I’ve just come back from Portugal, where I’ve been thinking mainly about bikinis, bottoms and (just to ring the changes) bikini bottoms. But a stray paragraph in an old copy of the Guardian Saturday Review, which I was using to protect my nose, struck me as relevant to the world of marketing.
Apparently, in 1343, while besieging the town of Kaffa, the general of the invading Mongol forces had a brainwave. And he started catapulting into the town the corpses of various plague victims.
Now I don’t know what it was about the image of a stinking, flea-infested corpse that put me in mind of marketing, but I kept reading. And I found out that from this humble beginning, we can actually trace the beginnings of the Black Death – which was to ravage Europe for years and eventually claim 25 million victims.
There’s contagious for you.
I’ve thought for a long time that one of the best brand names for the modern era of marketing is Contagious (a magazine + DVD which celebrates non-traditional ideas).
And that set me thinking. What is it about modern marketing that separates it from marketing of about 10 years ago ?
For me, the essential thing is the lack of a captive audience.
Which makes the whole damn thing a whole damn lot harder. There’s never been a greater need for market-challenging thinking – which is one reason why I love the story of www.theimpossiblepitch.com
Apparently this guy in Sweden has asked 3 interns to pitch for the global adidas business in just 3 weeks. And they’re coming up with really good ideas.
Love it.
But although brave thinking feels like the answer, it’s not the real differentiating factor for right now. For what that is, let’s look at a story which Edward de Bono told in one of his books.
It’s about a king with a beautiful daughter and two princes who are suitors for her hand.
One of the princes does everything he can for the king – he mows his lawn, paints his drawbridge, cleans out the moat, and fixes the clicking sound in the king’s chariot.
The other one asks the king to do him a favour. He says “Lend us your chariot for Friday night please, your Maj.”
And the second one is the one who wins the daughter. Because the king feels emotionally much closer to this prince, having done him a favour.
I’ve always loved that story – and always felt like it had a meaning for the ad industry.
But it was only when I was judging last year’s IPA Excellence Diploma essays that I saw how it really worked. (Incidentally, the standard of essays overall was fantastic. If the industry hangs onto those 19 people, its future is assured. But of course that’s a big “if”.)
One of the most brilliant essays was by someone called Chris Gallery, and it compared the marketing techniques of Clinton and Obama in the Democratic Primaries.
Clinton believed in “messaging”. She had messages she wanted to put out, and she put them out there, usually in paid-for media.
Obama had a very simple theme – “Change/Hope”- and he didn’t so much put it out there, as let people bring it back to him. And by asking people to donate even very small amounts of money to his cause, he built incredible loyalty.
He asked people to help him, like the prince in de Bono’s story.
And that, I think, is the essence of marketing in a world in which we no longer have a captive audience.
We can put messages out there, but people will by and large refuse to play that game in the future. However, if you offer something that people believe in, they will come to you.
And that takes me back to what I’ve been saying in the last couple of blogs. If you can create a theme for your brand – a social theme that matters to people – that will have far more resonance than any product message.
And, once you take that approach, it’s got an added advantage. Because, instead of just PUSHING your message out in paid media channels, you can be talking about whatever your brand’s theme is, and people will come towards it.
If, for instance, you’re an Italian washing machine company, and you decide that your theme should be about families – why not, the washing machine is near the heart of a lot of families and Italians really get family values – you can start up networks about families, join discussions online and in the real world about families – and people may actually want to hear what you’ve got to say.
Whereas if you just do an ad telling people about your washing machine, people may not actually care very much.
The answer, in this new world, is to pull, not push.
Ms Clinton pushed; Mr Obama pulled. And boy, did he pull.
In other words, when it comes to selling, less is definitely more.
Which, incidentally, I’ve found is also true of bikini bottoms.
