Pitchers and catchers report today, marking the beginning of the long journey to the World Series. What better way to celebrate than apply some of Yogi Berra’s quotes to marketing?
I believe in speaking to an audience using their vernacular. That’s why I love Yogi Berra, and his terribly funny euphemisms for life, which just absolutely drive grammar perfectionists crazy.
Here are my five favorite Yogisms as they apply to marketing:
“It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Launch a campaign or an initiative that isn’t doing well out the gate? Well, it’s not over. Make changes. Use your analytics and customer interactions to pivot and turn things around. Drop approaches, shake up messaging, and find new ways to communicate. Failure is only complete when you give in.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”
If you don’t have outcomes to achieve, if there’s nothing to measure, then how do you know if your marketing is successful? You don’t. As a result, marketing may be completely misaligned from the organization, and can lead it off the rails. Know where your company or nonprofit is going, and market appropriately.
“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
The Facebook conundrum! Seriously, when a medium becomes too popular, its hard to become heard above all the noise. There has to be better, faster, and cheaper ways to reach your target stakeholder group. Find them.
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
I used to worry about the future all the time. Planning for the future to achieve outcomes is a critical component of strategy. But if you over-focus on competitive response and events, you will always be disappointed. There’s always a surprise.
Meanwhile, you can lose today by over-focusing on tomorrow. Customers are won by actions taken today, not yesterday, not tomorrow.
“There are some people who, if they don’t already know, you can’t tell ’em.”
Some people are just vested in being right, and when they’re wrong, they’re still right. This is particularly true of social media voices (me included). It reminds me of the lyrics to Living Colour’s Cult of Personality, “I tell you one and one makes three.”
Well, if someone is so vested in being right — colleague, customer, prospect, commenter, or anyone — I’ve learned to give ’em enough rope to find out the hard way. I can’t change their mind any other way.
Care to add something?
A version of this post ran originally on the Vocus blog.