The Wow Factory Blog

This article, written by The Wow Factory chairman Richard Harvey, appeared in the October, 2010 issue of ‘Kent Business’ magazine

Clap your hands over your ears and squeeze your eyes tight shut.

That’s the increasing temptation for many consumers, as they are assailed with a cacophony of advertising, online messaging, PR and promotions.

Kent Business readers understand that marketing which delivers sales is a bigger challenge than it’s ever been. The most prized goal of business owners and marketing managers is ‘cut through’, the ability for a sales message to be heard and seen clearly above those of competitors.

But with all that racket going on, how are you ever going to make your message visible, particularly when the f-d has put a vicelike grip on the marketing budget?

The answer is creativity.

You probably have your ad agency telling you to spend money in magazines and newspapers, your website guy urging you to splurge the budget on a new website, the PR people saying, no, that’s not the answer at all, what you need is editorial coverage.

The answer may well be a combination of all these, and more. Or, indeed, less. The real solution is distinctiveness – how you make your message stand out from the crowd.

Let’s take a small, off-the-wall example.

Earlier this year, a young man with an acute sense of humour and a shrewd appreciation that the way he framed his message was crucial put his customised Renault Clio up for sale on e-Bay.

Much of the text wasn’t, as they say in the more pompous broadsheets, suitable for a family audience, given that it made copious references to illegal and exotic substances, and was couched in the sort of ‘street’ patois adopted by some of south London’s criminally-inclined undesirables.

However, you couldn’t help reading it. Example: “Dig out your favourite, unwashed Umbro hoodie, and come cast your shifty little eyes on this. Enhance your street cred at the local drive-thru burger joint or council estate no end with this utterly tacky converted little Renault Clio…….not your gran’s idea of a lift to town, granted.

“You gonna need a baseball cap with this beauty, ideally one that comes with no fitting instructions. Heaven forbid that you should put it on the right way……” And so on, and so on.

Tasteless? Certainly. Funny? It depends on your sense of humour.

But effective? Unquestionably. Not only did the car sell in a matter of hours, it also cropped up as a Facebook topic, spread like wildfire through the ‘net, and resulted in the ad achieving more than 148,000 hits.

Clearly, this sales approach pushed the boundaries of acceptability. But it worked, because it was creative, different, challenging, and demanded attention.

Like the Shepherd Neame campaign for Spitfire, with its ‘don’t mention ze war’ theme which gently mocked the Germans and had the Guardianistas up in arms (which generated a whole load of free, spin-off PR).

Or, in a different way, the Cadbury’s drumming gorilla. What on earth is the connection between gorillas and chocolate? None, of course, but it became one of the most talked-about, Googled and You Tube’d ads of all time.

So next time you review your marketing spend, think about the most creative way your message can be delivered.

Don’t be lured into the ‘corporate wallpaper’ trap of same-again press ads, a ‘that’ll-do website’, a stating-the-obvious press release.

Dare to be creative. Dare to be different.