By John Lavey, CEO/President
There is a well-known story about William Wrigley Jr., founder of the chewing gum company.
Wrigley attributed the success of his chewing gum business to its massive investments in advertising. A young accountant for the company asked the boss whether the brand wasn’t well established enough to divert that investment into profits instead of continuing to feed the spend. They happened to be on a train.
Wrigley asked the accountant, “Why doesn’t the railroad remove the engine and let the train travel on its own momentum?”
Today’s equivalent is investments in content marketing. More than 9 in 10 B2B marketers use content marketing as a primary marketing tool, with estimates that it generates three times the number of leads as traditional marketing channels (Demand Metric).
Yet, right now, many companies are being very conservative with their spending, sitting on their hands and holding off on investments in marketing.
It’s as if they decided to “remove the engine” and hope that they can succeed and grow on the power of any momentum generated from prior investments.
We see it differently. We know that removing the engine means losing ground quickly to competitors. In my own business, there was a day when Hammock was known as one of a few firms in Nashville to go to for certain work. Now we have to think about competing against the world, and we have to focus on constant content generation to stay relevant.
How’s the trip going for your business? Are you fueling the engine, or trying to operate on fumes?
Wrigley attributed the success of his chewing gum business to its massive investments in advertising. A young accountant for the company asked the boss whether the brand wasn’t well established enough to divert that investment into profits instead of continuing to feed the spend. They happened to be on a train.
Wrigley asked the accountant, “Why doesn’t the railroad remove the engine and let the train travel on its own momentum?”
Today’s equivalent is investments in content marketing. More than 9 in 10 B2B marketers use content marketing as a primary marketing tool, with estimates that it generates three times the number of leads as traditional marketing channels (Demand Metric).
Yet, right now, many companies are being very conservative with their spending, sitting on their hands and holding off on investments in marketing.
It’s as if they decided to “remove the engine” and hope that they can succeed and grow on the power of any momentum generated from prior investments.
We see it differently. We know that removing the engine means losing ground quickly to competitors. In my own business, there was a day when Hammock was known as one of a few firms in Nashville to go to for certain work. Now we have to think about competing against the world, and we have to focus on constant content generation to stay relevant.
How’s the trip going for your business? Are you fueling the engine, or trying to operate on fumes?
Image: Getty Images
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