I’m talking about marketing here folks, and not the typical work comp service marketing, which is not much more than a big party at NWCDC &/or RIMS plus some folks doing RFP responses and the (very) occasional website re-do.
Nope – real marketing – creative brand promotion that dramatically raises awareness. Campaigns that make the market sit up and take notice. Smacking them in their eyeballs with innovative, aggressive, creative messaging.
When was the last time you saw really good marketing in this boooooring business of ours? Stuff like the Newcastle campaign? Campaigns like Kinaxis‘ that produce brilliantly simple and quite funny brand messages for pretty dry products?
(This video on implementation as a differentiator is hysterical)
Or Microsoft’s Camp Network? (I can already see execs cringing over the “nobody eat the berries” bit…)
Not taking risks is what’s risky. Staid, boring, yawn-inducing plain-vanilla stuff is, well, safe – if you define “safe” as no one will ever pay attention to it, so you won’t get fired.
It also won’t get you any results.
What gets results is risky, aggressive, out-there marketing. If it doesn’t make the denizens of the C-suite at least a little nervous, its probably not worth doing. Because it can be holy-smokes-effective, as in millions of impressions and millions in new revenue.
Let’s be clear – we aren’t talking “risky” as in “stupid”. Not offensive, but rather “we think this works but it may not”; “this is a big departure from stuff we’ve done in the past”; “no one else in our niche has ever done anything like this”. To break through, you have to take that risk. In a world of grey and greyblue, bright orange will stand out and grab the viewer.
Which gets you their attention, for about a nanosecond. Great marketing grabs and holds the viewer’s attention while communicating your message clearly and completely.
And you can’t do that if you go immediately from orange back to your usual greyblue.
What does this mean for you?
Success favors the smart risk taker.
Yes! Real innovative marketing requires some level of organizational disruption or unease. Otherwise, keep using the “SUGGESTION BOX” for the ubiquitous ideas that create no turmoil or that require no thoughtful consideration beyond 5 minutes.
How refreshing! Not everyone is on board with this kind of thinking, and I think that’s what keeps us from going way off the other end. But why not stretch the boundaries of our thought processes? You can’t discover uncharted territory or opportunities if you don’t decide to embark on the journey.
Well said Lisa – I’d even suggest too many in our industry don’t even want to fully explore the territories they already know exist!
Good point!