OutSMART, Don’t Outspend: The Key to Marketing Success

October 18, 2011

Advertising seems so easy to a five-year-old: include My Little Ponies, unicorns, rainbows or glitter and you’d have captured my attention for sure. And believe it or not, even as an older child, I thought about TV commercials and marketing and wondered what was so hard about it. How could people make a career out of something so easy?

I think everybody has a secret passion for marketing, much like psychology. It’s absolutely fascinating to ponder the way the mind works: for marketing, our interest is shifted into the science of wants and needs and the art of persuasion. (Actually, I’ve read that only one in 10 psychology majors will find a job in their field. To the rest of the psych majors, I think you should strongly consider a job in marketing – we’re way more fun!)

Because we are now in a very consumer-aware/caveat-emptor culture, there seems to be a really negative attitude towards marketing. We’ve become the dark side of business and represent everything that is awful in the world because we “try to control your mind” and take no interest in the consumer. It frustrates me to no end and makes me want to shake my fist and yell, “Ya darn hippies!”

A good friend sent me this blog from my favourite blogger, Julien Smith. (Aside from his hate of advertising and marketing, this guy is brilliant and I highly recommend you check out his blog.) He discusses how ineffective and disruptive marketing as a whole is.

You know what? We know that!

Anybody in the marketing “biz” knows that advertising is an interruption in your daily life.

Let’s go back to psychology. I’m sure you’ve heard of the theory of reinforcements, based on Pavlov and his dogs. Positive reinforcement says that if you do something good, you’ll get a good reward. This principle stands for good advertising too.

An ad that is smart, witty and, most of all, entertaining, is the one that will capture your audience’s attention; people will reward you by absorbing what your ad has to offer them and ultimately buying in to your brand! This is the best way for your brand to get the attention you so deserve.

Terry O’Reilly, host of CBC’s radio show The Age of Persuasion and co-author of my current favourite read, The Age of Persuasion and How Marketing Ate Our Culture, says that by using entertainment in your advertising, you will outsmart, not outspend. It’s the best way you can (legally) gain a huge advantage over your competition. Some of the best viral videos and campaigns stem from tiny budgets. YouTube sensation “Will it Blend” by Blendtec said that its first video cost just $50 to make, and since then, its sales have increased 700 percent! Even marketing guru Seth Godin has made an appearance on the Blendtec show. Careful – once you pop one of these videos, you just can’t stop!

Don’t try this at home, kids! Ads that are authentic and entertaining will go on to entertain (and brand) for generations. Without smart marketing and advertising, you wouldn’t have the laughs from the Old Spice guy, the Dos Equis most interesting man in the world, Coke’s 1979 Mean Joe Green or the epic 1984 Apple Super Bowl ad. There’s a reason some people watch the Super Bowl just for the commercials.

As O’Reilly says in his book, “Great ads are the ones you stop to watch, the ones people email to each other, the ones that yield thousands of hits on YouTube...and now it’s helping redeem advertisers who had so rudely barged into hitherto ad-free sanctuaries.”

As your reward for reading this blog, I present to you more psychology fun: The Marshmallow Experiment!