Thoughts and Dots

I spent much of my youth in cottage country – from entire summers when I was young to weekends as a teenager and early in my career. During my teenage years, our social lives revolved around bonfires on the beach; gatherings of friends of all ages, on different beaches, roasting corn on the cob over the bonfire. One night when I was about 18 or so, we were fortunate enough to see the Northern Lights – or for the more erudite among you – the Aurora Borealis. Since then, I’ve never stopped looking up at the night sky.

Fast forward several years later when my 3-year old daughter asked me if I did puzzles at school. Thinking for a moment, I said “sort of”. During that moment of hesitation, I realized that my education was, in fact, all about puzzles – critical thinking and connecting dots. Looking for commonalities and discrepancies in the courses I studied was the basis of all I wrote during my university years; and, as it turns out, that’s what I do for a living; I connect dots, discover gaps, and find practical ways to fill those gaps.

This, my friends, is the power of strategic thinking, which in my case, happens to be marketing strategy.

So how does the night sky fit in? It’s made up of stars, which sometimes form constellations, but that all comprise the single entity above – our overhead outdoor ceiling – that we call the universe.

In marketing strategy, we have the universe of people we can market to, (through mass advertising, for example). Some of them will form constellations that provide greater insight and allow us to target messages more effectively – they would be considered customer segments. Others will be single stellar entities that represent gaps to fill, or challenge us to find ways to connect them to other customer segments or create new ones in the search for commonality.

Using this same analogy, stars don’t always represent people. They can also represent brands. Can a falling star be analogous to a dying brand? Can a super nova represent a cult brand, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Torontonians out there? And where do the planets fit in. Are they the “master brands” of the universe that represent a product category, such as Kleenex or that are household names and easily recognizable by anyone – Microsoft or General Motors, for example?

2 cents.

What do you think? Is this a puzzle worthy of your brain space?