthropy focus in your company, commit some money to invest in projects like kiva.
• Let your employees pick the companies to invest in and follow their progress.
• Take it a step further and match the lend that your employees place in Kiva.
• Get your family together and place a loan in a business.
• Get your workmates together and all join in to support 1 business.
• Your local group such as Rotary / Lions or your church could support causes on this and get your members to keep up to date with what is happening.
• Help Kiva out with their operation costs by sending them a donation.

You can check out Kiva at www.kiva.org (my lender loan page is here).  Facebook group is here.

So jump on, lend some money, help make a direct difference and see what happens.

Your marketing decision can help others too.

I read this short piece on the NzHerald a few weeks back about Airport Security.

“He went through security and then boarded his plane. After being seated he could smell petrol. He knew you shouldn’t be able to smell petrol on a plane, because planes don’t use petrol. The smell got worse and eventually he got the attention of one of the flight attendants. They started to look around to see where it was coming from. They found in the overhead compartment a chainsaw in a bag that was leaking petrol into the compartment. His plane was delayed as the owner was identified and the chainsaw removed and put with the main luggage. The owner of the chainsaw said security had stopped him but had let him through because it wasn’t one of the things on their list to confiscate.”

It says a lot to employees when top management rob them of the discretion to think for themselves.

They tend to do just go through the motions.

Marketing is in every interaction, even internally.