What If?

Have you ever, really, asked yourself a "What if?" question?

Do you remember the Marvel Comics series titled, What If? (yes, I was – and still am – a bit of a comic book geek). That comic book series asked questions like, What if Spider-Man was a murderer? What if Captain America revived in 1994? and What if the Hulk had killed Wolverine? As if you needed more fantasy from the Marvel Universe, this series really pushed the limits of creativity.

What If? is a powerful concept. It can help you re-focus and re-energize your Marketing by forcing you to think differently.

Here’s the big "What If?" question that I have been thinking a lot about lately:

What if traditional mass media advertising did not exist?

If you had a product and you had to get the word out, what would you do? More often than not, Marketers seem to struggle with Digital Marketing because mass media is "they way it has always been." But, what if you never knew about mass advertising or public relations? What if you woke up today, in 2009, and had all of the strategies and tools that we have at your disposal but there was no legacy of mass media advertising? Would your default be traditional advertising? What would you do?

What if you had zero marketing budget, but you had to make something happen? What would you do?

"What if?" is a great and powerful question to ask. Odds are, starting a sentence with the words "what if" is exactly what has brought our world some of the best innovations our society has ever seen.