Brands Just Want to be Remembered

I wonder what people would do if they knew.

Every day, all around them, companies and brand managers and marketers are jockeying for attention. Consumers are segmented into audiences, targets and strings of data. They are talked about and analyzed as if the public was little more than computer code that needed to be hacked.

I know this happens because I’m part of it. I make my living on it. But I also know something that many of my peers either don’t understand or are unwilling to consider.

People and brands have the same goal, yet in our mad rush to arrest the latest technology or execute our newest brilliant strategy, we look past that goal to get the quick win. We race against time to drive more traffic to our Web sites, get more clicks on our links, earn more likes on our Facebook pages.

We make plenty of noise but not enough sense. That’s because marketers like me too often forget this common goal, the one thing that the public and brands both share.

We want to be remembered.

That’s what moves people to action, even if they don’t consciously realize it or want to admit it. At some point, we just want to be remembered – to know that in the end, however small or insignificant, we mattered.

Brands have this same goal. Brands, products and companies – they want to be remembered, too. Yes, they also want to sell stuff, but at a certain point just selling stuff isn’t enough.

If your brand isn’t remembered it can’t live on. It can’t make a difference. Someone or something else will take its place.

This is why genuine storytelling will always trump artificial content. It’s why we should shun the “content marketers” who are, by and large, insolent bottom feeders who could care less about creating a memorable human connection.

It’s why we need to stop talking about “big data” and “real-time marketing” and all the other countless bullshit we marketers create to make us sound more important than we really are.

Tell a real story. Talk like a goddamn real person. Don’t settle for treating the public like a statistic.

Be memorable before it’s too late.