Zig while your competitors Zag

It doesn’t matter how right you are, if no one notices your communication, you are just tipping money down the toilet.

Most brands in the same category are advertised in pretty much the same way. Look at car advertising! Is every brand done by the same creative team? So while your competitors are trying to be noticed by being identical (huh?), you can be noticed by being different.

To use an advertising cliché, cut-through is as simple as zigging when others are zagging: or just being different to what is on air at that moment. You don’t have to, and shouldn’t, be bizarre, just different.

On the one hand there are marketers who create ‘company’ ads. That is, ads that fit the company mould. Their target is their boss or head office. The consumer and the Australian environment are scarcely considered. This is one reason most ads in a category are similar.

But ironically a lot of creative people are just as much to blame.

Most creatives slavishly refer to ‘Shots’ reels, which are a collection TV spots from around the world, deemed to be ‘creative’ or ‘breakthrough’. Some have better communication than others, but most are pretty ‘fresh’ ideas. So creatives start to copy creatives … who copy creatives who …

Technique trends quickly become popular, then ubiquitous. They go from being fresh to being unnoticed, because the whole creative industry is doing it. It’s a kind of cannibalism. And cannibalism is not good for your health.

One example is the rise of the quirky geek in beer ads. I don’t know who started it, but if I see another beer spot staring an obviously ugly guy with bad hair doing odd things, I’ll switch to Pimms and lemonade. What began as a different and engaging way of creating beer ads has become a cliché. If all beer ads are quirky then by definition, none are quirky.

Recently I noticed some commercials that really did break the mould, in an entirely appropriate way. They were for a brand of Tip Top bread. The bread market is essentially aimed at ‘Mums who want to give their kids good food’. The ads used funky low-tech animation. It looked like paper cut outs. Running in a popular gangster TV show among the slick ‘samey’ car ads, the simple animated bread ads stood out like nothing else AND as a result planted the message.

Using animation to sell bread is new. Using jiggly paper cut outs is really new. Result – instant cut through!

Another technique that will guarantee attention is quiet. Yes quiet. A 30 second spot can comfortably have about 60 spoken words. A lot squeeze in more. I created an ad for Tek Toothbrushes that used 16 words total: 5 for dialogue, 11 for the pack shot VO. The silence became the technique and had a devastating effect.

The idea was that a dentist had no patients because the toothbrush was so effective. We had a single shot on a receptionist in a large empty waiting room. After 25 seconds the dentist pops his head around the corner and asks, ‘Any patients Emma?’ The receptionist replies, ‘Sorry Rob’.

We always knew it had a lot of quiet. But when it ran on air surrounded by hundreds of shouting and overly busy spots competing for attention, the effect was sensational. People looked up from their magazines. People left the kitchen to check on the TV. And people bought Tek Professional in droves.

So to create cut through and maximise your production and media spend, ask your creatives to chuck out the Shots reel. Then get them to watch TV commercials in the shows your consumer watches. Then ask for something … different.

Learning from a 10 year old

My 10 year old daughter Sophia and her mate Coco have an occasional retail business. They set up a table at the front of one of their houses and sell items to passers by. Anything from Easter eggs to old toys.

The learning curve has been steep. Early Saturday morning - lots of customers out exercising but not carrying cash. Late Sunday afternoon - No customers at all!

A week ago they hit upon the idea of setting up shop at the same time as an auction was being held next door to Coco’s house. They planned to break up a packet of biscuits and sell them individually.

They had finally hit the marketing sweet spot.

They had found a large group of people, with some cash, waiting around and keen to have a small diversion to take their minds of the stressful auction.

The biscuits were priced well – high enough to make a profit and low enough to be attractive to the auction goers.

All the girls had to do was tell the consumers that they were selling biscuits (not just playing make believe).

Marketers, whether 10 years old or 80 years old, are just people who need to sell something. So what did the 2 little girls do? What a lot of marketers do.

They rang a bell and screamed!

“We want to sell our biscuits!” “Hurry up and buy our biscuits!” “We want your money!”

I asked Sophia how this worked. ‘Not very well’, she admitted. “The people just ignored us”

What the girls were doing was not that different from most advertising campaigns ie. Talk about yourself, your product and your problems. Ignore the consumer’s needs, the consumer’s wants and the consumer’s desires.

The result is that consumers try to ignore the message and only a mega media spend will drive the message into their unwilling minds.

But there is a happy ending. Sophia and Coco were smart enough to realise a change of approach was needed. They simply smiled and spoke to each person as they passed. “Hello, would you like to have a yummy biscuit before you go to the auction?”

The auction goers loved it. Instead of being screamed at they were having their needs met: needs they didn’t even know they had! The need to have something to take their minds off the auction. And the need to helping cute, entrepreneurial kids.

Maybe we can all learn something from these 10 year olds.

Sophia and Coco’s 4 rules for advertising.

1. Don’t scream at, or annoy your consumer. (Bad creative and repetitive media schedules do this every night on TV)

2. Don’t tell your consumer about yourself, your product, your factory (9 out of 10 advertisers do this without even realising). Tell your consumer about THEM: how you, your product and your factory WILL HELP THEM.

3. Do be engaging, cute, pleasant, watchable, readable, listenable or appealing in some way. (Even the most rational ad has room for some sort of charm).

4. Do put familiar ideas together in surprising ways. Combining Biscuits and Home Auctions has never been done to my knowledge.