Tuesday July 28, 2009

Be different. Go on, we dare you!

In the Mexico Olympics of 1968, a little known athlete called Dick Fosbury approached the high jump bar at a world record 7ft 4in.

When he took off, instead of turning his body towards the bar he turned his back on it, brought his legs up and flipped over the bar backwards. This revolutionary method of high jumping subsequently became known as the Fosbury Flop and is still used around the world today.

Dick was successful because he knew that success meant daring to be different, not just doing the same as his competitors and expecting different results. He was taking a chance, but let’s not forget that a reward often requires an element of risk.

One of the biggest problems public transport companies face regarding their creative output is that it’s very difficult, maybe impossible, to develop advertising/design/promotional work that really breaks the rules and does something different in the category.

As marketing professionals given responsibility for your brand, you may want to go in the opposite direction to everyone else, you’re just not allowed to.

Unfortunately unless the heads of transport companies are themselves determined to change things, clients will never be in a postion to reap the rewards of working with a truly creative agency.

Unless the head honcho demands their people really challenge the status quo of their market and lets them get involved in engaging some challenging work, it simply will not happen.

This is frustrating for all involved – if we can’t make a real difference, what’s the point?

However all is not lost. Whether you’ve got a price promotion planned, a new route to promote or a third party tie-in to advertise – dare to be different. It's the only real way to success.

(P.S. Think being creative/different can’t make a difference? Click here and you might think again)

Extracts taken from ‘Whatever you think think the opposite’ by Paul Arden and themarketingblog.co.uk

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Top 10 marketing blunders

As a new feature, every month we'll be looking at the top 10 most brilliant marketing screw-ups. This month Electrolux.

In the 1960s, the company successfully marketed vacuums in the United Kingdom with the slogan "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

British consumers took the slogan literally because "sucks" as a term of disparagement is strictly an Americanism.

However, Americans often naively presumed that using this slogan was a brand blunder, and such notions exist even in certain business school textbooks.

In fact, the informal US meaning of "sucks" was already well known in the UK at the time, and the company's "marketing people were fully aware of the possible double entendre and intended it to gain attention."

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