We Back!
Hey y’all!
I’m back and it is like I never left for a month or so…or something.
Why was I away?
Some of you may know, but I had some complications from long COVID. I won’t go into them in too much detail, but I will say that I had what is called a “COVID cascade” that was in reaction to my COVID exposure in January, followed up by never returning to baseline, and having some stuff going on which I was asymptomatic for until I flew to London at the middle of March.
Upon return, all hell broke loose…and I spent some time with some really great doctors from the Johns Hopkins network.
I’m on the mend now, but I would encourage y’all to not take COVID lightly, get your vaccine because it would have probably been worse for me if I wasn’t vaccinated, and be good each other.
Also, while I was in London, I got to go see Chelsea and sit in the front row!
This week, to stretch my fingers out, I’m going to steal a little idea from a hero of mine, Roger L. Martin.
Roger is the greatest strategy teacher in the world and is a tremendous strategy writer. His newest book, A New Way to Think, comes out this week and I’ve had a chance to read an advance copy.
Roger was asked by Medium to do a series of posts to introduce himself to a wider audience. There are four of them in all and start with getting to know me.
In that vein, having come back from the hospital and a series health scare, I figured I’d reintroduce myself and talk about me for a moment in the context of this newsletter and some of the stuff I work on.
An introduction to me and my work:
Last week, I had a chance to sit down with Giles Edwards, head of Gasp!, a London-based advertising agency, to be a guest on their podcast, “Call to Action”.
It is the best podcast for marketers going and we got into a bit of the Dave backstory.
The first question that Giles hits on is how you got your start because he feels like the best marketers didn’t come to marketing in a straight line.
For me, that might be true.
I really started in nightclubs sometime in the mid-90s. The exact date and time are blurry as is much of the stuff I did during those years.
What I do remember pretty clearly is the formative experience of learning that I was a marketer, during our weekly Monday meetings when Garry, one of the main partners, said we needed to raise our check average “$.025” and I stumbled on the most important question of my life: “What kind of gin would you prefer?”
This was my formative marketing experience for a number of reasons, let me share a few:
Marketing is about the customer. No one really wants a well gin and tonic at a bar. So they never order a well gin and tonic when given the chance. If you pay attention the customer, you’ll see that finding out what they want will make you a fortune.
Profit is about value, not cost. The real cost difference between a well drink and a premium drink in the 90s when I learned this lesson was maybe a quarter. But the premium I was able to charge was around $2. This might double or triple my profit margin. But the incremental cost was very little and no one cared because it wasn’t about the cost of the supplies, it was about the value that the person received from getting a Bombay and tonic, not a gin and tonic.
Stories matter. The story you tell yourself. The story your customers tells themselves. The stories that your advertising and marketing tell. On and on, they matter and set the tone for your product or service. If you are a premium product, make sure that comes through in every message you send.
Over the years, I’ve been called “The King of Tickets” and that came out of a specific situation where I was one of the people that helped the AmEx Centurion Card concierge solve the problem of how to deliver tickets to their cardmembers anywhere in the world at any time.
Within that work, I was able to develop a better understanding of the power of marketing to turn a commodity into something more. I learned the importance of strategy and the points I often talk about here like ambition, market focus, value, and resources.
Most importantly, I learned that marketing drives sales and that to really goose your profits, you need to be a great marketer because great marketing makes sales easier.
Around 2007-2008, I began writing consistently, mostly thinking through ideas like Don DeLillo once mentioned, “to figure out what I think.”
Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of those ideas here on this newsletter in its many forms and on my website at www.davewakeman.com.
If I had to collect my ideas into three big buckets, I’d say:
Strategy is about giving yourself an advantage in your area of focus.
Marketing is the most powerful force in business.
Brands are drivers of advantage, profit, and marketing success.
Moving forward, I’m going to continue focusing on these three areas in a practical, useful manner. And, as we get back out into the world, offering more of these ideas in useful ways to y’all.
Things like:
How do you attain a competitive advantage in any market?
What it takes to make success sustainable?
How to use the 4 Ps as a weapon to win more market share?
See you next week.
Dave