What fun we are going to have with truth marketing!

Our mission is to help marketing leaders make the most of their resources and better connect with their customers and partners in this new era of what we call "truth marketing". We understand "truth marketing" to be the process of building products with personality by delivering services with honesty and respect for all customers. And having as much fun as possible in the process.

It is only marketing, after all. Roll the scroll wheel to discover more!

Truth marketing means having the courage of your convictions

We all have convictions. We find it easy to voice them in interviews, breaks, corridor conversations or over a beer. The problem with convictions is that they are difficult to stand by in meetings and presentations – it's possible to come close, but we have a tendency to dress them up in jargon to disguise them for what they are.

But what exactly are convictions? A statement of what I believe in, the baring of my soul.

At first glance, corporations do not tolerate convictions. But, deep down, they love them – they are the root of differentiation and the fuel of an engaging work environment; convictions are the driver of innovation and a way of generating huge savings on market research (you can never dispense with market research if you work for a large organisation, but show me a successful entrepreneur who has invested heavily in it.)

As convictions become more important, the role of the leader is changing too. Leadership is no longer about grand visions and decisive action – a leader must manage a broader community in which convictions are allowed to flourish with magical results. The role of team members is to follow (the leader) and support the team with conviction of her own. This takes guts.

But the alternative is apathy and dysfunctional teams.

Truth marketing means innovating with purpose

Innovative products are created at the meeting point between a leader's conviction and the emerging social context. This may or may not be when you're sitting on a beanbag with our finger in the air surrounded by creative agency types, but it certainly is not innovation just for the sake of it.

We call this innovation with purpose. It may be a “left field” eureka moment or simply a commitment to be everything a good

• supermarket
• paint
• airline

should be.

To put it simply, great innovation that works is often extremely basic, and clever, imaginative people have difficulty being basic.

Truth marketing means learning to let go

At the heart of the 21st century marketing challenge is the need to let go, to relinquish control. We live in the era of truth marketing. Secrets are harder to keep – questionable corporate behaviour, dodgy sales practices, brand hypocrisy and poor customer service can blow up as a Facebook “cause” or amusing YouTube video at any moment.

This is a conundrum for people my age – now in positions of marketing leadership in large organisations – brought up (professionally) on the idea that you can control brand image. The best you can do today is develop your brand with the conviction in your heart and let it run free in the world. At which point, yours is a watching brief. You must watch for the moments to intervene to maximum effect in the knowledge that you can't predict when those moments will come.

This takes a seat-of-the-pants approach – it's not the kind of behaviour large corporations, or people in successful large corporations, instinctively understand. But it is the only thing the next generation of consumers knows. This makes it a much more fundamental challenge to marketing departments than learning how to use new forms of social media to promote the same old brand positioning. The use of these tools without conviction amounts to little more than transparent attempts to make your brand seem cooler than it actually is.

Truth marketing is most relevant for service brands

Good service is being useful, which is different from just being nice. Being useful generates goodwill and goodwill always results in good business – in both the short and long runs. And the minute you start to see good customer service as the way to create a space to sell more, you create the most virtuous of business circles.

Q: Does that make customer service the new advertising?

A: Duh.

Not all products need, on the face of it, an overt level of customer service. Nonetheless, in this era of Truth Marketing, it is the single most widely available business opportunity. And it is an enormous opportunity even for those brands/products that don't, on the face of it, need an overt level of customer service to sell their products.

Truth marketing harnesses talent

The other key aspect of the 21st century marketing challenge is the same old internal one of getting the most out of the collection of bright young things who constitute your marketing department. All too often, I have sat inside or at the head of a group of marketeers and thought to myself – what a waste of talent. Here is intelligence used divisively - to flog stuff people don't need, or to ensure personal survival in the corporate system. Sigh. The challenge here is also one of letting go.

Learning to let go in service of the right vision demands a good, conviction-based vision in the first place - and that all work on top of this is organised and collaborative. The models are out there in the world of open-source software, brilliant “products” developed and maintained by a united team of – generally unpaid – collaborators. Their conviction is one of joyful teamwork, freedom of choice and a desire to make the world a better place in tiny, incremental steps.

Truth marketing is a new dawn

I am not asking any of my clients to do anything I haven't done already. Glorious Day exists because work has dried up for strategic marketing advisers like me, and I needed to find a new approach. What I found was a set of convictions I'd always known I had, but that I understood as if for the first time.

This is why I now offer an exciting range of consultancy products at fixed prices (rather than the hourly rate I used to charge) and why every day spent working with my clients on their products is a packed and full day – yes, a Glorious Day! And if you use the product and want to work more with me and the rest of the team at the Glorious Day Brand Building Agency, then we'll sell you our services, but only one glorious day at a time...

Loz x