Too many businesses these days still focus on marketing themselves from the top down, especially when it comes to advertising. They focus on the big man in the big chair behind the big desk. The big man is wearing the cliché expensive suit sitting in the cliché expensive big chair behind the cliché expensive big desk.
People have had their fill of this type of advertising. More importantly, most people, and by most people I mean the people the advertising is aimed at, do not identify with the big man in the big chair behind the big desk.
Top down marketing is egotistical. It's designed to make the big guy in the big chair behind the big desk feel good. His own marketing people probably know it is not the most effective way to market, but they also know that it's the kind of advertising the big guy will like. It strokes his ego. He runs the company, so of course he should be in the advertising. Makes perfect sense.
Perfectly wrong sense.
Bottom up marketing focuses on the bottom (and if it's also making you think about your business' bottom line, now we're getting somewhere). Show the front line people. The people who build your products or provide your services. The people who are the grease in your machine, the cogs that makes the wheels turn, the gasoline in your company's motor. The viewing public can identify with these people.
They can identify with these people because they are most likely to work in a similar role. In a company of any size, a relatively small percentage of employees are management, and an even smaller percentage is top management (at least that's the way it should be if the company wants to be efficient and stay in business). Same with the general population.
The vast majority of the general public is not management, and even less are top management. Advertising that they do not identify with had better have some other hook to catch their attention, or it's a BIG waste of money and time. The company's money, and the viewer's time.
Marketing from the bottom up makes sense. Does your business market from the bottom up?
