Velocity Marketing: Why the first 72-hours Matter.
By Donna Budica & George Karalexis
In our current climate of content over-saturation, survival demands a knockout first impression. Any successful campaign, rollout, brand and product longevity relies on capturing attention to stand out. More importantly, good marketing -- real marketing -- sets that tone & pace immediately.
We are exposed to over 8,900 trending topics daily. Most of these have a shelf-life of less than 11 minutes. To assume that anyone, even your core audience, is paying attention to your messaging can be a fatal misstep. The average person is exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements per day, which reinforces the point even further.
One of the biggest challenges our clients face is setting up & executing on a marketing plan that is able to penetrate the noise AND create a lasting impression. The first 72-hours of a campaign are vital, now more than ever, to cut through clutter and create meaningful, momentous impact. Velocity Marketing strategically focuses on that precisely narrow & fleeting post-launch period.
Velocity is the rate and direction of an object’s movement; that means the trajectory & inertia of any given campaign gets dictated by that crucial kick-off window. There are no second-chances for first impressions. Recovery is difficult, and course correction is very expensive.
Velocity Marketing only works with stellar strategy & militant execution. Unmet expectations and lackluster performance are more often than not the result of flawed, incomplete preparation. The only way to surmount that is by systematizing the blueprint and creating replicable success:
This is the process that sets up Velocity Marketing for success:
Discovery - It’s important to understand the messaging of both client and song. You also need to know what the artist / client is willing to do — and not do.
Setting KPIs - Benchmarks for success are key. Too often, marketers and teams want a song to be “big,” but they don’t have key performance indicators to measure or understand which component is actually working.
Comprehensive Approach - An idea is not a strategy. Setting KPIs informs how we roll out a campaign and then what tactics to use to achieve our goals. You have to hit your consumer from multiple touch points and understand why. Killer marketing campaigns don’t happen in a silo. You need captivating visual content that is in line with the artist’s brand then reverse engineer HOW to achieve your benchmarks while creating / sending a unified message.
Execution - Without fiercely diligent execution, nothing matters. Flawless and well-timed delivery creates velocity that resonates and lasts.
Always-On Monitoring + Daily Reporting - Meticulous reporting is the only way to iterate in real time. It's as much for the client (external) as it is for your team (internal). Daily reports induce ongoing, transparent assessment to ensure that you create, increase, and sustain engagement. This ostensibly small, painstaking formality is actually the vehicle for creating virality, #1 trending, & compounding interest.
Even with an immaculately designed Velocity Marketing campaign, reality has its hiccups. But you can create a competitive edge if you effectively anticipate at least some of the more frequent ones; success typically favors the prepared.
Strategic challenges we have faced during execution:
Underestimating the impact of organizational dynamics. Misunderstanding or neglecting internal politics can be the silent killer. And most of all, don’t attempt to change them. Respect the org structure; stay malleable.
Most organizations lack systematic processes & the consistency to manage projects & programs at scale. This shortfall is the primary reason planning & execution feel much more difficult than they are.
Cursory (at best) risk analysis. Risk-taking & innovation are sexy, in theory. But they only appear sexy because the ones you hear about are the ones that work. And the ones that work are those that calculated, mitigated, & contingency-planned for potential (and likely) failures. Scenario-izing an alternate route to your objective isn’t sexy -- but it wins. And you know what’s actually sexy? WINNING.
Overburdened, limited bandwidth; poor resource distribution. It’s no secret that we have done a great job at being extensions of others’ teams. We are masters of supplementing, complementing, and adding bandwidth and capacity. It’s not uncommon for organizations to be weighed down by an excess of projects & responsibility overlap. High-touch, sniper-style strategies & well-oiled execution don't develop overnight. They require a curated constellation of skills, tools, expertise, resources etc. -- we come in to bolster the chances of success.
Memorable, impactful marketing is a little bit art & a little bit science.
The music industry, especially in this uncertain, cluttered, post/mid-COVID, constant-consumption climate, is unforgiving, unrelenting, & unwilling to concede to double-takes or reconsiderations. Relevance relies on the Velocity generated by that initial traction within the first 72 hours. When you align the right tools (content, data, technology, social networks) with the artist/brand narrative (the DNA) together with the tactics (plan, anticipate, mitigate, all that’s left to predict longevity is consistent TRANSPARENCY (daily reporting) -- it is, after all, the currency of trust.