TALKING POINT
Marketing Platforms And How The World ’ s Most Eligible Bachelor Got Hitched
By Boniface Ngahu
In a typical marketing set-up you are likely to have different people in various departments or companies handling various elements of your strategy . For this reason , a disconnection aka ‘ Tower of Babel ’ like situation can emerge in the execution of your marketing campaign whether it is digital , integrated or the traditional brick and mortar type . In the case of digital you may have a web developer , social media specialist and IT people , all these may not be working in harmony for the success of your marketing campaign .
To minimize the effects of such disconnection or prevent that from happening altogether it is useful to have a marketing game plan that simplifies your Big Idea on which the campaign is based for ease of execution and understanding by different implementers within and outside your business . This is where selecting a platform for your campaign comes in .
Game Plan : A Platform Provides Connected-ness for all Implementers to Play
One of the elements of a marketing game plan is selecting a platform on which to leverage your campaign after considering various options available . A good platform is one that is not contested by the competition in your category or one that is generally underutilized . A platform helps you as the marketing strategist to have what the lawyers call ‘ Locus Standi ’ or somewhere to stand . This provides sufficient connected-ness for all implementers to participate in the execution of the plan seamlessly .
This means that you and your big idea are on a high ground for everyone to see helping them to focus . It also helps you to be single-minded by choosing one specific platform per campaign to run with , and it creates a cohesive direction for the different execution parties to follow while closing the gaps that emerge from their disjointedness in physical , geographical or departmental spaces .
Being on an elevated ground , a platform helps a leader achieve what Napoleon
Choose your platform carefully and guard it from predators of attention for your game plan to succeed . Remember the analogy of a headless chicken that moves aimlessly in any direction without meaningful purpose or the forgetful warthog that loses focus to become an easy meal to the more focused predator .
Bona Parte meant when he said that , “ a leader is a dealer in hope ”. As the leader of the campaign it helps you to rally all your generals and foot soldiers behind your mission in the market place just as Napoleon did in the battlefield . Now that we are talking about campaigns , a political party or politician may seek to be elected on a low taxes platform to win votes of citizens overburdened by over-taxation .
NTV in Kenya started featuring live basketball matches from the US in very early morning hours when most other mainstream local TV stations broadcast international predominantly news channels . Basketball is an interesting platform to capture night owls and early birds viewers ’ segment mainly younger demographics who are disinterested in local and international news or politics , they may also be betting on such games keeping them tuned to NTV .
Platform-Tinder , Multiple Dates and Recruits at Our Finger Tips
This column highlighted one of the Best Paper Award Winners during the second Africa Market Research Association ( AMRA ) Conference that we hosted at Hotel Villa Rosa Kempinski in Nairobi . Tory Gentes from Canada won the Best Paper Award in 2018 for her presentation titled , “ 10 Tinder Dates in a Week ? In a World of Social , Our Recruits Are ALREADY in the Palm of Our Hand ”. She highlighted how one can use Tinder the online dating app as a recruitment platform for collecting qualitative market
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