Lately I’ve been feeling a lot like a consumer brand that’s conflicted over how to focus the messaging priorities of an integrated media campaign to best match their overall business objectives. Anchor into one idea and laser focus everything you do around that direction? Establish several different objectives and go into market hoping to just hit one? Screw it all, and just go celebrity? Much of it depends on what the brand believes it can accomplish given the integrated media budget, but then money can be siphoned from other marketing budgets to account for a big enough idea…
…Right. Sorry.
When not writing this less than profitable online column (“blog” – whatever) I work in combo of integrated marketing, branded content development and media for a set of beauty brands (ala Dove but not Dove). We identify brand marketing objectives and build out 360 campaigns across tv, print, and online to achieve those goals (drive sales, garner PR, increase household penetration).
Sometimes I work with brands that have a crystal clear direction. They want to market to first-time Mom’s around the idea of creating a bedtime routine for babies. One goal, one message, boom.
But other slash most times I work with brands that approach this process like an over-achieving high school junior trying to bolster up that college transcript to woo the Ivy Leagues. They want to do it all. Focus on music but also all passion points, tie to celebrity but also make it about real people, align to beauty and fashion while being sure to keep it totally down to earth, focus on driving sales but also make giving money to charity a number one priority.
And what happens when that happens is self sabotage. They hurt one goal by having way too many because there aren’t enough dollars in the budget to get it all done.
I think I might be that kind of brand.
Lately I’ve been piling projects on my plate eyes-bigger-than-my-stomach-style. It’s a combo of, I really want to get X done before the idea passes in my head, and how can I say no to Y person who asked me to contribute something to Z production, and also if everyone else is going to watch the game then how can I miss out? Also the priorities of my 9-5 which feels more like a 9-8 even though it pays like a 9-noon.
We weren’t taught to not want a lot – if not “it all.” Carpe Diem and “you only live once” and better fit it all in before you get married and have kids. Multi-taski-ness is next to godliness and the return of the Renaissance rich makes you feel like you have to keep a dozen coals in the fire to make sure at least one does whatever the end of that metaphor is (perhaps it’s not coals…).
Can you have it all? I’d like to think yes. Can you get it all by going for it all at the same time? I’m gathering no. That’s where the self sabotage comes in.
10 half-assed projects are worth less than one home run. 3 half-asleep hours spent out because everyone is out are 3 hours lost. Saying, “I thought I could do it but now that we’re down to the wire I realize I really can’t” is way worse than saying, “sorry, I have to pass this round.”
Those are the logical statements I tell myself when I’m livid that I can’t get a blog post – right – column written for Monday and am three weeks behind on a book proposal. Most of the time my head is much more in the spot of – what if this one project is the project that’s going to make all the other projects happen? Or – what if I let this opportunity pass me by and it never comes back again? And – how am I supposed to know what of all the things I love to do should be the one I give the most attention?
If I were in fact a brand I’d do a focus group. Get some people in here and ask them some questions and see what they want and where they think I should go. I’d budget it out and look at past examples of success and read media research. But at the end of the day I’d still have to take a leap of faith – with money – and hope to god it works out.
So I guess I call my parents and talk to my friends. I should read about 20-somethings who were a lot like me not long ago. I’ll divide out my time and give thought to what really makes me happiest and try to calm the hell down, as a general rule. And at the end of the day – an hour I try to keep as far from the next day as possible – I’ll keeping leaping. Sometimes I’ll land and that will help me know where to jump next. But sometimes I’ll probably fall, and that may help me know even more.
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To refer to your BC jesuit education, I would suggest that we find freedom when we set limits on our existence. Laws, for instance, help us know clearly what can and can’t we do. Saying I’m not eating meat today narrows down the list of items on the menu–increasing efficiency and clarity of choice.
Doing one thing well, even a few things well, is better than being a universally half-ass person.
Good luck!
love it, especially the first half. in the second part it seems like we’ve been diagnosed w/ the same disease. FOMO – fear of missing out. it’s a horrible disease! -mk
Do you ever write posts in English?
Yup… I have the same problem. My blog is so rambly, of several subjects and a few names. Like my career, like my life.
Maybe some of us need to try on more shoes before we purchase a pair? Ugh, sucky metaphor. I’m scared i’m losing the opportunity to really focus and get good at one thing.