No doubt all my savvy readers remember the Wicked Sick BMX as was sold on Ebay. Turns out it was a project designed by a couple of creatives at the Advertising Agency George Patterson Y&R. And all I can say is kudos.
Sure creativity takes courage,takes clients and businesses that ‘get it’ and when well executed, creativity wins. The added bonus of creativity is that usually comes at no extra cost.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd6-n7MhVg8&feature=fvsr]
Here’s a recent Article I wrote for Anthill Magazine:
When aiming to generate media coverage for our start-up or business, we often get one thing wrong. It relates to our training as marketers. We are too targeted.
In fact, we need to do the reverse and cast the media net wide – as wide as possible. What needs to be targeted is ‘the message’, not the media organisations we aim at. The message needs to be written for the forum. But, in truth, most of us have way more messages in our business than we have bothered to think about, or even invent. Yes, we can invent messages.
The message or pitch needs to be all about them, their readers and their viewers. Never us or our start-up. So before you pitch, work out how many angles you’ve got and you’ll be surprised what you can dig up. In fact, you’ve got to give a bit before you get anything – especially for start-ups, who can exchange a few learnings from the battlefield.
Here’s an idea-jam for potential examples of media angles for Start-up X.
There’s more, but you’re bored already. I’m just showing what’s possible. Stuff like this equals free media. Pages/slots have to be filled.
Frequency vs Depth
While we know we need advertising or media exposure, the thing we need most is frequency. Advertisers talk about depth and frequency. (Depth being how many people we reach on each occasion. Frequency being how often we reach them.) It’s great to let zillions of people know about our start-up as quickly as we can. We may even be lucky enough to get some kind of viral campaign working for our start-up – we may be featured in the newspaper, on TechCrunch or we might even be lucky enough get a TV spot.
After the event, here’s what happens: people cook dinner, pick up the kids from school, pay the bills, kick the dog and get on with life. Our start up doesn’t really matter to them… straight away.
Consumer awareness goes something like this:
Exposure 1: “That’s a cool idea/product/concept.”
Exposure 2: “Oh, yeah, I must remember to check that out.”
Exposure 3: “There it is again. Might be worth having a look.”
Exposure 4: “Hmm, Ok – I’ll check it out when I’m shopping/online next.”
Exposure 5: They finally act and go look at / investigate / touch / feel / try….
After many exposures we have “a chance” of selling to them. Sure some people check it out first time, some buy straight away, but the large majority need to be reminded, over and over again. This doesn’t mean you need to spam them or do terrible interruption marketing. It means you need to send frequent and relevant marketing communications to the people who might care.
It’s a lot like us never noticing an advertisement for a car until you are in the market to buy one. They’re always there, we just have selective perception.
This is why advertising frequency is king. No point having a big launch campaign if your prospective new customers aren’t looking on that occasion. For entrepreneurs, the big launch concept is a hoax. It’s unsustainable. We’re far better off being there all the time, in some way – then we don’t have to predict when people will buy.
And before you waste a shipload of money on a PR agency, the truth is the media aren’t listening anymore. Well, listening to PR firms…. Once upon a time, a PR agency had the secret access keys to journalists. That made them powerful. But things have changed. Now we can access anyone with a few Twitter messages and some Google magic. And the PR agency messages are very 1993. In an age of authenticity, we are far better off going direct. Developing a relationship with media contacts is far more valuable than wasting money on outsourcing PR. People want to talk to the person, and that person is you.
Want proof ?– check out the rentoid.com about page and scroll down to see the media we have generated – none of which has been paid for.
The link you are about to click on below is absolute ‘Radvertising’ by Honda for it’s new Hybrid the ‘Insight’.
The thing I like about it most is the use of the media forum. In fact, that’s what makes the difference. Especially on line where the ‘audio visual’ experience is usually lost. Kudos to Vimeo and Honda for this. The ‘insight’ for startups is how Honda have managed to great cut through on a forum (video websites) which usually lacks it.
Yes it’s a bit artsy, but this suits the target audience and the creative idea is clearly integrated and not just an addendum.
Click here to watch. Enjoy.
Often I have strong opinions on somewhat popular advertising which I lambast for being bad. In recent memory is the Cadbury Gorilla. But here is some radvertising by Nike. It’s a bit old but I only recently happened upon it. And it’s rad for the following reasons:
Enjoy
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsizQdNKhGg]
I was recently asked how a particular rentoid promotional activity went. Which was when we got rentoid on iwearyourshirt.com
Turns out it was pretty cool, he did a good job of promoting our stuff, but there wasn’t a huge upswing in members or rentals. Which is OK – it wasn’t a game winning activity. It got me thinking about our attitudes towards instant gratification. We live in a world where we want and expect instant gratification. In nearly all things. It’s not hard to understand why with Google results, instant video, mobile technology that we want our answer right now, or we’ll move on.
This has a dangerous implication for entrepreneurs – in that the business world doesn’t work this way. Sure we need to move quick, finish things fast, and innovate constantly – but this still wont (or very rarely) will deliver instant results. We need ignore all the stories we read about our heroes who ‘did’ have things work out rather quick. They are the 1 in 6 billion aberration – and believe me it is not us – we are not that lucky. And it is luck, not brilliance. Proof of this lies in the fact we all know a handful of equally brilliant people who haven’t had the luck of Zuckerberg or Sergy.
We need need instead is to stay the course, and have faith in our actions. We must celebrate effort rather than results. Because there is no telling when the results will actually appear. But if we do the right things they will come to fruition. Success which may not be the global type entrepreneurs like dreaming about – but success to a level of great satisfaction.
We again can look to nature to see this in action. If we took societies instant gratification ethos into growing our food we’d all starve to death. In nature things take many months at a minimum, many years as the usual, and oft times, many years before we will yield anything. Whether we are growing vegetables, crops or fruit, we have to believe that doing the right thing will result in in just rewards. But we will not see the rewards until a long time after the input of our efforts. Efforts which must be made consistently every day with nothing to show for it. We must have faith that that the results will eventually come. Without faith the motivation to continue the nurturing will be lost. We wont do what is needed and the crop will fail. There is no instant reward in nature.
And there is rarely an instant reward in business. We need the same faith we have in nature when we know we have the right ingredients. We must continue to attend to the field regardless of physical evidence of success. We must celebrate effort and not results. Only then will we have the patience and tenacity required for a financial yield.
Here’s some radvertising I just made for my start up (well business now, more than startup) rentoid.
It’s zero budget and within 30 minutes of posting it already had around 1000 eyeballs across it – not bad.
Do you like it?
They’ve started already with this clever spoof from Guinness of the James Boag’s Tasmania magic water advertisement – as blogged about here.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX4mL1Xy8y4]
Radvertising or badvertising – What do you think?