Happy New Year!  I hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday season.  As we begin 2018 I’m sure we have various goals that we would like to accomplish.  I’d like to kick-off the year with a blog series focused on goals that involve the people side of things.  In particular I want us to think about setting goals to improve the relationships we have with the people around us.  I’d like us to do this by looking at how intentional we are about the marketing process and applying that to how we interact with each other.

Marketing is all about understanding and influencing people’s beliefs to help them find solutions to their problems.  Recently, I did some message evolution work with my wonderful brand, market research, and creative agency partners.  Message evolution work is about deciding what are the DESIRED beliefs you want a specific group of customers to have and then deciding what REASONS TO BELIEVE (think of supporting points like data, science, images, written messaging, etc.) you could share to drive people to have that belief.  You then test these concepts and use what you learn to create campaigns and stories that drive those desired beliefs.  All of this requires discipline and the team being intentional about choosing which desired beliefs they want to drive. 

Let’s think about a real world example.  Think of Ford Mustangs.  What do they want you to believe about Ford Mustangs?  Look at the image I pulled from Google about the Mustang and the message it conveys.  To me this suggests that they want you to believe something like, “Mustangs show the world that you are successful, tough, and driven.”  Think of Subaru.  What do they want you to believe?  Look at the image.  Subaru wants you to believe that Subarus are safe and reliable.  These campaigns both started with the brands identifying what desired beliefs they wanted to drive, and then they could try to drive those desired beliefs with images, text, etc.

What does this have to do with anything?  Instead of thinking about brands, let’s go in a slightly different direction.  Much like a brand, when we interact with people we cause them to feel a certain way.  What desired feeling are you trying to drive with the people you work with?  Seriously, pause for a moment and give the answer to that question a thought.  Do you have an answer?  How intentional are you about trying to make people feel that way? 

In case you’re wondering, here is the primary feeling I’m trying to create with people.  I want them to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I care about them and the work we do together.I want them to know I care about them and our work, because I believe if they know I care about them we will have a better working relationship and we will be able to do amazing work, which will help more patients.

The challenge: If we want our relationships to evolve, we need to be intentional about the feelings we are trying to create with the people we work with.  What feeling are you trying to drive?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry