Marketing built from the bottom

Watch a new brand launch in Cairo and you will see where the effort goes: the countdown posts, the giveaways, the loud week of noise. It is the top of the structure and the part everyone can see. It is also the part that matters least.

Start at the bottom instead. The base of good marketing is knowing what you intend: what are you hoping to change, and for whom? Which people, specifically, and what is this thing for in their lives? If that is vague, nothing above it holds. A product designed for everyone tends to fit no one, and a story about yourself does not travel. It travels only when the people hearing it recognise it as theirs.

Above that sits keeping the people you already have, which is worth far more than finding new ones. A brand that leaks customers has to run faster every month just to stand still.

Then comes being worth talking about. Growth that lasts comes from people telling each other, and they only do that when passing it on makes them look good or moves them toward something they want.

Earn those, and you may earn the right to be expected: people who are glad to hear from you, who open what you send because it is about them. That is an asset. Shouting at strangers is a cost that never ends.

Only then do the words, pictures and campaign ideas come in, and they work because there is something underneath them.

Right at the very top, in small type, sit the stunts and the noise. They get most of the commentary. They deserve almost none of it.