Kristin Savage

I recently caught these lyrics from the song Shelter by Rage Against the Machine:

“What you need is what they selling, Make you think that buying is rebelling”

Promoting the purchasing of a product as a kind of ‘rebellion’ has unique merit.

Some examples:

Apple - rebelling against bad taste

37signals - rebelling against stuffy, feature heavy applications 

Trade Me - rebelling against classifieds

Grand Theft Auto - rebelling against everything in town

Volcom - their brands tagline: Volcom | Youth Against Establishment

Negativity sells, and so does rebellion. It might happen naturally or be contrived. Either way, it works!

Negativity sells, but it doesn’t last without a change in form every now and then:

• Nuclear fallout
• Ozone layer depletion
• AIDS
• Y2K
• SARS
• Bird Flu
• Terrorist attacks
• Climate Change (bubble)

… sigh, next please!

All the time I discover stuff added into things for what seems like no good reason. It screams OBVIOUS but it still gets printed/spoken.

Examples:

• PO in front of a Box number.

• Mob: in front of an 021/027/029 number. For those overseas the distinction between types of numbers isn’t necessary, and for those onshore, pretty soon the distinction won’t be necessary.

“Our goal is to be in a position to say ‘why bother with a landline?”

Hamish Sansom, Vodafone NZ

• Dictating the .co.nz when giving an xtra email address, or similarly .com after gmail, .net after clear etc. (maybe mailer-daemon could be more informative and include the ending required, not just “i’m sorry it didn’t work out”).

• Email: before the email address in a message footer. I can see it’s an email address.

• The www. in front of a domain.

• Amongst the babyboomers when quoting them an email address: “is that all lowercase?”

I’m trimming branding paraphernalia. It’ll be like clearing old clothes out, kinda difficult to make choices, but refreshing once it’s done.

PS. Upon finalising this post something related on the ‘put less’ theme came up.

I went to a gig at Sandwiches last night and there was a super talented guy playing. Between songs he was talking about album sales or something similar and stated, somewhat jokingly; “it’s all about the marketing”.

This implied that the product is irrelevant, it’s just the hype generated that will sell something. I disagree! I reckon consumers are more intelligent than that. I reckon they’ll buy his album anyway, it’s that good!

Blake Ross of (Firefox) said in the book Founders at Work;

“I thought marketing was something that required a degree and formal
experience. It turns out that marketing is just making the product good enough
that people spread it on their own, and giving them ways to do that. It’s a lot
easier and more natural than I thought it would be. Now I can’t stand meeting
with professional marketers who try to “craft” the “message” and all that junk.”

(Livingston, J. 2007, chpt 29, p. 401)

I was walking along Cuba street, in Wellington the other day and saw this ratty A4 page notice sellotaped to the window frontage of an established restaurant…

It seems foolish that a business will spend several thousand dollars on a great frontage for their store, yet proceed to cover them with tacky paper notices. The equivalent would be TradeMe posting their listing fees on their homepage. Trademe don’t do that as far as i can see. You don’t find need them unless you’ve listed something. Makes sense!

What is a note that insignificant doing in the front window in the first place? Surely only a small percentage of their customers bring cakes anyway? This place should just bring the ‘cake policy’ notice out to the birthday celebrant’s table at the relevant time.

To me it says… we care more about recovering $10 than portraying a welcoming image. Play by the rules or you’re out!

I’m guessing it’s one of two things:

1. they don’t care if they seem unfriendly
2. they have a load of customers with birthday cakes

What about using the store frontage in a more effective way such as placing a framed print or small blackboard stating news like:

• New Menu
• Entertainment on Weekends
• Welly’s only Authentic Turkish Restaurant

On a different note, here is a cool idea for a shop frontage.

If ever there was a great example of how to get repeat business it’s Australia’s Ksubi. Their staple product …jeans …with holes, have great potential for repeat sales. Holes in jeans, not a new idea sure, however these holes are riskier than you’d expect from wherever you buy jeans for less than $400.

Intentional or not, this is a great way to generate repeat business, at a ‘faster rate than usual for jeans’. They’re effectively lessening the product life cycle.

You can try to lessen the impact of the hole problem by patching etc (some of the holes are in rather awkward places). But really the easy answer is to buy another pair, with small holes again. At $400 a pair they’re expensive holes. When you buy a pair there’s a sticker attached which reads something like: Most of our jeans have holes, and they mostly will get bigger, in fact we guarantee it, love our holes!

You might be wondering why folk wouldn’t go for another brand. It’s because these jeans are seriously comfy, get better with age, and pretty much make their way around your pins 365 days of the year.

Holes in addictive jeans! Great repeat business concept. I wonder if it’s intentional?

Other interesting facts:

• Ksubi were formerly named Tsubi, before they were challenged on trademark infringement by US shoe label Tsubo which resulted in Ksubi doing this to vent.

• If you want to see the loosest website ever, check out Ksubi’s. No real conventions followed there.

• These would be the guys mainly responsible for the return of the stovepipe…

Prank marketing is a risk I suppose. Richard Branson is the king of it, even though he was actually shy of press until he was advised that “making a fool of yourself” will be the only way virgin would ‘crack’ the American airline industry (TV advertising proving too expensive).

Burger King used the prank vibe to interesting effect, pricking customers loyalty:

There’s always the angle ‘no publicity is bad publicity’. McDonalds might be getting slower at the drive thru, but this is unbelievable.

As an aside, does anyone know why the McDonalds/BurgerKing drive-thru first window is no longer used? It seems it’s a redundant chattel now.

I’m enjoying watching test cricket at the moment: India v Australia. Cricket would have to be one of the best sports to sponsor, even host commentary for. Obviously you’d have to be targeting cricket fans, but that aside.

In between each over (every seven or so minutes) there’s a 60 second gap to swap ends. Perfect for a couple of short ads. Rugby as a host expects its marketers to wait until halftime, or hire a shadowy billboard. I guess the USA got around this ‘rugby type’ problem by inventing ‘timeout’.

There’s always a way around it for the marketer.

And there’s always a way around it for the fan. Continuously pressing F5 on this site means you’ll get the scores without the TV or Radio ads end of over. Still, there’s banner ads on the page.