How are spending your marketing $$$ ?

How and where are you spending your marketing $$$ ?
Is it time of the year to spend your marketing $$$ ?

Are you spending all of your firm's marketing dollars wisely or are you spending it just for the sake of spending it, to prevent your already very limited marketing budget being cut down even more ? Are you throwing out your marketing dollars out of of your corporate window ?

It is interesting to note some companies are purely spending their marketing dollars just on creating buzz or chasing after the cool or becoming the "Ipod" of their particular industry and forgetting about whether the buzz will help define what their brand stands for. Does these short term tactical moves actually helps to build the brand or just creating a buzz and be forgotten after the buzz melts down? Sure, one can argue that the consumers are in control today and they are only interested in what they want and zapping away clutter of TV ads with TiVo.

Burger King's online viral marketing, Subservient Chicken, which creates word of mouth and spread like wild fire, sure it indeed created a big buzz among many but does it really have any real connections with Burger king's core brand values ? Instead consider how are McDonald's spending their marketing dollars on, Brand building efforts!

• Does the core message get across to the consumers ?

• Does the buzz or any short term tactical moves reflects the brand or product's core value or attributes ?

• Does the short fixes, keeps consumers coming and longing for more of the brand after the buzz melts down ?

• Are your dollars well spent on building your brand for the long term? Or are you throwing our your $$$ out of your corporate window ?