Manizesto

A few hints:
She was an orphan.
She was black.
She was a self-made millionaire.
She’s not Oprah.

Born on a plantation to former slaves, this remarkable woman from Louisiana became an orphan at seven and a widow at 22 years old with a 2 year old baby under her arm. And despite living in a very racist and very sexist United States, she started a business and became the country’s first female millionaire ever, of any race.

“There is no royal, flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life, it is because I have been willing to work hard,” she said.

Any guesses who it is?

Madam C.J. Walker. She started a cosmetics business targeting African American women which quickly became one of the fastest growing companies at the time.

“I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations…I have built my own factory on my own ground.”

Now, do you have the same tenacity, the same grit, the same audacity and the same sticktoitiveness to succeed despite what the outside world says you can do? Or do you find yourself blaming a slow economy, lack of resources or a demand for more conservative marketing efforts for your lack of innovation and success?

Don’t play the victim card. Your results are your own. Find a way to make it happen.

[Photo by Janneke Hikspoors.]

It’s going to be a tough year for many businesses next year. Sales will be down, clients will leave and budgets will come under scrutiny. Which begs the question: Is innovative marketing going to die next year?

That depends on what type of marketer you are. The Scrutinizers will cut marketing budgets. The Dreamers will keep dreaming. The Worry Warts will do the same old thing and develop ulcers. But what about the Innovators? How can you innovate with resources under perusal and people less willing to take risks?

First, let’s define innovation. It’s not risk taking. It’s not unmeasurable. It’s not audacious. It can be all these things, but doesn’t need to be. Innovation is doing something new or doing something old in a new way. If you’re not innovating, you should be fired.

Innovative marketing will not die next year. In fact, the innovation field is ready to harvest next year. All you need are the skills to harvest it and to be better at it than others.

I plan to innovate next year by:

1. Always asking “Why?” When we develop systems and processes that work, we tend to never step back and question if they’re the best way to do things. This year, I’m on a quest to find better ways to message people, better ways to fulfill on promises and better way to improve customer relationships.

2. Always asking “What if?” Development resources, budget constraints, time and headcount are all limitations we’ve used to box ourselves in and restrain our thinking. Don’t do it. Dreaming is one of the best ways to come up with better, more innovative ways of doing things. In 2009, I’m going to make time to ask “What if?” often.

3. Always asking “Why not?” It’s a healthy question. When (not “if”) you get told “We can’t do that”, ask “Why not?” Ask it regularly, then let your mind explore ways you can still make things happen that would normally get shot down.

I guess what I’m saying is look for ways to challenge the status quo and innovation will follow.

[Photo by Sarah1rene]

I have great respect for journalists. They break important news, keep government and companies in check, reveal scandals and organize what’s happening around the world so we can always know what’s going on. They also work in stressful flurries of phone calls, research and writing. Deadlines always loom. Accuracy is a must. The pay generally sucks.

In college, I was required to take a news writing class and have a semester writing for the Daily Universe. I was thrown into a noisy, crowded newsroom, assigned the Latino Metro beat, and told I had to write three 1,200 word articles and record one 30-second radio news spot per week for the next eight weeks. My student advisor, Sara Israelsen, said “Here’s the phone and here’s the computer. Good luck!”

In that stressful two months, I learned two things every marketer should:

The first was how to write slugs. A journalist’s slug is 4-8 words that says what the article is about. It’s what the layout designers use to write the headlines. The shorter and more to the point the slug, the stronger it is. Since slugs force you to boil down what you’re saying to its essence, you learn how to cut out information that is irrelevant or just noise and put more meat around your core message.

Every marketing message you develop should have a slug. What do you really want to communicate? Your slug is not your tag line. Write a slug, revise it, then say it to your customers or prospects.

The second things is there are always two sides to every issue. Everyone knows this. But as a marketer, you should remember that your message will never resonate with everyone. Instead, you should audaciously focus on talking to the audience you care about and forget about everyone else. They don’t matter to you anyway.

[Photo by snowriderguy]

Everyone wants to be responsible for the next innovative viral marketing campaign. Many try, most fail. Only the truly creative, the truly entertaining and the truly captivating ones are able to rise above the incessant noise and clutter of the Internet and get noticed.

That’s why this campaign, created by Saatchi & Saatchi New York, is worth mentioning here. The theme is universal, the writing amazing, the acting first-rate and the marketing message perfectly subtle.

Remember that unpaid viral marketing should be even more well thought out, even better produced, messaged more subtly and launched more carefully than any other marketing channel, because you’re not starting out with an expectation or a captive audience, and you’re competing with every other online medium. It’s not for the faint of heart.

Watch the video here.