Marketing Mystery...

If you're ever in the San Jose, CA area, I suggest you take a tour of the Winchester Mystery House.

The 160-room mansion, built by Winchester Rifle heiress Sarah Winchester, is renowned for it's sheer size -- and lack of a master building plan. It was under construction continuously for 38 years from 1884 until Sarah's death in 1922. It has intricate inlaid parquet floors and Tiffany art glass windows as well as doors that open into nowhere, windows that look out onto brick walls and staircases that lead into the ceiling. I toured the house decades ago, yet I still remember it vividly.

Although an interesting oddity, it is also a visual reminder of what marketing without a master plan looks like.

Managers of the most valuable brands in the world know one thing: have a master plan and follow it consistently. They avoid being drawn off track by anything that doesn't line up with their master plan. Their messages all line-up with the brand's central message and purpose. They rarely jump ship in the middle of a program or campaign -- not because everything they do always works, but because they have a well thought out, long-term plan in place. And when they do suddenly change direction it usually has to do with unforeseen competitive maneuvers or to capitalize on external changes in the marketplace and not sheerly on impulse.

Do you have a master plan? Are your marketing messages consistent? Or is your brand a mystery to prospects?

For more about the Mystery House, go to: http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com.

- Phil Sasso