Trade Association Branding: Formalize the brand and consistency will come (podcast episode #143)

How I Made it in Marketing

It’s a noisy world out there.

So anytime you have that most valuable of things – a small window into your ideal customer’s attention span – are you clear and memorable with your value proposition?

Of course, that is all the more complicated by the fact that the small window of attention isn’t only when they see your big TV campaign or whatnot, it can come from so many places – it’s also when they step into your store, add something to the cart on your website, reach out to customer service, and on and on.

Which is why this lesson from a podcast guest application stood out to me – “Even bad brands can be good, when they’re consistent.”

To hear the story behind that lesson, I talked to Drew Holmgreen, CEO, PPAI [https://www.ppai.org/].

PPAI is the Promotional Products Association International, the largest trade association in the world for the $27 billion promotional products industry – a community of 15,000 members.

Holmgreen manages a team of 50 and a budget of $25 million.

Lessons from the things he made

• Rally together to overcome Murphy’s Law
• When you can’t send a sample, send the entire state
• Formalize the brand and consistency will come
• Tell them what you know definitively. Not what you think.
• Even bad brands can be good, when they’re consistent
• Volunteers are your best resource
• You should always have a chip to help push you forward

Discussed in this episode

When you can’t send the entire state, send a customer story. In this episode, our guest discusses sampling on an experiential marketing scale. If you don’t have that budget, try sending a customer story instead. Our latest MeclabsAI Workflow makes it easy – turn a client win into more leads [https://win.meclabsai.com/]. (from MeclabsAI, MarketingSherpa’s parent company).

B2B Marketing Leadership: The higher you get in the organization, the more details you need to know (podcast episode #115) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/B2B-marketing-leadership]

Creative Marketing and Advertising Campaigns: Hold the line & get a door kicker (podcast episode #84) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/creative-marketing]

Get more episodes

Subscribe to the MarketingSherpa email newsletter [https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters] to get more insights from your fellow marketers. Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

For more insights, check out...

This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages [https://meclabs.com/course/] free digital marketing course.

Apply to be a guest
If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application