How to stop chasing metrics and start changing minds.
After eight months on the road, crossing through eight states, I’m back in New York. Reentering this beehive of eight million people presents a stark reminder that 99% of what people do lacks substance.
It’s amazing what a 30,000-foot elevation does for your thought process. The big shit separates from the small shit and things become clear. Which is why, while taxiing on the tarmac, I fired a client.
I just fired a client. How’s that for engagement?
As a founding partner of a branding agency, I can say without reservation that the worst thing is working with a client who mistakes activity for achievement. That’s why I cut the cord. The client was lost in the numbers, blind to the bigger picture. They didn’t understand that real engagement isn’t about metrics; it’s about impacting what people believe.
True marketing is more than loading up an automated marketing platform with commoditized content, hoping for clicks and opens. That’s a war of attrition. Data that tracks such “engagement” can hardly be called digital intelligence when click thru rates are on par with direct marketing of the 80s. The truth is, the data is just showing you how shitty you’re doing in real time.
The seduction of data is that it justifies incrementalism.
For all those performance marketing media teams squeezing every drop of the CPM/CPC/CTR lemon, what passes for engagement is anything that moves the needle. As long as the numbers trend in the right direction, everything is fine.
Or not.
Satisfaction with incremental results is the antithesis of branding. It’s retailing. An endless series of tactical wind sprints that leaves you personally and financially exhausted.
I’m not against tactical campaigns. I’m against the tyranny of sales without a finish line.
It takes conviction to roll the dice on a big idea.
Let’s be clear: data helps you strategize how to reach someone, but it doesn’t tell you what to say. If data is driving your content, you’re marketing is mechanical, reducing everything to a transaction. And when you’re just transactional, you’re reduced to price, timing, or promotions — things that might build a business… but don’t build an enduring brand.
Even McDonald’s, the king of transactions, invests in brand advertising because they understand this truth.
That’s why we always ask any prospective client to state the goal of their company, without using numbers of dollar signs.
Our agency is called Meaningful because we help brands find a meaningful place in the world. Before you roll your eyes at what sounds like an presumptuous claim, let me explain. Brands find meaning in two ways:
- How they fit into the context of what’s happening in society
- How they resonate with what people believe
What’s happening in society? To quote Heraclitus: “The only constant is change.” And in a digitized world, change happens at the speed of light. Just look at the last four years. A global pandemic accelerated remote work, damaged education, reconfigured supply chains, polarized politics, and prompted government initiatives at a scale not seen since The New Deal. If your brand doesn’t understand how it brings value to these dynamics, it’s irrelevant.
What do people believe? Belief drives behavior. Always. So the place of true engagement is in our belief systems, which are often unconscious because they’re emotional. They reside in the limbic part of our brains. And, unlike the world around us, beliefs don’t really change. So, as a brand, the goal is to awaken those beliefs by speaking to them.
If you want to go deeper into this, read What It Means To Be Meaningful.
A brand without meaning is a brand without value.
Do you want to create work that punches through the noise and leaves a mark? Do you want to create something that matters? It’s simple: be meaningful. (I didn’t say it was easy: that’s why we exist.)
Here are a few examples of brands that became meaningful:
- Whizz eBikes: Instead of just selling eBikes, they became champions for delivery riders, advocating for the daredevils navigating the gig economy.
- 360ReGen: They redefined the conversation around regeneration at a molecular level, going beyond modern medicine to restore vitality in a way that resonates far beyond the healthcare industry.
- Clinicient: They evolved from a SaaS vendor to a thought leader in healthcare, making physical therapy the first choice of treatment and driving real change.
- ServerDome: Positioned themselves as the sustainable answer to outdated data centers, focusing on better infrastructure designed for the future of AI and machine learning.
- DIME Bank: They didn’t just settle for being another retail bank; they leveraged their 156-year history to build trust and drive hyper-local campaigns that mattered.
- Killer Burger: This brand embraced their identity and personalized the customer experience, making their unique, messy, and flavorful burgers a national sensation.
- Brand Token: They brought decades of branding experience to the blockchain, creating an exclusive community of emerging Web3 brands with a focus on building something meaningful.
- Soho House: They redefined their creative process to foster connection and creativity, transforming from a social club to a collaborative workspace for a diverse membership.
- Ramsey XPress: This logistics company didn’t just brag about capabilities; they lived their ethos of getting the job done, establishing themselves as a brand with true grit.
- The Collective (Generosity New York): They aimed to make generosity a defining characteristic of the millennial generation, positioning them as the inheritors of a $68 trillion wealth transfer.
- Alliant: They embraced their role as a digital-first credit union, creating a campaign that acknowledged the savvy, hands-on consumers and made banking cool again.
The brands listed above decided to go beyond playing a numbers game and make an impact. And, most rewarding to us, is that when each one saw the work we created, they became proud of who they were.
Are you proud of your brand?
Are you inching along with a metrics mindset, hoping no one notices the wheel spinning? Are you tired of incremental marketing?
Eight months on the road have shown me this: most brands are stuck between playing dress-up and making a real impact. If you want to explore what impact would look like for your brand, let’s talk — over lunch or a coffee. I’ll take you to the best Italian sandwich spot in the West Village, and together, we’ll figure out how to make your brand meaningful.
I hope you had a happy Labor Day weekend. I did, after I got off the plane.
Cheers,
Bōggie
