Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

After the smoke cleared at the Indy Japan 300, Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an IndyCar event in history. It was great to see.

She, and others in the race, made a comment that's worth listening to as it relates to marketing, in that this race was a specific type of race that had to be run with a specific understanding of the strategy it would take to win.

Patrick said about her victory that "It was a fuel strategy race, but my team called it perfectly for me."

The point is advertising and marketing campaigns are far more than simply throwing our brand, product or service out there, it has to be done with the understanding of what it is we're trying to accomplish. It could be even more than one thing.

Many marketers - including those who think they're top notch - miss out on understanding the current marketing, economic and business climate they exist in. So they can throw out an advertising campaign, and even if it's temporarily successful, won't understand why.

Danica Patrick and her team understood that the race they were racing today was a "fuel strategy race," those that raced it that way, had the best plan, and executed that plan successfully would win. Her and her teams' understanding ended up making history.

We must understand the marketing campaign and the race we're running with it in order to get the best out of what we're presenting to the public.

What type of campaign are you running and why? If we don't know the "why" of the strategy, no matter what type of metrics we get back concerning it, they won't do us much good.