Do you have the patience to succeed?

NK&A is based in Boston.

During football season 2015-16 The news headline was “Deflategate”. And during the last couple of months of the year the headline morphed to a more dramatic story line; “Free Tom Brady.”  It literally was “Free Tom” all day, all night, all of the time; tweets, blogs, TV, radio, hand-made posters, kid’s t-shirts. You would have had to be living under a rock to not know what’s going on.

Speaking of living under rocks let’s move to another news story about rocks, and dirt and slush.  Let’s talk comets. Specifically, about the Rosetta Mission and Comet 67P. Like Deflategate it had drama – not 7 months, but 10 years. Like Deflategate it had to do with science; not the PSI inside a game ball but space, gravity, high level physics and chemistry, too.

At NK&A we’re about marketing, and far more fascinated by the Rosetta mission story than we are with Deflategate.  Why? First off, Deflategate seemed so random. There never seemed to be anybody in control and there certainly wasn’t any planning to speak of. It was a day-to-day series of reactions between the NFL and the Players Association/Tom Brady vying for advantage.  Good marketing isn’t about reaction, it’s about planning and acting with intention, all in the pursuit of achieving a goal, which is exactly what the Rosetta mission was about.

The Rosetta mission had to be planned exceptionally well to be able to interact and analyze Comet 67P. How exceptional you ask? First off, Rosetta needed to travel for 10 years to catch up with the comet. The point of intercept was so remote (500 million miles from the sun) it was like finding the proverbial needle in a hay stack in the dark. The expedition also required perfectly planned power consumption. The use of solar panels was stellar (pun intended) – that helped. But the engineers also needed to plan for no interaction with Rosetta for 3 full years in order to save the power required to complete the mission. So the scientists prayed that they could come out of 3 years of hibernation, and locate and interact with Rosetta. Talk about patience in achieving a goal!  What a nail biter. This is another critical part to reaching marketing goals. Without the patience to see your marketing plan through results will not happen – think Roger Goodall here. The Rosetta mission engineers had patience. During those 3 years Rosetta would have to travel 450 million miles and intersect Jupiter’s orbit to meet up with Comet 67P. Their patience was critical in meeting their goal. Maybe the engineers should consider a second career on Wall Street.

The mission was successful. Rosetta’s satellite met up with the comet taking pictures and samples. And samples were most important since the scientists were looking for organic matter, specifically amino acids – the building blocks of life some 3.8 billion years ago. The theory is that comets enabled life on earth. These flying slush balls striking earth and providing the water in our oceans and the organic matter/building blocks of life. That is a dramatic story. It’s also really cool. Far cooler than Roger Goodall, Ted Wells and PSI in an NFL football.

But remember, NK&A is from Boston. And while we are as determined as the scientists planning the Rosetta Mission in planning our client’s strategies, and admire their commitment to goals, strategic prowess, and total brilliance; we’ll admit… it still may not be quite as cool as Tom Brady.