Chapter 10
Two Businesses, One Marketing Plan
Can you imagine bringing together two different businesses for a single advertisement? Say Bud Light and GEICO create a Super Bowl ad together, or a local clothing retailer and a delicatessen join up to coinvest in a Yellow Pages ad. It's a strange idea, but it's not so unusual in a world in which marketing is more about adding value to customers' lives. Many businesses are discovering a way to drive efficiency, sales, and happier customers by joining with other businesses around their common interests. This is one example of how the future of marketing will look a lot different—and a lot better—than the past.
Success with marketing increasingly does not lie in crafting new and better ways of placing advertisements in front of a customer. That traditional model is falling apart thanks to people's growing use of digital technology. In a world of growing customer control, the only thing we as businesses can do to attract people and grow sales is to create advertising that people choose to engage with and marketing that itself improves people's lives; a concept I call “Marketing with Meaning.”
When you think about how your marketing can add value, seemingly strange ideas like partnering with another business suddenly make sense. Two businesses working together can create a better, combined solution or experience that benefits their joint customers and bottom lines.
For example, each year my suburban township holds a “Daddy-Daughter ...
