N.I.F.T.Y Marketing

To me, the essence of marketing is about creating and communicating value. And there’s a lot of marketing out there. Some of it is better than others. (Remember Crystal Pepsi?) 

Good marketing inspires us as practitioners and convinces us as customers to change our behavior. But what makes good marketing tick? I’ve been thinking about this a bit and came up with a framework called N.I.F.T.Y. as a way to analyze a marketing effort and separate the “me too” efforts from the ones that stand out in their industry. What does a marketing effort need to have in order to be considered N.I.F.T.Y.?

Novelty: The effort should be unique or at least a new spin or twist on the status quo.

Intelligence: The effort delivers on the business strategy. N.I.F.T.Y. is not about experimentation of new channels for the sake of experimentation. Instead it’s about taking marketing insights juxtaposed with business goals and creating a plan for closing the gap.

Flexible: A truly N.I.F.T.Y. marketing effort is flexible enough to work across channels making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Targeted: It’s focused, deliberate, and timely to the specific customer segments it engages.

Yes! The marketing effort influences targets to respond.