In some cases you have little or no control over the situation but you always have the opportunity to do something to effect how the truth will impact your brand.

Brutal Truths always land in marketing’s lap. That’s because marketing is the center of everything that happens around a brand. We’re the great plumbers, the electricians; the Fix-its. It’s no wonder that the average life span of a CMO is 24 months. Every morning, we have to be ready to face a new Brutal Truth, fix it and get ready for the next one.

What Brutal Truth did you face last week? Your latest market share report went down ten points. Your major competitor just merged with the No. 3 brand. A new competitor entered your market space. The government wants to recall one of your products, and your ISP just went bankrupt and closed its doors. And closer to home, the new sign kits were never shipped and the ad that is scheduled to break on Tuesday has the price wrong.

Here’s the fantastic marketing truth for the week, this week’s AH-ha! Every Brutal Truth has an end game. Every Brutal Truth can be conquered if you have unwavering faith. It’s unwavering faith in your brand, your people and your ability to develop a solution to address the short-term issues and re-position your brand that will positively impact the next sale.

The Marketing Implications

Our Brutal Truth happened several years ago when our biggest client was sold. We never saw it coming. We knew we had too many of our resources in this one client. At the same time knew that we were caught in the trap of not having enough immediate resources to bring in new business.

The ax fell quickly and we had a Brutal Truth to face. Keep faith in the brand we built and scramble like hell to get new business. An unwavering faith in the strategic positioning that our Sixth Star model would resonate with new clients and that we could add value to their business resulted in two new clients and a turn around that was painful but netted long-term growth and a much more balanced portfolio of clients.

That hard lesson taught us that Brutal Truths do not have to be death knells. It taught us that while it is important to stay very focused on your brand’s core business, you have to continually evaluate and modify your brand’s position. Positioning is not lip service. It’s everything. We began this business 20 years ago with a fuzzy notion of direct marketing. That grew into a loyalty marketing position but we knew that was not enough. The migration of the Company shifted to focus on relationship marketing, even though we fully realized that customers do not necessarily want a relationship but our clients do.

Unwavering truth offers a unique challenge and that is not to jump to the next hot strategy or idea because it is hot. The same is true for all the new technologies and marketing channels that are continually introduced. Marketers should not act like kids in the candy shop. It’s good to sample. It’s better to test. But it’s not good to become a glutton for every new technology and marketing scheme that comes along.

A case in point is all the discussion about how marketers are not doing enough to “engage” with customers. One of the more current popular marketing terms is building “emotional attachments” with customers. A recent white paper by the UK marketing firm Allegiance suggests, “While reward programs can add value to the customer experience they cannot easily create the level of emotional attachment that causes true customer engagement with the brand.”

I am not convinced that marketing is about creating emotional attachments. If it tastes good, gets good gas mileage, is easy to use, etc., I’ll buy it. If the sales person smiles and is product savvy, I might buy again. I might like my relationship with this brand, and while they didn’t discount the price, they did offer me a rewards program so I get something extra on my next visit. Life is pretty good and I don’t need to get emotional.

For us, a new Brutal Truth is emerging. Is engagement marketing the new hot idea we should embrace? If we don’t will we be left behind? Will other marketing firms latch onto this idea and cause chaos in the marketplace? The answer is probably “yes”, but that does not mean we should all jump to this marketing idea or marketing technology du jour. By doing so, we violate our unwavering faith in our Sixth Star strategy that is big enough to encompass a multitude of strategies around the three central themes of rewarding customers for their patronage (before a competitor does), staying connected and making it easy for customers to do business with you.

In his book, “Good To Great,” Jim Collins writes about Admiral Jim Stockdale, the highest-ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” who was held prisoner for eight years from 1965 to 1973. He discusses Stockdale’s unwavering faith even though he never knew what would be the end of the story. He closes the discussion about Stockdale with The Stockdale Paradox: “Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. AND at the same time, CONFRONT the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Those are powerful words. This week, gather your team to address a Brutal Truth that will face your business. Remember the Stockdale Paradox and you will prevail. We did.

Have a wonderful week and don’t forget that time changed yesterday, a sure sign of Spring.