Box clever

Feb 22, 2012 by nsones in Blog, Marketing

Of all the clichés that annoy, frustrate and – in the end – leave me feeling just a little bit sick inside, it’s the ones that imply individuality and uniqueness of strategy and creativity. We all use them, then we wince. Because we know it’s the worst kind of nonsense.

Let’s think outside the box. Let’s blue sky think about this. Let’s fly a kite.

Why? Because they presupposed originality, but kill it with their predictability; because behind that they’re usually a mask for a lack of originality, a cloak for doing something very ordinary; and because most importantly they miss the point.

Which is that looking outside the box is only OK if you’ve already looked in it.

There are lots of reasons to try to test the mould and the methods of getting to your market are increasingly complex. You want to do something you haven’t done before; be original. Etc. And true originality, whatever that means, is the goal of us all. But the only criteria, when putting a strategy, campaign or piece of material together, are:

Is it effective?

Almost every day I see articles about the ‘death of email’. Since 2009 I’ve been noticing these emerge pretty much every day. Leaving aside issues of journalistic lack of imagination, of course email will eventually evolve out; it’s just too prone to error and unhelpful replication, etc. But as a contact method for engagement it’s still the primary contact platform. The debate over Powerpoint is similar. There’s a reason it’s there – it’s the ‘best fit’ between thousands of words of copy, and a screed of images. The point is that, to copy the NRA, ppt and email don’t kill creativity – poor thinking does. Use them. Creatively. And don’t do them in isolation in a social world.

What’s in the box? The obvious. You don’t like it. Nobody does. So what? It gets the job done.

Can you do it? Really?

There’s a tremendous pressure to create materials, collateral and engagement platforms with heavy front-end investment, often in design. But unless you’re a design agency or brand consultancy, you’re probably overstretching your resources and doing something you’re quite simply not expert at. This is particularly important for internal materials and new business/pitches. Create brilliant work – but again, look at the essence of it; how can you do it simpler, with less ‘drag’ on the business and your strategy? This is critical for smaller businesses and probably accounts for some nasty bottom-line issues in larger agencies.

What’s in the box? Effectiveness. For your business, for replication, for delivery and for the client.

Are you doing it just because you’re bored? Couldn’t you do it simpler?

You tend to produce the most extreme work in an extreme environment – a brainstorm, for example. Your brain, in these conditions, WANTS to do new things. You’re sensitized to it. But you can (a) overestimate the effectiveness of the creative and (b) burn yourself out.

That’s when it’s really good to have someone come in who isn’t thinking like you are. Who can look at the creative and tell you whether the interactive model of the planet Mars you just drew is suitable for the electrical reseller you’re working for.

It’s easy, as a creative, to get bored with the ‘usual’ ways people do things. But that’s also a way to create things that don’t fit the client, don’t fit the brief, and cost the earth.

What’s in the box? Focus. So you can see what tool you really need to use.

Are you doing it because you don’t have anything to say?

We don’t like a vacuum. In B2B marketing it’s easy to get into a mode where we want to fill it. The particular issue in B2B marketing is that argument is very important – a true, articulated message and understanding. It’s not enough to simply say “A-Z!”. You have to have the B-Y to make serious people about to spend massive amounts of their company’s cash on your client’s proposition (or just take a meeting) think you know what you’re on about. If you’re finding yourself imagining too much – and you haven’t thought about how that creative idea attaches to your client’s proposition recently – maybe it’s because either the client hasn’t got anything new to say, they haven’t told you it clearly, or…you don’t understand it.

Find out. Ask questions. Look foolish. Then re-create something that fits – and gives you the B-Y.

What’s in the box? Questions. Ask them. Until the answers make sense.

Are you doing it to be loved?

We’re marketers. We love ideas want excitement. But like shopping for food when you’re hungry, this can have unfortunate results. It leads to desperate gambits, overstretching ideas – sometimes creating material the client loves but which, because of a flaw in initial approach, fails to connect. In a previous agency I worked on a campaign with the best creative, fantastic idea, lovely design and beautiful collateral production. But nobody came to the meetings because the client wasn’t shaken from their chosen targets. The agency was also in love with the idea, the material and the job – and we didn’t look at what was right in front of us. We could have sent an email. The client wouldn’t have loved us as much. But then they might have got what they wanted. Marketing creative when it’s unfocused becomes gimmick, and that often rebounds with disastrous impact.

What’s in the box? Truth. And the ability to express it.

Do you really, truly think it’s original?

As Jim Jarmusch brilliantly summarises, there really isn’t an original thought out there. All you can hope for, sadly, is to twist things a little. Which is precisely what From Up North has done with Jarmusch’s comment.

All the lists of ‘Marketing clichés’, as well as being clichés themselves, are also little prisons from which the agencies that write them up are constantly trying to escape. Of course we don’t want to use a lightbulb image to convey ‘ideas’. But negating these obvious, hackneyed approaches cloaks something useful: clichés work. Largely because they’re often (images like lightbulbs excepted) only clichés to hypersensitised, overanalytic marketing types.

What’s in the box? The stories that work. Use them. Even if you have to steal (stolen from Picasso).

Is this all a way of saying ‘do the expected’? Of course not. But don’t imagine that what’s outside your box is outside others – you’ll soon find that your ‘amazing idea’ is someone else’s (maybe a competitor’s) standard offer.

And realise that frequently what’s in the box is still powerful, still potentially original, and much easier to use, than something unscoped, that doesn’t fit your business, doesn’t fit the need – and which will miss the mark.