The Bright Idea: Why didn’t I think of that?
You ever have those times when you just have a bright idea? And I don’t just mean any bright idea. I mean the bright idea that actually makes sense. I mean the kind that you even shocked yourself because of how great the idea was.
Those are the days. You feel great about your undeniable awesomeness. Then reality strikes. It’s like the humbling moment from hell.
You know… that moment when you’re look all over for your glasses and realize their on top of your head. Or the moment when you call roadside assistance because you’ve locked yourself out of your car, and when they get there, you realize your keys were in your pocket the entire time.
Truth be told, we have our highs. And we have our lows. And there are areas in our lives where our highs are pretty much someone else’s low.
Illustration: The extent of my engineering skills is taking cardboard and a soda bottle, wrapping duct tape around it, and calling it an invention. Ooh… a bottle rocket holder *that will most likely catch on fire, I might add.* I could care less about the derivative of x, I don’t know much about planes (and I’m not talking about airplanes) and if there’s something to be engineered, I would have to call an engineer.
It’s kind of the same with marketing. The lay person thinks “flyers, shiny pictures, flashy videos, street team, post cards, email, website, and the list goes on.”
But you very seldom hear this? “When I create my marketing plan, I’m going to send this to zip code: 90210 where the median age is 44.9, average adjusted gross income is income is $408,901, average household size is 2.2. And even though there are 21,396 people who reside in the 90210 zip code, I’m only going to produce and mail 20 post cards because out of that 21,396, only 20 households fit my target audience.”1
When people work with experts, they may scratch their head and say, “why didn’t I think of that?” They may wonder why they don’t always have moments of awesomeness as described in the beginning of this article. Well, it’s because you have a different type of fish to fry. It’s your job to focus on what you’re passionate about and skilled in and surround yourself with experts in other areas. It’s the marketing and advertising team’s job to choose the right tactics and come up with the fancy taglines – all so that you can focus on what’s more important in your world.
