5 things Bucks Fizz can teach marketeers.

OK. I get it. The title of this is at best a little trite. Bear with me though, they do make some valid points, and were well ahead of their time foreseeing work by Byron Sharp and the digital revolution. 

I like to tell everyone that my first gig was Run DMC supported by the Beastie Boys. It wasn't. It was Bucks Fizz, London Astoria, nineteen-eighty-ahem. I manage to sleep soundly each night by telling myself that Run DMC was the first gig I *chose* to go to. See what I did there?

Not much has stuck in the memory about that night, probably for good reason. But seeing their Eurovision winning number performed in front of my young, developing eyes has burnt "Making Your Mind Up" into my conscious. Perhaps that's why I'm so passionate about marketeers "just making an f-ing decision."

It's all to easy for us to hide behind an ever growing mountain of research, telling us what we already knew. "Oh, shall we just test it once more....?" Or to continue to search for evidence to support for an idea in which we've invested metaphorical blood sweat and sometime real tears, and which just isn't stacking up for consumers. 

God knows I tried hard to get a pet project away once... but we simply couldn't find a consumer to support the idea.

God knows I tried hard to get a pet project away once (I still think it's good by the way, so don't get me started), but we simply couldn't find a consumer to support the idea. Not one. I resorted to using lines like "turkeys don't vote for Christmas" and the well used Thomas Ford quote about people wanting faster horses. Both signs of desperation and losing the argument. All this is to say that I wasted effort, personal and that of the team, emotional and mental in trying to get this away. We weren't "failing fast."

Anyway, what advice can Bucks Fizz give us?

Thing #1. "You gotta speed it up, and then you gotta slow it down." What they're clearly saying here, is that as modern marketeers we have to be be both fleet of foot and have a longer term vision. New technology allows us to buy media, communicate with consumers, respond to events in real time. However, that's not a strategy for the long term in itself. The ability to do some of what we do faster than we could 10 years ago is not a replacement for having a strategic approach to building a brand. Well established marketing fundamentals are still valid.

Thing #2. "'Cause if you believe that a love can hit the top, you gotta play around." Perhaps, for the time it was published, the most ground breaking lesson. Some 30 years later Byron Sharp expanded on their thinking in his book "How Brands Grow" demonstrating that growing your brand's consumer base will (almost) always beat a focus on loyalty. BF are asking marketeers to think about growing their brands by playing around and not focusing exclusively on building loyalty or brand love. 

Thing #3. "And soon you will find that there comes a time, for making your mind up." The seminal moment for me. Just make a decision, use all your marketing nous and the research available to you to make the best decision you can at the time. People generally don't like uncertainty, just look at the UK post-Brexit. Research is only one tool though, more of that in thing #5.

Thing #4. "You gotta be sure that it's something everybody's gonna talk about." There's no point creating work that's wallpaper, or not investing behind it as much as you can - scale cut through is the sub text. My previous article (Why it’s time to ditch the Christmas ads) talks about how the UK retailer Christmas ads are generally pretty good at generating buzz in our collective psyche. More wise words.

Thing #5. "Trust your inner vision, don't let others change your mind." Finally, the quartet encouraged us as marketeers to have confidence. Have confidence in embracing ambiguity.  We are the voice of the consumer within our businesses, one should know more about them than us, and not much trumps that. 

So, there you have it, balancing strategy and tactics, preparing Byron Sharp's 2010 book, decision making, brand fame and confidence. They said it all. 

And I haven't even mentioned the skirt ripping.