Outside-the-Box Marketing

I used to believe I was an outside-the-box thinker. Then I started paying attention to the ideas people brought me every day, each one introduced with “this is really outside the box,” and I noticed that every single one fit neatly inside the big box we all live in. Then I turned that same eye on my own ideas. It was a shock. Almost everything I had ever called original was a slight variation on something I had already seen.

Coming to terms with that did two things for me. It sent me on a mission to learn what genuinely different thinkers do that the rest of us do not. And it gave me a strange gift as a marketer: since most people think inside the box, I know exactly where to aim.

The box is a habit

We are trained into the box from the day we start school. We are taught to write a certain way, think a certain way, act a certain way, and whatever school misses, society finishes. I have no complaint about that; it is how a society functions. But it means that “it can’t be done” and “it has always been that way” are reflexes, not conclusions.

Getting out is a matter of challenging what you know, in every direction you can think of, until “why not?” and “how could I do this differently?” become the first questions instead of the last. I do not tell everyone to go down that road, because it complicates things you did not expect. But for the few who do, a whole new range of possibilities opens up.

Here is the practical version. Truly new ideas are rare. What is common, and what I recommend to every business starting out, is taking an old idea that has already worked and putting a new spin on it. Challenge it and use it at the same time. Make it yours while making it for others. That alone puts you ahead of nearly everyone in your market, because nearly everyone is still running the same ad the last guy ran.

Four stories, four spins

Let me give you the examples I used in my book, because each one is an old idea with a twist.

A man wanted his neighbors to notice him, so he set his Christmas lights to music. Christmas lights were not new. A light show was not new. His own house, lit and timed to a song, was the spin. It started as a neighborhood stunt to get people to drive by. It spread far beyond the neighborhood. That is the extreme end of the scale, and it began as a small local campaign.

A wine shop owner in New Jersey bought a twenty-dollar webcam and recorded a wine of the week, then ran a special on that wine in his store. Reviewing wine was not new. A store running a weekly special was not new. Putting the two together, honestly and every single week, was the spin. People stood in line on Fridays. Some drove a couple of hours to meet him and buy the wines they had watched him talk about. His tool cost less than a tank of gas.

A personal development company sent a plain email with ten ideas for living a happier life. Lists of advice were not new. What the writer understood was the human need to pass along something they believe is good for the people they care about. Ten minutes to write, five minutes to send, and then it got forwarded around the world. You could have typed that email. The difference was that someone had the idea and sent it.

And one older, offline example: the “keep your hand on the car” contest, where the last person touching a car wins it. On its own it is dull. Add a few outrageous characters and get local media there from the start, and it becomes something people walk down the street to see. The story of the stunt outlives the coverage.

What they share, and what to watch

None of these began with “how do we advertise our service?” They began with “what would people want to look at, share or talk about?” The business benefit rode along behind. Each was cheap enough to attempt more than once, and I want to be honest about the odds: most ideas will not work. You can afford a lot of small attempts when each one costs a webcam or an afternoon.

Two cautions. First, bounce the idea off people who think like your customers before you launch it, not people who think like you. My book tells the story of a major brand whose sporting-event slogan backfired so badly that sales fell, because customers connected the product to one occasion only; they had to relaunch at great cost. If a company that size can misfire, a startup certainly can. Second, once something spreads you have no control over it. Make sure that what spreads is something that helps your business if it goes further than you planned. Not everything should go viral.

One afternoon

Set aside one afternoon. Write down five marketing ideas that already work in your industry or in a completely different one. Beside each, write the spin: what would make it yours, and what would make someone want to show it to a friend? Pick the cheapest one and do it this month. Record it, because if it works locally, the recording is how it travels.

Brainstorming takes an afternoon and costs nothing. Executing one small idea, a video series, a show, a give-away worth talking about, is usually a weekend and a very small amount of money; the wine shop owner’s entire toolkit was a cheap camera. The cost of the ideas that fail is mostly the time you spent, which is why you keep them small and keep trying new ones.