Your greatest advantage in marketing is not your sign, logo, messaging, and brand kit. Many times it's not even your website (even though we love our websites)

It's not how many follower you may have, or how many times you post a week. Everyone likes to get caught up in all of that, we call it the "frufru stuff." All of these brand asseets are powerful, don't get us wrong.... but the one thing that many people miss in all of their marketing pursuits is impact.

Impact is magical. It moves mountains. Impact inspires consumers. Impact creates noise. And lastly, impact is in the people, not in what colors your brand is.

Take Nike for example. Nike has a great logo. They also have incredible branding. But what really drove the needle for them? It was their campaigns, their commercials, and the way they impacted the consumer through inspiration. Let’s face it, after watching a Michael Jordan commercial, every kid believed that if they wore Jordans, they too could touch the rim and make it to the NBA. Was that true? Absolutely not. But the way they built their marketing was impact-based.

So you may be asking, how do you truly create impact in marketing pursuits? At Flow Forward Media, we break impact down into three different categories: inspiration, experience, and community.

Impact Styles

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Inspiration

Take the Nike example again. The campaigns they rolled out starting in the late 70s were campaigns that instilled belief, even in adults, that they could do anything and accomplish anything if they wore a pair of Nikes. Although their product is incredible, the inspiration through marketing is a massive reason why consumers flocked to the stores to purchase the latest shoe. Nike sold the dream.

Experience

When you think of experience, focus on your childhood memories. There’s a memory that 95% of us Americans share when we were children: McDonald’s.

The McDonald’s Happy Meal is one of the most iconic childhood memories for most adults. Everyone remembers the box the Happy Meal came in, how the red paper of the box was hot and slightly greasy from the over-salted fries inside. Let’s be honest, most of us didn’t eat McDonald’s for the meal. We wanted either one of two things: the toy or the dessert.

The toy was usually some sort of trinket you’d play with for a week and then lose in a couch cushion, but it was still the main reason you’d beg your parents for a Happy Meal. The experience was priceless, timeless, and truly impactful for all of our childhoods.

Community

The last point, but maybe the strongest driver in business, is community. More and more people in this world are working from home. They go to coffee shops to work because they miss seeing people. We attend run clubs on the weekend not just to run, but to meet other people.

The majority of Americans either struggle with loneliness or have a yearning to make more friends. Therefore, community drives impact.

Speaking of run clubs, let’s use that as an example. For the last two or three years, run clubs have been the hot commodity in the lives of people in their 20s and 30s. Why? Due to certain world circumstances in 2021 and 2022, the majority of the job market was forced to go remote. The problem with that is corporate America didn’t weigh out the repercussions of that decision. Now most of the workforce works from home, locked up in their apartments like they were in 2021.

When you go through your entire day behind a screen and never talk to someone in real life, it can get lonely very quickly. Therefore, run clubs have become the next big thing.

Run clubs are essentially when a group of people who enjoy running turn their training sessions into events. Take 214 Run Club in Dallas, Texas. Every Saturday at 8:30 a.m., 214 Run Club hosts an event where 200–300 people show up and run together. Before and after the event, coffee is served and everyone meets each other. Most of these people work remotely, and this is their one social outing where they can engage with real community and make the friendships they yearn for.

Moments like this are incredibly impactful and keep people showing up every week because they love community.

So Now What?

Impact is everything. It holds much more weight than anything else. Products, logos, and aesthetics matter, but they are only vehicles. What truly drives connection is how you inspire people, the experiences you create for them, and the community you build around them.

The brands that win are not the ones with the flashiest colors or catchiest taglines. They are the ones that leave people feeling something bigger than themselves. That is the difference between noise and legacy.

At Flow Forward Media, this is the lens we use when helping businesses grow. Whether it’s through inspiration, experience, or community, our mission is to help brands stop chasing attention and start creating impact.

Because impact doesn’t just sell.
Impact lasts.

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