Icy Calm Pty Ltd

The Icy Calm Marketing Strategy package is designed to examine and establish strategic brand fundamentals. It is most useful when a business or organisation is in start-up mode or looking to reinvent or reinvigorate its sales and marketing activities. It includes a variety of exercises, tools and processes that come together to help create the core marketing plan for the organization and creative brief for those responsible for implementing the plan and strategies contained within. It is very much a collaborative exercise and begins with a joint session including client, the creative team and myself. Upon completion the client is supplied a detailed strategy document and creative brief. Prior to the joint session I will undertake independent research on the business, category and competitive environment.

The package itself is a compilation of tools and processes I have collected over the years from a variety of business, sporting, military and communication strategists, plus several I have invented myself. All have been tried and tested successfully over the years with my own clients. Not all components of the strategy package always need to be covered, as often firms have many of the fundamentals in place, and or they may be looking for something specific, say perhaps an online or social marketing strategy. Nor do they necessarily need to be undertaken in the same order as below.

1. Business focus

One of the first exercises in strategic planning I generally undertake is defining the business focus. In a nutshell we answer three simple questions:
1) What are you really passionate about?
2) What can you be the best in world at?
3) What best drives your economic or resource engine?
It’s often more difficult that you think, but not only does it help me identify the focus of the business, it more often than not helps the business itself find their focus.

2. Values

A prime objective of any brand or marketing strategy is to establish a tone of voice for every communication an organisation makes. What has worked really well for me is concentrating purely on values. Here I employ a cultural transformation tool that’s become invaluable to me in defining the desired culture of an organization, and setting the tone for all communication. It is the desired organisational values and the personal values of the CEO that usually matter the most, mainly because they are they key decision-maker. From these it is possible to define the complete DNA of the desired culture, in a form incredibly useful for creatives and marketers to base their expressions of the brand.

3. Competition

In some organisations, keeping an eye on the competition is a daily event, but it is surprising how many start–ups and even established brands act like they operate in a vacuum. In this component I start with a story about one of the greatest examples of strategic planning and execution ever displayed, in terms of outwitting the competition. Aside from the battlefield, there is no more competitive environment than the sporting field. We’ll look at how against all the odds, and a stronger opponent, it is possible to win by simply out–thinking the competition. An underdog, start–up, or existing player in the market, must study their competitor’s every move. Don’t imagine they won’t retaliate, but if you are ready, you can turn it into a huge advantage.

4. Positioning

A position explains why your business has a right to exist in the marketplace and why a certain customer segment would prefer it. It is the place where your business is genuinely successful. It may be based on price, service, quality, durability, convenience, variety, taste or status. The point is that trying to be all things to all people at all times will fail. If you don’t have a positioning statement we will write one, and then put it to the acid test. Is it? 1) Desirable; 2) Sizeable; 3) Ownable; 4) Preferable; 5) Achievable; 6) Believable; 7) Understandable; 8) Profitable

5. Message development

There’s one particular writing tool I always share with all my clients. It works equally as well for the elevator pitch, as it does a speech, paragraph or page of text. It will dramatically help the persuasiveness of your communication.
The tool is called “Knowing, Feeling, Doing” and it is not simply about organising facts for maximum recall, it is about ‘meaning–making’. Here’s how it works… every communication or message you wish to create should have three essential components. They can be used in any order or permutation, as long as you address each one. Once you have these in place, it’s a bit like polishing a rough diamond.

6. Target Audiences and buying roles

You only need to look at the way many fast–food companies market to children, through the inclusion of toys with meals, to realise that someone that influences the buyer is just as critical as the buyer, in making the sale.
This exercise draws upon Wind and Webster’s ‘Six buying roles’ model developed in the 1970’s to explain the many buying roles within a large organization, but is equally applicable to any business trying to determine to whom they really need to market themselves to, aside from the obvious.
We walk through all the possible buying roles of 1) Initiator; 2) Influencer; 3) Decider; 4) Buyer; 5) User 6) Gatekeeper.

7. Sales funnel

Anyone in sales will tell you it’s a process – and they are dead right, but what is that process? Enter the Sales Funnel. The Sales Funnel breaks down the sales ‘process’ – each step integral in getting the consumer over the line. The more conscious you are of these steps, the more chance you have of creating a sale. If you neglect a step, you’ll get a disruption of flow, or worse still only a trickle of sales. We’ll look at each step moving through the sales funnel from awareness to action and strategies for keeping you potential customers moving through.

8. Creative development

It’s hard to imagine how all those amazing Disney films, not to mention the theme parks, were the brainchild of a single man. Well the truth is there wasn’t just one Walt Disney. There were three. Walt Disney’s simple, yet incredibly successful, strategy for creative development was founded on an ability to assume three different roles – dreamer, realist, and critic – each of which involved a particular type of thinking and action. The key point here for entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators and anyone in the business of being creative, is that it’s not just about the roles themselves, it’s when to play them, or more importantly not to play them.

9. Integrated communication

Integrated’ has been a buzz–word in agency–land for more than a decade, and is still the catch-cry for many a creative shop and marketing department. At its’ heart, integrated communication hinges on a single, pivotal creative proposition. This ‘big idea’ as some like to call, is then applied to a spectrum of ‘marketing drivers’ that ensure engagement with the consumer on every possible level in the sales process. We’ll look at the role and value of each driver in the integrated mix: 1) Activation; 2) Awareness; 3) Buzz; 4) Emotional; 5) Experience; 6) Product. It’s a model equally scalable for a small or large company. Done well, the end result is a consistent, efficient and powerful method of communication.

10. The Creative brief

Many a client has told me the creative process is foreign to them, and they don’t really understand how ‘creative people’ do what they do. By the same token, many creatives, to their detriment, fail to understand the consumer and prefer to operate in an artistic vacuum. And if some clients pitched their wares directly to the consumer, well they’d lose interest pretty quickly. My job is to get client, consumer and creative all speaking the same language and that’s why I’ve developed what I believe to be best creative brief template. It’s simple, easy to complete and is guaranteed to get everyone on the same page. It is the critical tool in turning strategy in reality.

Cost Structure

Small start-up or existing organisation < 20 employees $5,000 + GST
Medium start-up or existing organisation 20 – 100 employees $12,000 + GST
Large–scale organisation 100+ employees $25,000 +GST
Part packages quoted upon request

Sha–mayne Chan, Director, 2Birds Design

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