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. Theyíll start to scream. Nobody wins a shouting match when it comes to advertising. And usually youíll find you even lose a few customers in the process because they canít stand the noise.

Itís 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; itís finding who wants to hear you and speaking to them. So how do you compete if you canít out shout or out discount your competition? You get rebellious and radical with your advertising.

Do those words scare you? Thatís okay. Remember, youíre being courageous now. You can handle it. Besides, rebellious and radical arenít dirty words. They will help you draw attention away from your competition without resorting to screaming and insulting your customers.

Itís not about being outrageous just to get attention; itís 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 competitorsí marketing efforts. Itís unexpected. Itís surprising. Itís 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. Weíll 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 canít gain attention if you donít learn to identify and then steer clear of the norm. It doesnít matter how great your product or service is or how large your potential market, if your target audience doesnít 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 donít 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 donít 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 brandís uniqueness

More info’s and free registrations (restricted to  pros), please join our live seminar

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.

You have Successfully Subscribed!

error: Content is protected !!