This afternoon I was looking out the window in an effort to put off the project sitting on my desk when I noticed the chalky vapor trail of a jet painted across the baby blue sky here in Denver. As I let my mind wander and make random connections (which is what one does when they’re trying not to work), I thought of the stunt planes that perform skywriting in front of thousands of sun-starved fans who attend early spring baseball games. And as I considered this very antiquated method of branding, I was struck by how similar it is to modern branding and marketing.
When most marketers, branding professionals and ad people devleop and execute a plan, we feel a sense of permanence about it. “There,” we say, “that’s finished and set in stone, ready to be released to the world where it will make an indelible impression.” Similarly, when entrepreneurs and business owners create a product or launch a service, they feel they have created something that is worthy of lasting and that will stick around (unfortunately, we have many landfills that prove some of these inventions are a little too long lasting).
We all fool ourselves into thinking what we create and promote will last, if not forever, well beyond our lifetimes, probably because of our unquenchable desire to outrun death as well as our unexplainable urge to leave a footprint. But all footprints are eventually erased, and so too are our Web sites, print ads, Facebook pages, billboards, media kits, radio spots and Twitters. Everything we do to market our businesses and serve our customers starts to fade as soon as it is set free.
So with such little time, as we make such evanescent gestures, it’s important that what you write in the sky be important. More than important, actually. Vital. Vital for you, for your customers, for the world. Because if all we can write is “Viagra” or “Low prices” or “Buy now”, than we’ve wasted a valuable opportunity to say something meaningful, something worthy of being writ across the big broad sky.
