A Single Vision.

Today's Marketing Cookie is very truthy and correctish. Too many chefs is one thing, but I would like to talk for a moment about the wrong chef. When I was a kid, my younger sister and I woke up really early on a Saturday morning and decided to surprise my parents with breakfast in bed. We decided to make pancakes from scratch. We found a recipe, and I was in charge.

One by one, I read the items in the recipe, and we added all the ingredients together. Everything was working out great until it came time for the salt. I misread the instructions and rather than three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt, I thought it said three-quarters of a cup of salt. We emptied the box of salt from the pantry as well as all the salt shakers we could find in the house, and we still didn't have enough salt to fill three-quarters of a cup. I made the executive decision that we would go forward with what we had and hope for the best!

While I cooked the pancakes, my sister prepared the most beautiful dinner trays, complete with juice, silverware, and mom's finest china. As the pancakes were nearly a perfect golden brown, she had drawn a lovely card for them with crayons, saying, "We love you mom and dad!" We were ready.

We each carried one of the dinner trays down the hall toward our parents' room and knocked lightly on the door. My mother's voice said, "Come in." We entered the room, and the expression of joy on their faces from seeing such a beautiful breakfast being presented by their children was truly a Hallmark moment.

My sister and I were so proud! We stood together in eager anticipation waiting to see them taste our wonderful pancakes. Our parents complimented us on how terrific they looked, as they sipped their orange juice. Then the moment of truth came when our parents both took up their knife and fork to cut off a bite-size piece of the pancakes. They lifted it to their mouths and within moments of tasting pure salt, they made horrid noises of utter disgust and began spitting and spewing the pancakes into a napkin. It can be like this with the wrong chef, just as much as it can be with the wrong marketer.

In any company, navigating an organization that relies on committee decisions can be challenging. If you've ever worked in such an environment, you know it can become a sluggish process, heavily dependent on consensus and prone to slow decision-making unless there's a decisive leader to propel things forward outcomes can be less than ideal.

Finally, I'd like to discuss the essence of broth—the foundational element upon which all soups are crafted. A perfect broth not only enriches the soup itself but also serves as a versatile base for numerous other dishes. Similarly, in marketing, our 'broth' is the strategy, guided by a unified vision. Once this strategy is established, it provides a robust foundation from which your team can develop and execute multiple successful campaigns.