All this translates to big budget spends and more importantly, a clear justification for spending that much. No marketing effort, no matter how creative, would be successful if it didn’t substantiate the amount spent on it. It is precisely due to this reason that though marketers attempt ‘out of the box’ methods, invariably marketing ideas are ‘safe’ and use the ‘tried and tested’ formulae.
And then there are some.Just somewhere along the way comes a campaign that is so far out there that it makes you sit up and take notice. But that’s just the battle half won.
Here we chronicle some marketing campaigns that used creative ideas that are not only unique, they’re a little bit crazy. But hey, they worked!
There are two ways brands use content. They either use it to do a lot of things that will eventually lead to their product or they use a lot of content to do drive home just one particular point. This brand did neither. They decided to use all their energy in the part that comes before the process of ‘content creation’ and came up with one stellar idea. And after that, just one line placed at the right place is all it took to strike genius.
Source: US Data Corporation
Half.com was an ecommerce site that came up at the beginning of the ‘web dominated era’. A site that allows users to list and sell used movies, music, books etc, it started off at a time when it took a lot for a small brand to get any attention. We’re talking about the pre-social media era, before getting attention from a million people was about posting a picture!
The idea was to pull a stunt that would get everyone’s attention. They identified a town that had the term ‘half’ in their name and offered them $100,000, 20 computers, and a free website in return for changing the town’s name to half.com for a year. The town obliged and half.com got 2 big returns in exchange- they got noticed and eventually Ebay came calling with an offer for 300 million dollars.
Source: Creative Criminals
With most brands, marketing or content is seen as an attempt to either promote a new product or promote the brand in general. Big budgets and boardroom discussions are almost always associated with a new idea that must be presented to the audience in a most appealing manner. But what if the idea is to promote something that’s no longer there?
Sounds baffling doesn’t it? But that’s just what the marketing geniuses over at Volkswagen did to celebrate the discontinuation of one of their iconic buses.
The simple copy puts forth a compelling message that goes to prove that the most impactful ideas are the ones that are the simplest. It goes to show that marketing is about celebrating something that will capture the attention and mind space of the audience- either in anticipation or in remembrance.
Source: net-a-porter.com
E-commerce is the way of the future. Online shopping sites have taken the world by storm spelling doom for many retail stores that are struggling to stay competitive and relevant. But that’s a story that’s been running for a while.
What adds to this is the stiff competition that’s already present in the e-commerce market. New websites are coming up every day, offering exciting offers and extreme ease of shopping. So how does an e-commerce website stay relevant?
Take a page out of Net-a-porter’s book of ideas if you’re looking to be inspired. The brand released its unique, one of a kind digital magazine that allows shoppers to directly shop from their online store. All pages in the magazine come with codes that can be scanned using the Net-a-porter app and can allow the reader to choose from a host of options which include either purchasing the item or watching a video.
So there you go. Some marketing ideas that are sure to shock you, inspire you and convince you about the power of marketing. Something that reaffirms the fact that success in marketing lies not just in doing different things that would get you noticed, it’s also in doing the same things, a bit differently.
