My Three Hard & Fast Rules to… Breaking the Rules

When I finally landed on the title of my blog series “My Three Hard & Fast Rules to…,” I couldn’t help but smirk at the idea that for the better half of my career I’ve been doing the exact opposite of following “the rules.” In fact, I can think of more than a few times that I was pulled into whatever the equivalent is to an adult principal’s office and been kindly asked to refer back to the ABCs versus worrying about the 123s.

Truth be told, when I really think about it, I’ve always been a rule breaker at heart. For example, when I was 10 years old, while all my classmates were going door-to-door selling chocolates for a school fundraiser, I convinced my parents to purchase sample chocolates as an “investment.” I then hosted a Tupperware-style chocolate tasting party with all the neighbors (winning top sales for my grade). You see, even back then, when I thought about “breaking the rules,” it was never about taking an uncalculated risk for the sake of a thrill; I just believed that the best results came from coloring outside the lines and that, worst-case scenario, IT’S JUST CHOCOLATE – what did I have to lose?

Today, as a global brand marketer for over two decades, my core philosophy has not changed much. Armed with a little confidence and a whole lot of courage, when it comes to taking a rule-breaking risk, I remind myself that worst-case scenario (dare I say it?), IT’S JUST MARKETING.

I’m Alyson Griffin, and here are my Three Hard & Fast Rules to… Breaking the Rules.

Rule #1: Trust Your Gut

I don’t just use this expression as a clichéd idiom to represent “believing in yourself” – I mean it somewhat literally. In fact, scientists have discovered that after the brain, the nervous system’s second biggest network of closely-interconnected neurons is located in the stomach area. So, while the actual signals of instinct come from your brain, the nerve cells in your gut do play a large part in your intuition. So, when it comes to breaking the rules and pushing against the status quo, if the feeling that compounds you to do so comes from that same inner compass that guided you into having a seat in that conference room to begin with – TRUST IT.

If you’re thinking “that’s easier said than done,” you’re absolutely right. When I was roughly a decade into overseeing separate B2B and B2C marketing efforts at HP, I was handed the oversight of our combined marketing team. Like the majority of us in the industry, I began to manage the two sides of the team in silos: two sets of calls, two different strategies, two marketing plans, two everything.

Enter the “gut moment” –

One afternoon I walked out of a meeting discussing another year of conference circuits and email blasts to our B2B audience, and into a meeting where I was approving an innovative plan for social influencer partnerships and digital product unveils aimed toward our B2C customers. That’s when it hit me! Without even really recognizing it, I was blissfully unaware to the fact that I had been following the traditional rules around how the industry is “supposed” to market to a B2B audience versus thinking about the audience themselves – you know, as people. It wasn’t until I started to recognize how nuanced and boundary-pushing B2C marketing was that I realized that this was a rule I had to break. If you read my post last month, this was the aha moment! that inspired my third rule about marketing to B2B or B2C; the bottom line is to remember that, at the end of the day, we’re all people. Wouldn’t business decision makers be just as influenced by YouTuber reviews, experiential activations and impactful digital content? Suddenly my two separate meetings became one larger discussion around who our overarching audience was, what their behaviors and passion points were, which pain points we could solve, and how we could tell our story in a way that mattered most to them.

What is important to take away here is that while trusting my gut is what enabled me to think about the rules differently, it was the rationale from my 10-year-old self that encouraged me to break them. If I swing and miss…what’s the worst thing that can happen - I get another pitch?

Rule #2: Take the Swing

Baseball is a great analogy for marketing because the batter has a lot of “chances” to connect with the ball – if the batter plays the count right, s/he can miss up to five times before it “really” matters. In marketing, there is gray - not black and white - so teams can take a chance and still learn from their effort; even if the campaign or activation didn’t exactly knock it out of the park, getting to first base is still a win.

It was that mentality that helped me push my team to think and act differently with strategies like leveraging social media to reach target audiences, challenge our competitors, and to get our powerful B2B-class-products into the hands of consumers at perhaps the mother of all B2C events: Coachella. (I’ll likely flesh this example out in a future Blog)

After setting a successful rule-breaking record for nearly 20 years at HP, I was presented the opportunity to join Intel as the VP of Global Brand & Thought Leadership. My charter was simple: go transform the narrative behind Intel’s very powerful brand. My approach was even simpler: don’t just say it – show it. I was eager to take a playbook from my time at HP, and push Intel to look at B2B marketing differently. The first activation initiative I put forward was to take the Data Center Business Group to SXSW. This is when a lot of those aforementioned trips to the principal’s office took place - the bottom line was that Intel didn’t traditionally spend marketing dollars to sponsor an event like SXSW, let alone create a 30,000 square foot experiential activation for a B2B message. There was a lot of risk (in budget, but mainly in exposure) around nailing it on the SXSW stage, not to mention, I didn’t have a track record to fall back on like I did at HP. Regardless, as I walked up to bat, I knew I needed to make a choice, and so I took the swing.

I stood headstrong to the fact that if we were to create an experience that really resonated with audiences in a meaningful and authentic way (yes B2B audiences have likes and interests too), that we could transform the way people viewed and interacted with our brand. Some of the initial questioning was valid: could we, Intel, the silicon product inside the most recognized devices, showcase who we were effectively without taking a back seat? And, who the heck wants to listen to a keynote about Data Center Business Solutions anyway? Well, turns out that the answers were: Absolutely and a LOT of people. Throughout the multi-day festival, we created a fully immersive AI experience where attendees could touch, play and understand our brand through interactive activities like training a driverless car or going through an age detection experience (this predated social face filters). The line into our experience wrapped the corner, all day, every day.

By the time our keynote was scheduled, what started off as a worry about filling 850 seats, turned into standing-room only. The success behind this event gave Intel’s B2B side of the house the license and freedom to take more risks and to push more boundaries; soon breaking the rule became the new “rule.” As you can imagine, anytime you decide to disrupt the status quo, you can expect a certain amount of push back. To be fair, there is a time and a place for the saying “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” – but as Blockbuster, Kodak, or Toys “R” Us would tell you, business is not one them. Innovation is born from the trial and error that comes from breaking the rules. Which brings me to Rule #3…

Rule #3: If Not You, Who? Your Competitor  

We live in a world that is overcrowded and cluttered with advertising and marketing messages. According to a recent HubSpot Study, consumers are exposed to at least 5,000 advertising messages per day! So, as marketers, we have our work cut out for us. Tactics are constantly being torn down and rebuilt to be more effective, efficient, and profitable. If you’re not tapped into the cutting edge of ad and marketing trends, tools, and strategies, you’ve lost a serious competitive advantage. This is the same argument for rule breaking.

One of the most important considerations for any brand is how they are going to distinguish themselves from the competition and push past the differentiation stage of the marketing funnel. Breaking the rules and risk-taking automatically distinguishes a brand and generates visibility – even if for no other reason than the fact that so few others have taken a similar risk. Rule breaking also allows you to break through the plateaus of marketing campaigns. When a brand relies on the same old strategies over and over, odds are that they’ll also see the same results over and over. While safe, that model is not sustainable. A brand’s growth follows an unpredictable pattern - ultimately, it is about finding new consumers to increase the number of people who choose to purchase its products. To do so, a brand must expand—across new categories, consumer needs, moments, targets and presence. The business landscape is littered with cautionary tales of huge companies that failed due to lack of innovation. An unwillingness to innovate, which requires risk, puts any company at a much greater one: last-to-market.

The element of rule breaking may be daunting - but if you trust your instincts, swing without the fear of missing, and cannon-ball your way in first - my experience has been that the reward will far outweigh the risk. So perhaps, the real reason I ultimately resonated with the title “My Three Hard & Fast Rules to...” is because my hope is that it might inspire some of you, my fellow rule breakers, to challenge my “rules” and rewrite them to disrupt whatever business status quo you’re bound to, and to take a risk that just might change the playbook.