The Great Marketing River.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about the start of something big.

We begin our story today, way up in the corner office mountains, where marketing has been completely frozen by arctic inhabitants. As a result of repeated poor marketing performance, every spring was fitted with a valve and shut off. Every marketing resource has been pooled in a reservoir and all outlets were completely blocked with dams and locks. Marketing has been repeatedly disappointing, and the organization could go under if it doesn't get it right next time.

Then one day, the company found you. You're a marketing pro and you have some good ideas on how you plan to refill the funnel. Your concepts are risky, but the top brass has approved your plan and the sun is allowed to shine once again on marketing. The rigid ice cap begins to thaw, and the valve on the springs is reopened, allowing a series of tiny streams to flow steadily down into the valley below.

Once in the valley, the new resources replenish the already proven streams that you've seen deliver opportunities in the past. Some trickle into secondary channels which dried up during the recent marketing drought, and the rest flows into new channels which have never been tested by the organization before.

Taking a closer look at the landscape, you can see some of the new marketing channels have already splashed into untapped audiences as it winds its way through undiscovered villages. As the results continue to be positive, you then have the confidence to open the locks upstream and empty your reserves into these newfound channels.

In order to add resources, you seek to align with the owners of uncharted territories within your organization. These may be areas where marketing hasn't had a presence before, such as customer service, engineering, or product development. To your delight, they agree to break down the barriers and allow marketing to saturate every aspect of the organization. These alliances add additional energy to the river and increase the momentum and force of its success.

As the river carries forward through the area, it eventually empties into the receiving nets of the sales team who are more than eager to harvest their catch. From your vantage point, you can see the performance of every far-reaching channel and how it eventually feeds into the mouth of the river. At this point, all marketing channels are becoming unified as they flow consistently and swiftly together with more power than they had on their own.

It is here, at the mouth of the Great Marketing River, where all can see the benefit of opening and feeding those new channels and allowing the river to flow through the landscape. The chief executive has realized a hearty return on investment and the company is celebrating your collective success. Congratulations!

As you stand proudly on the banks of the river you've formed and admire its impressive power and strength, it is important to remember that it all began miles from here as a series of tiny little streams. You tested new risky channels, unified the company, and uncovered new opportunities that no one realized were hiding out there. Every success in marketing has a starting point and I believe it really is as today's fortune says, "Rivers need springs."