Posted on Sep 3, 2012

Hard-Core Humility in Marketing

People often confuse humility with weakness. Real humility requires tremendous fortitude and strength to remain positive, to keep pushing forward, while acknowledging you don’t have all the answers. It is through such hard-core humility that great brands are built.

Unfortunately, marketing often gets a bad rap.

There’s advertising that promotes get-rich-quick schemes. Executives that make profit-at-all-cost decisions. Sales people that are pushy and will say anything to get the sale.

And marketing gets blamed for such unethical behavior.

Yet, every day there are millions of honest, hard-working individuals trying to add value to others. But few know about the real value they offer. They need help telling their story.

So they engage marketing.

Marketing doesn’t need to be loud, obnoxious, and shady. In fact, the most effective marketing is quite the contrary.

The best marketing embraces the value of humility.

The Value of Humility

As a differentiating value, Humility means a disposition to be humble; a lack of false pride. It’s about being real.

It’s easy to embrace a sense of humility if you don’t feel what you offer is very special or not many acknowledge its value. But then, what real value are you bringing to the world?

Contrast that to celebrities.

As human beings, we naturally esteem celebrities – the famous movie star, the distinguished public speaker, the prominent concert pianist, or the legendary leader. They’re at the top of their game. Of course, they didn’t start out this way. But through dedication and hard work they achieved celebrity status. Unfortunately, as status rises humility tends to drop.

Now consider the individual who is a dedicated expert – or celebrity – in their field. An engineer who knows how to build the exact machine needed to produce a product at a fraction of the current cost. A scientist who knows more about their topic than 99.9% of the world’s population. A designer who ‘just knows’ what people will want to wear next year. A coach who knows the strengths and weaknesses of every player on her team, and how to motivate them to play their best – and win.

We respect experts who know their stuff. We admire them even more when they acknowledge what they don’t know. That’s how great stories get shared.

Humility shows you are continuing to learn. It’s healthy to admit “I’m still working on that”. It’s good to confess “I don’t know”.

The same is true when marketing a business or a brand.

2 Rules to Live By

When training executives in media relations, preparing them for interviews with the press, there are two golden rules that every executive should learn. In all communication, good or bad:

Focus on the positive
Always state what is true.

A number of years ago I interviewed a seasoned PR professional. He told me of an occasion where a major crisis had occurred at a Fortune 500 company where he was head of PR. The crisis involved product quality and the impact could have had far-reaching effects. As he prepared the CEO for a press conference, he explained the two rules above. He stated:

“You will be pressured to make a response on what happened and why. But you don’t have all the answers, yet. Say so.

You will feel compelled to give them a statement that will make them happy. But nothing you say will make them stop asking questions. So just state what you know to be true. If you don’t know, say so.

And remain focused on the positive. Whatever questions they ask, keep bringing your answers back to the positive things going on to find a solution.”

This was great advice for that CEO. And it’s great advice for anyone who talks about their area of expertise. No need to prove your celebrity status. That will come on its own.

Great marketing requires hard-core humility. It requires courage and fortitude to acknowledge you don’t have all the answers, while remaining positive and continuing to pushing forward.