Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A7
Driving choices
Companies that invite us to play invite us to make tbeir offerings our own, and tben we buy and "tell a friend" about it. Perbaps we even syndicate it on Digg or back to Facebook. Increasingly, peer recommendations drive the choices buyers make. When you let your audience play with your brand, they become part of it. They volunteer for your army. Tbey recommend your product or service. Play is an imperative for companies wanting to lead. Our global culture demands playfulness for a company to become an icon, and thus reach its market potential. Make sure your company's marketing mix incorporates this P no matter bow dry or tecbnical the industry. To lead, you must encourage and enable play. One early reader of this article commented that Play may not play out in the financial industry. To her, I will end by noting that I just compared movie tastes on Facebook with a senior VP from a major lending institution, a former client. Another friend a venture capitalist tumed me into a vampire, then sent me a private post. He is ready to play, and that could mean serious business. Michael Graber is the managing partner of the Southern Growth Studio, which helps companies prosper with a pragmatic application of brand marketing and product innovation. The Oxford-based firm is online at www.southerngrowthstudio.com.
invitations to piay
Everywhere companies are encouraging us to become a part of tbeir culture by inviting us to play, to participate, to opine. Where is the communications firewall set up by the legal and PR departments? Wbat is going on? What bas cbanged in marketing? Everything. In this era of interaction, the ability to play with a brand, product or service is a critical factor in winning new customers and retaining existing ones. The above examples are not merely clever promotions. Like tbe universe, marketing always expands. Tbe marketing mix once the four Ps of Product, Place, Price and Promotions, later upgraded to the five Ps with the addition of Positioning now welcomes the sixth P, Play. As consumers and buyers, we want the power to choose our options and to control the experience. We expect to try things out, to squeeze the Try Me button on a SpinBrush toothbrusb before throwing it in the cart. Marketing has merged with technology, making the user experience the benchmark of success. Market leaders understand that in a fragmented culture the best way to establish leadership is provide a way for people feel safe to explore, to play, to try out everything from software to food to consulting methodologies before buying.
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