Be Rebellious
In order to get consumers (whether they are retail or service customers or business-
to-business audiences) to notice an advertising message, many companies resort to
loudness and one-upmanship. Neither of these tactics works in the long run.
If your competition is talking loudly and you decide to yell louder, what do you think
they will do? Yep. They’ll start to scream. Nobody wins a shouting match when it
comes to advertising. And usually you’ll find you even lose a few customers in the
process because they can’t stand the noise.
It’s the same with one-upmanship. If you have to compete on more and better
coupons or more and better discounts, giveaways or incentives unrelated to your
core product, your revenue per sale decreases as well as your number of sales.
Customers see these types of games as gimmicky, fake and disingenuous; and they
leave. The ones who do stay now view you and your competitors as commodities
with no difference except your price. That is a dangerous place for a company to
find itself.
The answer to clutter is not more clutter; it’s finding who wants to hear you and
speaking to them. So how do you compete if you can’t out shout or out discount
your competition? You get rebellious and radical with your advertising.
Do those words scare you? That’s okay. Remember, you’re being courageous now.
You can handle it. Besides, rebellious and radical aren’t dirty words. They will help
you draw attention away from your competition without resorting to screaming and
insulting your customers.
It’s not about being outrageous just to get attention; it’s about being remarkable.
An advertising campaign with a strong rebellious strategy is, by its very nature,
different from anything your audience will find from your competitors’ marketing
efforts. It’s unexpected. It’s surprising. It’s effective.
There are two keys to creating a successfully rebellious advertising campaign. The
first is the big idea. This idea comes from a strategy that is derived directly from
your customers and their relationship with your brand. You arrive at this idea
through a discipline called account planning. We’ll get into the details of both the
big idea and account planning in later articles.
The second key to a successfully rebellious advertising campaign is attention. You
can’t gain attention if you don’t learn to identify and then steer clear of the norm. It
doesn’t matter how great your product or service is or how large your potential
market, if your target audience doesn’t pay attention to your message, your ad
budget has been wasted.
Think about these two keys while you flip through the newspaper or a magazine.
Ponder them while you watch TV. You should notice something almost immediately.
Most ads today don’t seem to be based on any big idea. Many are so boring that you
flip right past them without noticing them. Others get your attention but the ads
don’t have much to do with the product so you quickly forget the brand the ad was
supposed to sell you. What an opportunity for your brand!
Now, there is a caveat to being rebellious. Your ads should never be different just
for difference sake. The difference should be derived from your brand’s
uniqueness.
This article introduced the second of twelve steps. Challenge yourself, your staff and
your ad agency to revolutionize your advertising program. If you missed the first
step, contact the author for a complimentary copy. And, remember, every revolution
begins with just one step.
Jeff Berney is a freelance idealist, brand evangelist and writer. He can be reached at
jeff@jberney.com.
© 2006
After more than a decade in the business, Jeff Berney offers more than a passion for
prose. Above all, he is a strategic thinker, an idealist, a brand evangelist. The articles
posted here are from his collection entitled, “Twelve Steps to Creating Breakthrough
Advertising Campaigns: A creative philosophy to help companies recover from years of
playing it safe.” You can view his work or read his blog at http://www.jberney.com
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