When we plan our marketing strategy from various perspectives such as social media marketing, branded content, establishing social media on major platforms and the list goes on; we can actually apply imaginary resolution to any of these.
A new year with a new fresh outlook. This happens every year and it’s mostly everyone’s favourite time of the year as we look forward to a brand new year ahead, just like the classic song by Andy Williams which is always played over and over again around this time of the year, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Somehow, in every holiday season, people’s good spirits coupled with lots of happenings tend to fill the air wherever we go. No one wants to be left behind in this season as they engaged themselves in various activities which were planned in advance, some even few months ahead just to be on time to catch up with the atmosphere and not to miss out any opportunity. It is with no exception that companies promoting their products or services will take full advantage of this sparkling time of the year. Again, this happens every year as we all know but in this competitive world of business, many companies or marketers will want to seize every chance to market or launch their products/services effectively. They want their products/services to be the first to be known for being either outstanding or to be remembered as long as they can, if possible permanently in the minds of the public.
A brand new year also leads to new year resolution being made for accomplishment but for some people who do not believe in resolution, they will either state their point of view or shrugged their shoulders indicating why bother when in the first place, it can’t be fulfilled. But I believe a made up resolution or rather an imaginary one does work. This is because resolution is not static. It can be revisited and revised accordingly along the way. As Collins English dictionary defines resolution as “If you make a resolution, you try very hard to do it. Resolution is determination to do something or not to do something.” Thus, I believe it is a promise which we can fall upon as a reminder and encouragement to achieve it. It can also be a foundation for us to build something bigger, more solid or branch out at later stage. It is something that we visualise that we can achieve and hence, known as the “imaginary resolution”.
When we plan our marketing strategy from various perspectives such as social media marketing, branded content, establishing social media on major platforms and the list goes on; we can actually apply imaginary resolution to any of these. It is like creating your own world in marketing while being logical and realistic in its approach but concurrently, must be prepared for any potential risks. Imaginary resolution in marketing can comprise of among others, a well thought of marketing strategy, the preferred design for an advertisement, the choice of words to be used in branded content or even something that you try to avoid doing it now but keep in view until the right time comes. It can be broken down into preliminary and revision stage as narrate d below:
- Preliminary stage – this should be done before the start of a new year. For instance, we have to study and imagine the market outlook for 2018 from various angles such as potential market trend, population size, age group, culture, consumers’/buyers’ interest/preferences/tastes, competitors, etc before penning down our resolution to strategise our marketing initiatives. Most importantly, our imaginary resolution caters the needs of our audience as we stay closely knitted and connected to them whole year round to prevent our products/services from being isolated or made less popular.
- Revision stage – there is no fix time for revision of resolution as it can happen any time of the year. Forget about accomplishing your preliminary resolution perfectly as it is inevitable that circumstances and people’s mindset about a particular brand for instance, may change from time to time. Brands that were once people’s choice or favourite brands somehow for some reasons can be made unpopular all of a sudden or out of the blue and they switch brand overnight. In the eyes of the owner of the brand, this can be very devastating and disappointing, especially when it affects corporate image and sales tremendously. Our preliminary resolution can subsequently be outdated at this point of discovery and hence, needs to be revised. Being imaginative about your revised resolution is workable if one is prepared to be innovative and can preamp the right time to change your marketing strategy via revised imaginary resolution. Don’t be disappointed if you can’t achieve part of your resolution as “you and only you” have the power to revise it as and when you like it with no extra cost to rethink about your resolution to meet a particular objective/strategy. You never know that this resolution can one day become your marketing tool for you to look back and reuse as you like.
However, there are times where we may wonder whether this created resolution is workable as there are uncertainties associated with unforeseen circumstances or unknown risk factors. We will be wondering whether it is worth the time and effort to prepare a resolution. But do you know that miracles can happen and a lousy resolution can sometimes become a powerful tool/base point to start and move on. It all depends on how we work around it. Here, I would like to quote an example of the famous Disney musical film, Mary Poppins song entitled “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Try pronouncing the title of the song and spell it on your own after 5 seconds. I am sure most of you will have problem with that. We will go, “supercali…. what again?”). Wikipedia states that “The roots of the word have been defined as: super- “above”, cali- “beauty”, fragilistic- “delicate”, expiali- “to atone”, and -docious “educable”, with the sum of these parts signifying roughly “Atoning for educability through delicate beauty.” According to the film, in which the word gained its popularity, it is defined as “something to say when you have nothing to say.” I am trying to link this to imaginary resolution to bring out the point that this word which was once a nonsense word has gained its recognition worldwide where nothing is impossible. Follow me through the following first 5 lines of the song lyrics as we link them to imaginary resolution which can assist in our marketing strategy:
“It’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Even though the sound of it
Is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough
You’ll always sound precocious…”
The lyric tells us that this word (perhaps the longest word in dictionary) of “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” may sound scary at first sight (referring to “atrocious”), but if you dare to bring your product really loud out there, you may succeed to capture the right attention at the right moment as you win over the public’s attention on how they perceive (referring to “precocious”) your product based on your marketing efforts. It takes determination and efforts to prepare a resolution but it doesn’t cost you anything to go for imaginary resolution. We just need to enhance our thinking skills, our ability to think out of the box and creativity to come out with an acceptable resolution.
In order to at least secure the scalability and popularity of our brand or services, why not create an imaginary resolution for rainy days? There are endless marketing ideas and techniques demanding to be noted for a price, of course. But imaginary resolution is different. It is something you imagine that it may work out as part of your marketing strategy and can be a superb brainstorming session to motivate your marketing team while bearing in mind, not to get too carried away with the process. As the saying goes, “The resolution of an image is how clear the image is until you can see its fine aspects”. Be as imaginative as you can as if you are going to succeed when drafting your imaginary resolution and allow it to crystallize with the flow. You will never know that this imaginary resolution of yours can one fine day lead to miraculous outcomes and become one of your successful marketing strategies.
