To me the Ultimate Marketing Wisdom for surviving a recession, or any other business setback, is simply this…just don’t quit!

Over the more than 35 years that I’ve working in the marketing trade I’ve noted that persistence is the sole characteristic that typifies all successful businesses and individuals. Those who survive – whether they be organizations or individuals – unfortunately aren’t always defined by their worthiness, talent, devotion to others, intelligence or beauty. Some say survival depends on luck, but that’s merely creating a causal factor after the fact. Luck, unlike persistence, is not a choice. The key to surviving is to choose to persevere.

I believe that there are keys to persistence, beyond merely not giving up, though an unwillingness to call it quits, whether it’s due to faith, will power or just plain stubbornness…or a bit of all…can’t be discounted. I have a friend who emphasizes that one of the keys to survival is learning to thrive in your circumstance, whatever those circumstances may be. Folks who read the Bible will be familiar with the scripture that tells us to…”in all things be grateful and give glory to God.” Those who take comfort earthly wisdom may choose to simply “…direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.”

All well and good, you say, but the Gospel According to Pollyanna wears thin when I’m sitting in my office staring at a silent phone, my e-mail in-box is empty, and the postman brings only bills and promotional material from competitors. In other words, what does this persistence look like?

At this point I must confess that I’m a charter member of the Chicken Little Society, and like all CLS members it’s all too easy for me to slip into a damp, dark and lonely place when my life doesn’t fit my fantasies.

So…

Rule Number One: Separate Fantasy From Reality. In other words, take stock of yourself, or your business. If you’re a small business person, by which I mean that you rank somewhere near the bottom of the Fortune Five Hundred Thousand, you and your business are probably inseparable. Stock-taking is really a basic and potentially and excruciatingly painful process of determining at what you’re really good at doing, and (even more important) what you’re less successful at doing. Two things are essential, brutal honesty and a willingness to hear the truth. Having an objective spouse or friend who you respect (or fear) too much to ignore is useful in this process.

Big Business, by which I mean huge, impersonal enterprises that thrive on euphemism call this focusing on “core skills.” Management Gurus publish books reviving this principle every few years. Buy one if you like, or you can save your money and ask someone who cares about you enough to tell you the truth.

Okay, so you’ve asked and been told what you’re good at. Hopefully, it wasn’t too painful, but if it was you can rejoice that – if you take the wisdom to heart – you don’t have to go through this process again.

Rule Number Two: Put Your Heart and Soul Into What You Do Best. Sounds like a noble purpose doesn’t it but – in practice – it’s usually easier said than done. It’s all fine if you’re calling is something you’ve always aspired to doing, if it’s widely appreciated, and (best of all) if others will envy you for your activities. Unfortunately, most of us are called to more or less mundane tasks rarely celebrated in inspirational books. I doubt that the Wall Street Journal list of Best Sellers will feature, “The Joy of Sewer Maintenance” in my lifetime.

So, how does one find the passion in doing something less fantastic than entertaining a stadium packed with rabid fans? Personally, I take pleasure in developing my skills, such as improving my command of Adobe Illustrator; adding to my knowledge base about things like Search Engine Optimization and stretching my brain, lately it’s been learning Spanish. Since the region I live in is about 28% Hispanic, the latter is not purely academic.

Rule Number Three: Be Grateful. I readily admit this is the hardest of the three rules for me to practice. Like all Founding members of the Chicken Little Society I can easily fall into believing that things either are getting worse, or soon will go south. Gratitude, on the other hand, takes a sincere appreciation of things the way they are. Like the other two rules, I believe that this rule is a choice. I envy people born with a “sunny disposition.” Unfortunately for me my DNA is overcast so I have to discipline myself to focus on positive things.

How to do this? I can tell you from experience that ungratefulness is more than just a bad habit – it’s an addiction. Like all addictions you fight it daily or hourly. If you believe in God, pray. If you don’t, meditate. The bottom line is: if you’re willing to honestly look around you will find things – lots of things – to be thankful for…even in a recession.

If you’re locked in the battle for TV viewer eyeballs, here’s a morsel of Marketing Wisdom for you…character sells! Please understand that I don’t mean “characters” like the ubiquitous infomercial shill, Billy Mays, Rula Lenska, Joan Rivers, Tim Conway or chimpanzees.

When I say “character” I mean well defined, well written and – especially - well cast roles that have the ring of truth. While these are essential to any good drama, they are absolutely critical to the dramatic haiku of TV commercials, or as they are known in the trade, spots.

When you subtract the ½-second pull-up at the start of the spot that allows the message to be inserted into whatever video stream it’s going to play, and the mandatory 5 second wrap-up or button at the end, the story teller has a little less than 24 seconds to grab the viewer’s attention, set the scene and deliver the message.

You would think that after some 30 years of practice – TV spots settled into their current mode sometime in the late 70’s – ad guys and girls would have it down pat. But as all of us who groan at the countless derivative, wooden, overly literal, or outright amateurish swill that constitutes the majority of television advertising, it’s clear (to me) anyway that creating captivating and memorable TV spots is still an art, and not a science.

One secret to the art of TV advertising – perhaps the greatest secret – is the effective use of genuine, authentic and appealing character to make your point.

Some examples that come to mind are the old guys in the Bartles & Jaymes Wine Cooler ads. It turns out that these two fellows were chums of Hal Riney, the recently deceased advertising genius who concocted the campaign. Note to all who would hope to clone this formula (like the agency that’s created the painfully lame idiots-standing-hip-deep-in-the-cranberry-bog series ads for Ocean Spray) what made the Bartles & Jaymes ads work was the recognizable, authentic character in the two men.

The memorable nature of the B&J spots is especially ironic, since the product they were shilling was anything but authentic – watered-down, second-rate, bulk wine injected with CO2.

Another example is the one of the current on-going 15-second ad campaigns for Comcast which feature quick skits paid off by the sales message in the form of a lame pun. One spot has a Luchadero (sans mask) with the name Moolah embroidered across his chest walking down the street when a fan tackles him just in time to prevent his being crushed by a falling piano. Moolah picks himself up, gives his rescuer and affectionate slap and says, “You save Moolah.” The scene is followed by a black screen with goofy colored balloons containing the caption: “Save Moolah with Comcast.”

Comcast has run a whole bunch of these spots, all of which are equally fun, but the reason I think they work so well is that they are all especially well cast with people whose appearance, wardrobe and attitude is instantly identifiable to the viewer without any explanation. In short, their character is immediately identifiable. Sadly, such success brings imitators, the most egregious of which is a series of spots for Round Table Pizza that promotes their Hawaiian Pizza offering.

My current absolute favorite television advertising campaign are the series of spots promoting AT&T wireless network. The premise of each spot is identical. There are two identical actors in the scene, but the one that does the talking represents the main character’s phone, and he (or she) is complaining that the subject character is going to make a mistake, miss out on something good, or incur some calamity because they didn’t get AT&T wireless service and as a consequence don’t have “bars” in their current location.

“Bradshaw’s phone” tells the story of a salesman traveling to the Orient who fails to get the call telling him how to correctly pronounce the client’s name and instead offends a very important client by calling him “Mr. Stinky Fish Face.”  “Jen’s Phone” shows an attractive teenage girl stuck in a run-down drive-in restaurant with some smelly, lumpy dork because she was unable to receive a call from “totally cool Brad” who wanted to ask her to the prom. All the spots in the campaign are extremely memorable (as you probably already guessed) and bear many repeat viewings, all thanks to the excellent casting and spot-on portrayals of genuine, authentic folks.

The three products I mentioned are functionally unforgettable thanks to advertising messages that were routed in the recognizable authentic character of the people in the story.

You might want to keep this in mind when you’re temped to save a few dollars by buying generic photos on the Internet that scream “stock”, or allowing the radio station ad rep to read the lines in your radio spot because it’s “free”, or cherish the delusion that chimpanzees will make up for the lack of originality or imagination in your ad concept.