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nontraditional marketing approaches that work

Advertising is usually the most important element in any brand marketing plan, but many companies are finding that other approaches are also effective. Some have pursued these approaches out of necessity, being unable to support national advertising campaigns, while others are just more innovative than most in developing their marketing repertoires.

Following are some examples of nontraditional marketing techniques:

• Membership Organizations. Harley Owners Group (HOG), Hallmark Keepsake Ornament Collectors Club, Pond’s Institute.

• Special Events. HOG Rallies, BMW Motorcycle Owners International Rally, Jeep Jamboree.

• Museums and Factory Tours. World of Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta and Las Vegas; CNN Factory Tour in Atlanta; Kellogg’s Cereal City USA in Battle Creek, Michigan; the American Girl Place in Chicago; the Crayola Factory tour and store in Easton, Pennsylvania; the Hallmark Visitors’ Center in Kansas City, Missouri; the Ben & Jerry’s factory tour in Waterbury Center, Vermont; Hershey’s Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania; The Vermont Teddy Bear factory tour and store in Shelburne, Vermont; Dewar’s World of Whisky in Aberfeldy, Scotland; and MacWorld Expo (85,000 make this pilgrimage!).

• Theme Parks. Disney World, Cadbury’s Theme Park, Legoland, Busch Garden, Knott’s Berry Farm.

• Flagship Stores. The Apple Store, Niketown, Warner Brothers Store, and the Disney store at Times Square; ultra-deluxe flagship megastores from fashion designers DKNY, Donna Karan, Gucci, Hermes, Hugo Boss, Hickey Freeman, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Tommy Hilfiger.¹

• Limited Distribution for Product Launches. Create a sense of scarcity. Focus on those outlets known to be frequented by enthusiasts.

• Sponsorships. Rolex and high-end sports events (such as horse shows and races, yacht races, polo); Izod Arena, Allstate Arena, Capital One Bowl.

• Sponsorship Ambush. Converse was an official sponsor of the summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984. Nike upstaged Converse, however, by creating huge tributes to Nike-sponsored athletes on buildings in downtown L.A. In 2000, Reebok was an official sponsor of the Olympics. Nike upstaged Reebok by contracting with many athletes to wear Nike-branded athletic wear. In both instances, Nike received a much greater “share of mind” than the official sponsors in its category. (Of course, using this technique says something about the brand that uses it. The technique is not compatible with the intended personalities of many brands.)

• Larger-Than-Life Brand Owners. At the December 1999 Brand Master Conference, Sixtus Oechsle, the manager of corporate communications and advertising for Shell Oil Company, said that 40 percent of a company’s reputation is based on the reputation of its CEO. Examples in more recent years include Richard Branson (of Virgin), Anita Roddick (of The Body Shop), Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook), Bill Gates (of Microsoft), Ted Turner (of TNT), Jeff Bezos (of Amazon), Steve Jobs (of Apple), and Martha Stewart (of Martha Stewart Omnimedia).

• Frequency Programs. Hallmark Gold Crown Card, Starbucks Rewards Card, and any number of frequent traveler reward programs for hotel chains and airlines.

• Businesses with a Social Conscience. Ben & Jerry’s, The Body Shop, Tom’s of Maine, and Newman’s Own products.

• Cleverness That Creates Buzz. Consider GEICO’s Maxwell the pig campaign, Verizon’s “Can You Hear Me Now?” and the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World.”

• Cause-Related Marketing. McDonald’s sponsors the Ronald McDonald House; American Express alleviates world hunger; and Pfizer has donated fluconazole, an AIDS drug, to South Africa.

• Special Events. Community-based and grassroots events are especially favored, such as Adidas holding streetball festivals and track-and-field clinics.

• Proactive Publicity. This can be one of the most powerful and cost-effective marketing tools. Publicity is free, approximately six times as many people read articles as read ads,² and articles are more credible as they are perceived to be third-party endorsements vs. self-promotion. And the average salary of an in-house copywriter is very low compared to the average ad agency fee for creating an ad. Here are some examples of proactive publicity:

- When Hallmark launched the industry’s first personalized, computer-generated cards, they sent cards to talk show hosts.

- EasyJet invested a large portion of its marketing dollars in a lawsuit against KLM, claiming unfair competitive practices, positioning itself as the underdog on the side of the public.³

- Trivial Pursuit marketers sent games samples to celebrities featured in the game and to radio personalities who had an affinity for trivia.⁴

- The Peabody Hotel in Memphis has ducks march out of the elevator down a red carpet to its lobby fountain twice a day with great fanfare under the direction of the Peabody Duckmaster. Hundreds of people watch and take pictures, many of which are posted on social media.

• Outrageous Marketing Breakthroughs:

- A nonprofit organization, whose mission was to encourage woman over age 40 to get mammograms annually, wanted a message that would “break through.” I suggested they feature a bare-chested woman with a double mastectomy on outdoor signs along major highways, using shocking copy such as “Over 40? Don’t wait until it is too late. Get a mammogram today.” Or, “Which pain is worse? Over 40? Get a mammogram today.” (Imagine the buzz this billboard campaign would create.)

- To create buzz about the movie Frenzy, Alfred Hitchcock floated a dummy of himself down the Thames River.⁵

- In the “Will It Blend?” campaign, Blendtec demonstrated the power and durability of its blenders by posting a series of YouTube videos of its blender blending everyday items (an iPhone, marbles, baseball, crowbar, Bic lighters, Super Glue, etc.).

- Taco Bell quietly conducted nationwide research to find twenty-five men across America named Ronald McDonald, and featured them in television and web ads enjoying items from Taco Bell’s breakfast menu.

• Brand as a Badge. For this technique to work, the brand must stand for something the consumer wants to say about himself or herself. Examples: the Nike swoosh; Mercedes-Benz; FootJoy: The Mark of a Player; and Tesla Motors.

• Cobranding. Kmart and Martha Stewart, Hallmark Confections and Fannie May Celebrated Collection.

• Ingredient Branding. Dolby, NutraSweet, Intel, Kevlar, Lycra, Nylon, Gore-Tex, and Culligan.

• Comarketing with Complementary Products. Identify organizations with which your target customers are likely to interact at the same time that they might be ready to buy your product or service. Better yet, find a quality branded product that your customers would use in conjunction with your product. Best, find another product that matches these criteria and that provides complementary distribution opportunities. Examples: bundling a free sample of a washing detergent with the purchase of a new washing machine, or accounting firms referring clients to financial service firms and estate planning attorneys, and vice versa.

• Contests. Crayola Kids Coloring Contest and new crayon color contest; Mars, Inc.’s “Choose the next M&M color” contest.

• Being Helpful While Building the Brand. The Charmin SitOrSquat mobile app helps people find clean public restrooms all over the United States.

• Brand Magazines and Newsletters. Crayola Kids, Martha Stewart Living.

• Network Marketing. Primerica, Sprint’s Framily Plan, Amway, Mary Kay, Avon, Tupperware.

Colossal Ads. The 500-foot-high working Swatch watch draped from the tallest skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany.⁶

• Word-of-Mouth, Folklore, Testimonials, and Referrals. Taco Bell ran a television commercial about dropping a truck from a helicopter in Bethel, Alaska, to bring residents its Doritos Locos tacos.

- In its Global Word-of-Mouth Study, GfK Roper found that consumers worldwide cite people as the most trustworthy source of purchase ideas and information. In fact, it finds that by a very wide margin over advertising, people are the best source of ideas and information for prescription drugs, new meals/dishes, retirement planning, restaurants, saving and investing money, new ways to improve health, places to visit and hotels to stay in. Word-of-mouth tends to be more effective than paid-for marketing communication because it is more persuasive (coming from a third party) and more targeted (only communicated to people who are likely to find the information valuable).

- According to Keller Fay Group research, 93 percent of word-of-mouth occurs offline.⁷

- In his book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Jonah Berger outlines six things that cause ideas, products, and messages to become contagious: 1) social currency (i.e., people share things to make them look good to others); 2) triggers (it is important to make sure the message is linked to everyday occurrences in the target customer’s market; e.g., the Kit Kat + Coffee campaign increased Kit Kat sales by a third in the first tweleve months of the campaign); 3) emotion (awe, excitement, amusement, anger, and anxiety—coupled with the message—increase the contagiousness); 4) public availability (making things more observable makes them easier to imitate); 5) practical value (people pass on useful information to others, which tends to be highly targeted and therefore more likely to become viral); and 6) storytelling (make sure the product or brand benefits are integral to the story so that they are not lost with the story’s retelling).

- Focus on hard-core users, opinion leaders, and what Emanuel Rosen, in his book The Anatomy of Buzz, calls “network hubs”: They read, they travel, they attend trade shows and conferences; they serve on committees; they participate in best practices benchmarking studies; they do public speaking and write books, articles, newsletters, and letters to editors; they teach courses, they consult, they advise others.

- Expose people to things that make great “cocktail party talk.”

- Give people sneak previews, “inside information,” “behind-the-scenes stories,” and factory tours. Let them meet the product designers.

- Give new products to the trendsetters (seeding).

- Ask your employees to spread the word to everyone they know. Give them free products as a perk. This technique will attract people who like the product category and brand. It will also familiarize them with your brand’s products so that they can make better salespeople.

• Shopping Channel. Many companies have discovered that the QVC and other home shopping channels is a great way to promote new products.

• The Neiman Marcus Catalog. In the catalog, BMW once offered a limited edition of its Z3 Roadster with a “Specially Equipped 007” dash plaque. After BMW sold all 100 cars, there were still approximately 6,000 people on the waiting list!⁸

• Product Placement. Featuring your brands and products in movies and TV shows.

• Covert or “Stealth” Marketing. For example, companies pay a) doormen to stack packages featuring their logos in building lobbies, b) people to sing the praises of a specific brands of alcoholic beverages in bars, c) actors to pose as tourists asking passersby to take their picture with a new camera/cell phone product, and d) models to ride their scooters around town.⁹ (When companies are caught doing stealth marketing, it may have a negative effect on brand equity and cause consumers to become even more jaded, especially if the tactic is more deceptive than it is creative.)

• The Poison Parasite Defense. Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University discovered that a new way to counter and dilute a competitor’s message is by creating ads that offer opposing arguments embedded in visuals that link to the original ads being countered. An example is a successful antismoking campaign that featured mock “Marlboro Man” ads depicting macho cowboys on horses in the same rugged outdoor settings as the original ads; however, in the mock ads, the cowboys are coughing and showing other signs of ill health associated with smoking, thus triggering this new highly negative association with Marlboro.¹⁰

• Airline Radio and Television Shows. Virgin America, JetBlue, Singapore Airlines, Air Canada, and Emirates provide this opportunity on their in-flight entertainment channels.

• Unusual Advertising Media. Companies have used everything from sidewalks (ads written in chalk), walls above men’s room urinals, and posters on bulletin boards, to the sides of trucks and buses, athlete’s clothes, and crop art (images created by plowing fields in certain patterns). A German company is now printing advertising messages on toilet paper. Evian funded the repair of a run-down pool in London in return for featuring its brand’s identity in the pool’s tile design, which could be seen by people flying into and out of nearby Heathrow Airport. Procter & Gamble placed upscale port-a-potties (air-conditioned, with hardwood floors and aromatherapy candles) at state fairs to reinforce the luxury of its Charmin toilet paper.¹¹

• Scarcity, Exclusivity, and Secrets. These qualities make people feel like insiders and make things seem more valuable; they may make things more likely to be talked about.¹²

• The Internet. Online marketing (and Amazon.com, in particular) is covered in greater detail later in Chapter 11.

Traditional Marketing Techniques “on Steroids”

Here are some traditional techniques taken to an extraordinary level of success:

• Packaging. Method’s line of ergonomically designed, minimally printed household cleaning products; Mio’s “Liquid Water Enhancer” that fits pleasingly into the palm of the hand; Ty Nant’s use of cobalt-blue bottles to break into the mineral water category, and Voss’s use of aesthetically pleasing cylindrical glass bottles to do the same; the use of blue bags for home-delivered papers by the New York Times.

• The Product Itself. Never underestimate the power of design to differentiate! Think Apple’s iPhone, the Smart Car, and MINI Cooper.

• Vehicles, Uniforms, and Signage. Coca-Cola, FedEx, and UPS use trucks as billboards. UPS uses its delivery people’s distinctive brown uniforms. Lucent displayed large branded signs in front of each of its offices.

• Point-of-Sale Signs and Merchandising. Mass displays of Coca-Cola cases at the ends of aisles (in grocery and other mass channel stores) are designed to bring the brand to the top-of-mind. Signs, posters, and coasters featuring a particular brand of alcohol are intended to accomplish the same in bars and taverns.

• Free Product Trial. Candy Crush Saga and Words With Friends both offered a free app to attract users to their games, with the option of additional features if the customer purchases a low-cost upgrade. Element K provided e-Learning IDs featuring run-of-site (over 800 courses) for free for three months. This works especially well with low-variable-cost items for which there is some perceived risk of purchase.

Small-Business Marketing Techniques

Many small businesses cannot afford the techniques persued by larger companies. The following techniques are ideal for individuals and smaller businesses.

• Conduct demonstrations, classes, and workshops. A restaurant’s chef can teach a cooking class for a continuing education program or for a department store or cooking supply store.

• Speak at conferences and for professional associations. Join your local chapter of the National Speakers Association and register with speakers bureaus. Publicize your speaking engagements.

• Hold contests.

• Write articles for newspapers, periodicals, and professional journals.

• List yourself as an expert (e.g., in Radio-TV Interview Report; the Yearbook of Experts, Authorities, and Spokespersons; Broadcast Interview Source, Inc.; ProfNet). Connect with journalists (HARO—Help a Reporter Out). Post your press releases on PR distribution sites (PressReleasePoint, PitchEngine, PR Newswire, PRWeb, etc.).

• Host a local radio or television show on your area of expertise, or be a guest on one.

• Network online and offline (in professional associations, conferences, trade shows, benchmarking groups, chambers of commerce and popular social media channels).

• Publish newsletters (online or offline).

• Write a book.

• Hire a publicist.

• Maintain relationships with the press.

• Get involved in civic organizations.

• Donate money to local charities, especially complementary causes.

• Volunteer to judge competitions.

• Wear branded shirts and other clothing.

• Cross-promote with complementary or nearby businesses.

• Give away insignia merchandise (featuring your business’s name, logo, tagline, and contact information).

• Write letters to new residents introducing them to your business (perhaps offering them a free or reduced-price trial).

• Script your customer service and tech support people to cross-sell and upsell products and services as appropriate. (Be careful not to over-incent people. They should only cross-sell/upsell in the most helpful way as appropriate.)

Business-to-Business Techniques

Business-to-business organizations are able to draw on a unique set of marketing tactics that are appropriate for business customers but not end consumers.

• Create and actively interact with customer advisory boards. Invite the most influential opinion leaders to participate.

• Create and actively interact with strategic partner boards.

• Create external “expert councils” for all major new products. Invite the most knowledgeable and influential outside experts to participate, and involve them in the product design itself.

• Hold conferences and seminars, inviting current satisfied customers, prospective customers, and internal and external industry experts. Present case studies, discuss the latest innovations, let the experts speak, and allow time for networking.

• For software companies, beta test your software with major influential customers and those that would provide compelling case studies and testimonials.

• Hold product launch parties for important customers.

• Record testimonials from your most supportive customers and subtly interweave them with the background music that plays when people calling your company are put on hold. (Hopefully, incoming callers aren’t on hold for long, otherwise this technique could become annoying to some people who are waiting to speak to a customer service or technical support rep regarding a major problem.)

• Develop and disseminate a portfolio of customer case studies to reinforce specific brand benefits to specific target customers.

• Publish and widely disseminate white papers to position your organization and brand as experts in your field.

• Develop a speakers bureau and actively orchestrate speaking engagements at key industry events such as conferences, trade shows, and industry association meetings. At our company, we started a local chapter of Toastmasters and assigned the speakers bureau responsibility to a specific individual.

• Actively seek industry association committee assignments and board positions.

• Constantly keep the following people and organizations aware of your brand and its latest accomplishments:

- Industry analysts

- Financial analysts

- Resellers and other strategic partners

- Your organization’s professional partners (i.e., lawyers, accountants, management consultants, advertising agencies)

- Trade magazine editors and writers

- People who write about your industry for the general business press

- People who write books about your industry

- Other opinion leaders

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is a very specific subdiscipline with its own rules within marketing. It offers several advantages to the marketer:¹³

• It allows you to target specific people.

• It enables you to tailor your message for each person.

• It is action-oriented.

• It is confidential.

• It is economical.

• You can track and measure the response rate and the return on investment.

• You will be able to significantly and continuously improve its effectiveness over time.

The three most important elements of direct mail response are the list, the offer, and the creative. Of the three, the list is by far the most important.

The List

• You will have the most success with your current customer list (typically, it provides two to ten times the response rate of a rented list). Beyond that, always seek out frequently updated lists.

• Use a list broker that you trust.

• Profile your current (or prospective) customer base (by behavioral and demographic characteristics) and compare that with the profiles of the various lists that you are considering.

• Test each of the lists that you are considering (e.g., ask for free names or rent the minimum number of names possible).

The Offer

• Provide an incentive for the recipient to act immediately (i.e., for consumers: free product trials, percent off, premiums, sweepstakes; for B2B: kits, white papers, research reports).

• Maximize the perceived value of the offer.

• Provide an easy way to respond (an 800 number, postage-paid response cards, coupons, or website address).

• Code the response devices to be able to track the effectiveness of the offer.

• Make the offer time-sensitive in some way.

• Specify a response deadline (not too soon, not too far in the future).

• Provide a guarantee if appropriate.

• Avoid offers that are vague, generic, offered by most of your competitors, or that seem too good to be true.

• Test responses to various offers.

Be Creative

• Use the Johnson Box area (top right corner of the letter) to plainly state your offer.

• Start the letter with a powerful, attention-grabbing, benefit-driven statement.

• Talk to the recipient in his or her own language—be conversational.

• Use the word “you” as much as possible.

• Always use the “active voice.”

• Write long copy, but use short words, sentences, and paragraphs.

• Maximize subheads to call out important offers, benefits, and points of differentiation.

• Sell benefits, not features.

• Appeal to the “head” and to the “heart.”

• Personalize the letter to the extent possible.

• Make your copy sympathetic to the recipient’s problems.

• Use words to “paint a picture”; help the recipient to envision a desired or undesired end state.

• Know that the “fear of loss” is more powerful that the “hope of gain.”

• Include testimonials and case studies.

• Include a strong and clear call to action.

• Use the problem-solution construct that almost always works; think about the five P’s: picture, problem, promise, proof, and push.

• Always use a P.S. (restate your proposition here). After the Johnson Box, this is the most-read portion of the letter.

• Test various versions of the copy.

Other Considerations in Direct Marketing

• Personalize the envelope.

• Design the envelop/packaging to maximize its possibility of being opened.

• Use dimensional packaging—it has a much higher chance of being opened.

• Test envelope solutions.

• Time the mailing for maximum response.

• Carefully time follow-up contacts to substantially increase response rates.

• Always take the opportunity to thank your current customers—again and again.

Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is huge. Most companies use it to increase customer loyalty and retention, and it will continue to grow with the accessibility of the Internet and e-mail worldwide. Increasingly, CRM systems are integrating social media sites as a part of the managed customer experience.

Ideation and Creative Problem Solving

The mostly highly admired brands are usually unique, original, fresh, and leading-edge. In fact, many have invented or reinvented entire categories. To be that kind of a brand, an organization must be highly innovative. Element K’s former CEO Bruce Barnes likes to talk about the “Virtuous Circle of Investment/Innovation.” It is very simple:

• Investing in customer-relevant product/service innovation leads to increased revenues.

• Increased revenues enable continued product/service innovation.

Innovative brands with innovative products, services, and marketing approaches typically make extensive use of creative problem solving and ideation (idea generation) techniques.

Creative problem solving usually requires two distinct phases: divergent thinking (ideation) and convergent thinking (idea analysis and evaluation). The purpose of ideation is to generate as many ideas as possible in as condensed a time frame as possible.

BRAINSTORMING

The most popular ideation technique is brainstorming. It requires the following components to be successful:

• There must be a well-defined problem.

• Two or more people must be together in a room. Ideally, you have a mix of people from different disciplines, including someone who knows nothing about the subject (to offer perspective) and a subject matter expert. Also, participants should be screened for divergent thinkers with diverse experiences, who are willing to actively share their thoughts and ideas.

• Relaxation training, autogenics, psychodrama, sociodrama, and other techniques can help prepare people to ideate effectively. The intent is to break down mental blocks and preconceived notions and to get people to relax and feel confident and safe from criticism. A warm-up exercise also helps to get people to think about things in new ways and encourages “boundary-less” thinking.

• Providing participants with crayons and paper and other activities (e.g., Play-Doh, clay, Tinker Toys) often helps people open up in their thinking.

• The exchange of ideas helps to generate more ideas.

• Session ground rules should be established: no criticism or judgments allowed.

• The facilitator ensures that each person’s ideas are drawn out.

• No ideas are filtered out by the session facilitator; rather, all ideas are captured as presented, typically on a flipchart.

• The facilitator keeps the session moving so that people don’t have time to make premature judgments.

• The facilitator interjects questions to stimulate additional ideas when ideas are waning. Facilitators should have prepared a set of conceptual blockbusting questions before the session. What if it were bigger? What if it were the opposite of what it is? What if we morphed it? What if it were only one-dimensional? What could we do to solve the problem if we had no money to do so? What could we do if we had unlimited financial resources? What if it were round? What if it were red? What is the high-tech solution? What is the low-tech solution? How would environmentalists solve the problem? How would farmers solve the problem? How would Albert Einstein solve the problem? How would a five-year-old girl solve the problem? How would the Chinese government solve the problem? How would your cat solve the problem? How does nature address this matter? What if you were the problem? What would you do? What if you were the solution? How would you feel?

Other ideation techniques include the following:¹⁴

• Visualization, guided imagery, fantasizing, and envisioning the future

• Attribute listing and discovering connections between those attributes

• Mind mapping and diagramming relationships

• Questioning the problem and its assumptions, broadening the problem, looking at the problem at a meta level

• Applying ideas from one context to another (metaphorical thinking)

• Creating connections for two previously unconnected items (bisociation)

• Free associations (“What is the first word that comes to your mind when I say …?”)

• Forced relationships (forcing an association between the problem or solution and random words)

• Conceiving of two unrelated entities occupying the same space (homospatial thinking)

• Stopping to further consider associations that initially make us laugh (laughter results from the unexpected connection between two things)

• Sketching and doodling

• Stream-of-consciousness writing

• Experiencing the problem emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and physically

• Incubation (walking away from the problem after intensely thinking about it)

• Living a life of diverse experience

Who drives the pace of change in your industry, you or one of your competitors?

Go to www.brandforward.com for a list of online ideation and creative thinking resources.

Use the checklist in Figure 10–1 to assess the efficacy of your brand management practices in the area covered by this chapter. The more questions to which you can answer “yes,” the better you are doing. The checklist also provides a brief summary of the material covered in the chapter.