But what if the key indicator of success isn’t how fast something happens. What if it isn’t even WHAT happens?

Let’s leave the tortoise and hare behind for a moment and pick up another fable – the Elephant and the Fruit Fly.

Fruit flies are born quickly. They swarm and die quickly. As soon as one dies, it seems it is replaced by ten others. They are annoying, but you don’t really remember one more than another… just that you want to avoid them next time.

What about elephants? They’re not known for their speed, but seeing one is special. If you saw one today, you’d probably tell everybody you know about it. They have personality and character. Elephants are memorable. If one dies, it is not easily replaced.

So, here’s the big question: Between the Elephant and the Fruit Fly, which one does your message resemble?

The military spends tons of money to make something blend in and then loses it. Sounds pretty stupid when the army does it, yet advertisers do something even more inept. They spend an insane amount of money buying ad space to get attention, but then camouflage their ads. They still remain invisible because of clutter, attention-spans (Oh, look, there’s a bird!) and generic messages.

Top 5 Ways Advertisers Use Camouflage:

1. Look like the competition.

Ads should highlight what makes you special. To quote the Incredibles, “When everyone is special, then no one is.” That’s especially true when everyone tries to be special in the exact same way.

This Reebok ad is very similar to the Nike ad below (10 years before the Reebok ad).

(source: AdPulp)

Let me emphasize this point.

One of my clients has an employee who previously worked for the competition. Before I worked with this client, their ads were very similar to their biggest competitor’s spots. The employee said before we came in and changed my client’s ads, the competition always knew when my client was advertising because they had more shoppers coming in THEIR doors.

By looking like their competition, my client was sending customers to ‘the enemy.’

2. Advertise where all the competition is.

Why do advertisers have to be right next to their competition? It’s like the CEO went to the marketing department and said, “Castrol is on a NASCAR, why aren’t we?” So then their logo is slapped next to MOROSO and something unreadable (even in a close-up) typed in a script font.

What if you had the audience to yourself, like Sweet Pete’s Bicycle:

(source: Guerrilla Promos)

You get an audience all to yourself.

Likewise, an motor oil company could “rent” a parking spot from their local Auto Zone. Place a temporary sign stating the spot is reserved for users of their product because their engine runs better, fewer leaks, etc.

3. Being irrelevant.

Who cares:

How long your furniture store has been in business?
You’re the #1 car dealer in the metro area?
Your kid is in your TV ad?

When creating your ad, only think and talk of yourself and the customer never will.

Think and talk about the customer and your relationship with them, and they’ll reciprocate.

4. Never change the ‘wrapping paper’.

Has anything changed in your business over the last five years? I would guess so. Then why are you running the same ads?

First, those who didn’t respond to your message yet, won’t.

Second, maybe some responded and didn’t like it. Now they think nothing changed and they’ll still be dissatisfied.

I’m not saying you have to change the brand message, but give it some new wrapping paper every once in a while. If you have a powerful enough message, then it should have legs to adapt.

5. Basically… play it safe.

Being different seems risky. But being the same is even riskier.

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
— General Eric Shinseki, retired Chief of Staff, U. S. Army

—————–

If you’re going to spend money, time and effort crafting a message… don’t throw it all away by painting it camouflage.

Tony used this Derren Brown video clip as an example:

After viewing the video, two questions come to mind:

1) How can I be better at embedding messages superfluously? I tend to stop promoting a message at the point of adequacy. As Derren shows, there is a level of subliminal saturation to reach in order to be truly persuasive.

2) How many of my decisions are driven by these subliminal messages, instead of being driven by my core beliefs and values? Great! Now I’m even questioning whether eating at Pei Wei last night was my idea or a string of subconscious prompts (probably both in reality).

There is a rule of thumb that people must see your message 5-7 times before they’ll act on it. As with any rule of thumb, there are exceptions. (An incredibly powerful or creative message may be a catalyst at first impression. A boring, uninspired message may never break through.)

But, what if the message is packaged differently each time, or you repeatedly expose people to different elements of the same message – as Derren Brown did?

Maybe the whole isn’t always greater than the sum of its parts.

These were some fun TV ads we created for a Tulsa area business. It really fits their brand, since they’re known for matching people with just the right appliances. We’re hoping to build on this concept.

I just got this email from Staples today.  My wife and I are trying to organize our home office, so I thought I would forward it to her.  There’s no “forward to a friend” button.  I could forward the email myself, but these HTML emails never look right when I send them.

There was link to a web page version of the email, so I clicked it.  I figured I would send her a link to the web page.  Here’s the URL:

http://e.staples-deals.com/content.asp?wci=version&wnd=0&status_id=4611513700_73148130

Long URLs like this always seem to break when you send them.  No dice.

Viral marketing is a relay race.  The most important part of the race is the hand off.  Using batons that are hard to hand to the next person isn’t smart.

I was recently reading about the new Apple Mac Pro computers on digg. What’s most interesting is the reaction Apple gets from any announcement. Apple fans usually love it. Apple haters hate it (go figure). Reading their comments on digg is not for the faint of heart.

Why does Apple alienate these people? All they have to do is make their operating system run on PCs, make their music software play nice with MP3 players other than the iPod and stop those condescending ads. Then what? Then they’ll win everyone over?

Nope.

Then they’ll be just like everyone else. Conformed.

Apple still follows the philosophy of their early evangelist, Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki encourages companies to polarize people. When I first saw that in one of Guy’s presentations, I wasn’t sure I agreed. Now, I couldn’t agree more.

Not many companies would advertise free cupcakes for professed Bush haters. Most anyone with “good business sense” would have at least added a second sign:
“Tell us you hate HILLARY and get a free COOKIE!”

But that destroys any semblance of a story. It tells people nothing about our company, except that we ride the fence.

And we fail to realize the fence we’re riding is made of barbed wire.

Update

After an offline conversation with a buddy, Jason, it became clear that I should clarify one thing.  Whatever polarizes people concerning your business needs to be authentic.  By doing so, detractors actually help galvanize your supporters.

I can’t stop playing this video.

I think the beauty of it is how a big, polished production doesn’t get in the way of the even bigger idea.

The music’s pretty good too.

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Hat tip: Bill Kinnon

Personally, I think johnmoore is being too harsh. Sure, it would be a horrible idea for CBS to advertise their new Fall lineup of shows on barf bags, but there are other marketers for whom this may be a perfect fit. So, below you will see an example of those I think could benefit from this advertising opportunity:

Feel free to submit your ideas in the comments.

The guys at Eepybird.com have put together an extreme demonstration of what happens when you mix Diet Coke and Mentos.

Clever.

Entertaining.

Worthy of my attention.

Everything that so many products and advertisements fail to be.