Three Satellites

We always appreciate a good metaphor. This one derives from a day when, lost in an unfamiliar city, we began thinking about the Global Positioning System in our rental car. We talked about how its satellite technology relies on “navigational triangulation,” or the intersection of lines from three distant points to locate someone or something spatially.

And then we realized that RHB’s research services do the same thing for our clients, capturing the three perspectives that will locate them on the landscape of competing organizations and institutions.

At RHB, we believe that your marketing strategies and messages indeed need to be informed by the answers to three critical questions:

1. Who are you?

Beyond what your official mission and values statements say, what effect does your institution or organization really have on the world around you, and why?

2. Who do you say you are?

What messages are you currently communicating about yourself? (Not only what is intended, but also what is implied or suggested by the look, feel, image and content of marketing work.)

3. Who do others say you are?

What do external audiences understand and believe about you—whether those perceptions are accurate or not?

For every successful client we’ve served, we’ve answered these three questions in clarifying ways, leading them straight to the one spot in the universe occupied by their organization.

This is powerful information. Because only when you know where you are, can you figure out how to get where you want to go.