Plain Jane Mundane Space-Age Marketing
I recently had a chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral. When we got there, the tour bus had already left, so all we could do was check out The Rocket Garden and the Shuttle prototype turned into an exposition.
I didn’t need a tour: There was something that blew me away without that tour. The old rockets.
They turned out to be so unexpectedly plain jane and low-tech. So… what’s the word… mundane. The gloss of a picture in the book comes off, and what’s left is a sheet of metal clumsily wrapped into a tube. I found it difficult to imagine them fly… Even more so to imagine someone crawl into that tin bucket called the cabin and fly these things.
Nonetheless, there they were, artifacts of the glorious past, a testament to the courageous epoch.
Now think about your marketing. Are you spending money on the looks? The only person that’s going to be impressed is you. Your customers won’t care. Are you trying to make it fancy or to make it work?
If you’re going to study ads, start with those plane jane all-text ones that trick you and make you think they are editorials. People who run these ads treat them as their sales force: if these ads don’t produce sales they get immediately pulled just like a sales person that doesn’t sell gets fired.
The gawky machines that helped the man conquer the space didn’t need to be slick. The ad that will help you conquer the market won’t be a slick one either.
posted by Alex Makarski @ 9:05 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I agree with you. I do think we need make marketing just a little more simple these days. No one seems to be impressed anymore with the "bells and whistles".
Hi DrTDSP,
Here’s what I think.
There are two kinds of advertising.
There is advertising that wins creative awards and caters to the owner's ego, making it almost explode.
And then there is advertising that results in more sales.
That's how it works in small business.
Now, in the corporate world, you're dealing with a different reality. The people at the top of the company typically care more about what financial institutions the investors think of them. So the "client" in this case is not that customer who comes to them with a few dollar bills crumbled in their fist. They don't care about that little guy! To them, the "client" is the board of directors who decide how long the current management team gets to steer and enjoy the perks that come with the job.
And that's how those 747 ads come into existence.
Alex
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