CAUTION: The excerpt below may inspire you to (a) buy/read yet another marketing book and or (b) motivate you to go to the corporate dark side and become a Marketing Pirate fixated on changing the marketing culture that binds the branding at your company.
(As a part-time marketing gadfly and a full-time believer in meaningful marketing, I get the feeling I am going to love this book. Enjoy!)
The Pirate Inside: Building a Challenger Brand Culture Within Yourself and Your Organization [author: Adam Morgan]
“It’s more fun to be a Pirate than to join the Navy.”
- Steve Jobs -
Enough. I have had enough.
I have had enough of corporate rules. Of enforced mediocrity. Of doing it this way or that way, because this way or that way is the way we always do it round here. I have had enough of being a prisoner of my category’s history. Of being handcuffed by my company’s culture. Of being hamstrung by benchmarks and processes and so-called ‘best practices’ into becoming just another kind of establishment brand.
I read the most depressing article in the Harvard Business Review this morning. Apparently some study looked at 340 prime time commercials and found that there was a differentiating message in only 7% of them: 7%. Is my brand really any different? Really? My God, what am I doing in this job? And why do I feel that much of the time my company’s culture is dampening, rather than igniting my ability to change those statistics?
So I want out. Well, kind of out. I want to take the brand out and see what it could do if I had a little open water. I want to try doing things a different way. Try a little liberating lawlessness, frankly. Find my piss and vinegar, and see where that takes me. I look at the great marketing pirates like Jobs and Branson, and I think, yes, I’d like some of that. Some freedom – I could do something with that. The freedom to make up my own rules for a change.
Click here to read the entire excerpt from The Pirate Inside: Building a Challenger Brand Culture Within Yourself and Your Organization.
Wow.Cool. Great stuff =)
There are these great ideas I'm coming across- some in books like this one, some in blogs like yours or Evelyn Rodriguez's.
The hard part is getting your clients on board. They spent the last 20 years in the Navy, they'll be damed if they let you get away with all this pirate nonesense.
Damn, it's hard enough getting colleagues on board, let alone clinets.
Posted by: hugh macleodh | September 07, 2004 at 05:19 AM
Even more so, most clients hate change and all that it entails. Most marketing people I've worked with, with a few shining exceptions, want one thing only: Enough sales being generated by their activities to keep their job.
The idea of taking risks, and then having to defend these risks to a board asking for results, is not something that comes naturally to them. Rocking the boat (heh) isn't part of their job description.
Posted by: Andreas | September 08, 2004 at 12:12 AM