I’ve taken a break from blogging because I’ve been so busy. The Creative Alliance is in great demand these days and it’s been hard to keep up.
My last message was to be the final part of “The Sermon on the Count” and why measured results are so important in marketing. I’ll cut to the chase on that. You see, when you learn to measure your marketing programs and campaigns, your numbers are your scorecards—you know if you are getting the right ROI—winning or losing. It’s easy to justify things when you can prove it. If it’s working, great. Build on that. If not, go to plan B. It’s that simple. Yet I’m still surprised that people don’t set up, measure and monitor results very often today. They’re too driven on emotion; I like it or don’t like it. That’s gambling more than marketing.
If you’ve been around awhile, you know that little things done well, consistently and authentically—achieve powerful results. Now I want to talk about “going the extra mile.”
We all know that one, right?
It’s been said that there’s no traffic on the extra mile. People don’t travel this road much. Why? I think it’s because we’re immersed in a 24/7 world where everyone expects everything right now. By the time you’ve rushed to get it done, you’re on to the next thing.
My wife recently spoke to an owner of a Napa Valley winery, who said: “Most people anymore don’t age their wines past the time it takes to get from the store to their house.” But wine, like so many good things in life, takes extra time to be extra special. The same goes for business and work.
We were writing and producing a video for a great client last week. It was a tricky project and we had a hard deadline to have it done for a trade show on Monday morning. We planned to have it all wrapped up on Friday, give it time to be checked, tested and approved—then off to the client in time to set up the show over the weekend. Problem was, the CEO was giving us late breaking news and ideas for the video.
I got the last additions late on Saturday when I was far from work in the mountains. My video editor was also busy over the weekend, so we couldn’t even get to it till Monday morning. I told the CEO and he seemed fine with that, saying he understood.
But it didn’t seem right. We had all worked hard to be ready for this show—and him especially. If we made the changes, rendered the video and sent it to them on Monday in New York, it would be around 2 p.m. there, and the all-important first day would be all-but-over. Not good. So I called my editor and asked her to break her plans and meet me at the office Sunday to finish the job. She agreed and we worked till late Sunday evening to get it done. We sent it out that night so they could have it ready to kick off the show Monday morning.
I got an email from the CEO at 11:38 p.m. that Sunday night. It was simple: “You have hit a home run. This is just what I had hoped for. Many thanks. This will be a great conference.”
A warm rush of joy covered me and I slept like a log that night. Monday morning I high-fived my young, hard-working editor and told her why it was so important to go the extra mile. The rest of the day was just like any Monday—except for lots of laughing and joking around. The entire company just knows when we are in the groove.