I don’t battle my weight, I battle “gravity.” – SCN Encourager

Cindy thinks this is ridiculous. She says I battle “sanity.”

But she’s not a school communicator.

She doesn’t understand school branding is better with gravity.

Researchers Kieran Flanagan and Dan Gregory are award-winning behavioral marketers.

In their world, they define “gravity” as “the application of creativity to increase human engagement.”

In my house, gravity is defined by my inability to refrain from second helpings (and I’m not talking about asparagus here, unfortunately).

According to Flanagan and Gregory, when we apply gravity as a marketing tactic we influence pull.

And they say that’s what our branding should do – to pull.

It’s that simple.

In an interesting Convince & Convert podcast, Flanagan and Gregory said the two key elements essential to impacting “pull” (customer attraction) are accessibility and our speed of interaction.

Today, crummy approachability and slow response times will make you a marketing lightweight.

And a hefty ad budget won’t be able to help you.

If you want marketing weight (AKA gravity) you need consistent openness and speedy-quick “I’m here to help” human engagement.

We still need personalization.

We still need to establish emotional connections.

But now we have to be more available for extended periods of time.

Flanagan and Gregory said this challenge is easier for marketers who actually believe in the value of their goods and services.

Whew.

We’ve already got this one down pat!

The problem for me is Flanagan and Gregory went on to say that if we believe we are promoting something important we must “Go big. Go large.”

And that loops right back to big trouble with Cindy.

She thinks I’m too big and large as it is.

She just won’t buy into the marketing definition of gravity.

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