We work in an era where marketing is increasingly accountable, not just for outputs — brochures, websites, advertising, trade show booths and direct mailers — or even outgrowths — website visitors, followers and likes — but for outcomes. Results with a Return on Marketing Investment - ROMI.
Demand More from Your Marketing
As marketing subject matter experts, staff of Pipitone Group are often asked to provide their insights on industry trends by members of the media. Recently, the editorial staff of TEQ, a news magazine published by the Pittsburgh Technology Council that serves the business-to-business information needs of area technology companies, asked Scott Pipitone if he would put pen to paper—okay, fingers to keyboard—to share with readers his thoughts on a growing trend in marketing today: Demand Generation through Marketing Automation. It’s one that Pipitone Group has been on the leading edge of for some time now—from sales and marketing alignment, to personas and buy cycles; from creation of content to measuring results and everything in between—so, of course, he said, yes.
Charles Darwin wrote that “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” His theory posited that individual species would have to adapt in order to survive, and that natural selection—the so-called “survival of the fittest”—would weed out the species that failed to adapt to the changing environment.
Don Hewitt, the revered news man and creator of “60 Minutes”, managed some of the best and brightest journalistic minds of our time. Some might say he managed some pretty massive egos, too, with the likes Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner and Ed Bradley. Despite the tremendous talent that reported to him, however, his simple direction remained constant for more than 40 years: “Tell me a story.” In fact, his book is aptly titled, “Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television.” Few could argue that the reason “60 Minutes” is now in its 45th year is because its correspondents stick to that simple four-word creed.
In practicing media relations for 15 years, I’m still fascinated by the elements of what makes a great news story. As a PR guy, however, I still find myself struggling to explain to clients that in order for their media relations strategy to work and for their product or service to become news, they need to go back to Mr. Hewitt’s advice, or for that matter, the words my four-year-old daughter says every night when I’m tucking her in – “Tell me a story.”