Try and fail!

Have you ever thought of boosting your brand equity by encouraging your marketing team to do expensive mistakes?

While justifying our need to control every little detail and minimizing mistakes, we Finns have created a well spread dogma: “Well planned is half way done”. If we are being completely honest with ourselves, it only means that the task is somehow planned. Written or verbally. In worst case scenarios your marketing manager probably copies the same plan every time even if its never worked. Don’t get me wrong, planning surely is important. But when its about brand building should we cut the crap and concentrate in doing?

While we comfort ourselves in the epic lie of masterplans, we show our worst weakness: the fear of making mistakes. A day won’t go by without someone being manically lynched by a simple mistake they’ve managed to make. No matter how big or small, it is a mistake after all. I personally think that a brand is also build from the mistakes we didn’t do or the comments we never gave.

Thanks to my extrovert personality and enthusiastic way of working I have been the facade of these claims and public humiliations more than the doctor ever ordered. One day I decided I would get determined to change the way people in our organization should face mistakes. From that on making mistakes was cool (at least for the first time)! While concentrating in planning you never know wether something will work out or not. At least in marketing you know rapidly by trying if it is going to work or not. If you are still planning when the competitor is making it happen you are out of the game.

What if you would start encouraging your marketing team to skip heavy planning and go straight into trying even if it means failing? Say what they have to say and do what they want to do! I don’t think your team would start avoiding the craziest ideas they were earlier on afraid to tell you about? Would they start doing bad marketing because they now have the opportunity to openly claim to have tried and made a mistake? No. They will start doing more with bolder new ideas with bigger enthusiasm and what’s best they will deliver results. Of course after several sometimes very expensive mistakes, but in the end they will get more done, become more experienced and your brand will flourish in the end.

So next time you require a ridiculously long and detailed marketing plan remember: Try and fail to tell the tale!