That should have been thanks for your detailed reply Les!

Thanks for your details reply Les!

Hi Phoebe, I like your proactive approach! The amount of waste is so senseless. And as you suggest it’s not even good marketing. It’s lazy, unimaginative marketing by numbers. Although… maybe we should be relieved junk food marketers are so out of touch!

A friend from a large NSW state agency just commented “It’s true about collateral. Years ago we used to have to lock up the promotional gear otherwise our work colleagues would steal it. Nowadays we can’t give it away.”
Hi Graham, marketing seems to be concerned with the magic of the message and branding (owning ideas in the audience’s mind: Toyota is jump for joy). The basic concept is transactional: Carry out this action (buy, sign up) and you’ll get the specified benefit. But because the benefits are indistinguishable (all beers get you drunk, all cars drive you around), brand warfare descends into psychological sleights of hand like celebrity association and artificial urgency.
Community engagement, on the other hand, is a constellation of corporate outcomes in search of a methodology. I’m not sure what it is and different professions understand it in different and convenient ways. I try to ‘be real’ and unpack it as: 1) The desire to be noticed; 2) The desire to be talked about positively; and 3) The desire to have people come and play with our offerings.
When you unpack in more concrete terms it’s possible to strategise what these three outcomes might require in each specific situation. Community engagement as it’s taught in the IAP2 framework has a ridiculously large hole it it because is neglects the need to “be actually engaging”, that is, to create events or processes that people would actually want to break their busy schedules and come and play with?!
I actually think that Design Thinking is superior replacement for both marketing and community engagement! Plus a massive dollop of creativity of course.
Best wishes – Les