A lot of times we who are in the business of marketing and advertising get too comfortable in the box that is marketing and advertising. We get comfortable. We settle down and like old soldiers we tell stories of the marketing campaigns we waged. Those tales become our reference points, later they turn into guideposts and finally they calcify into rules that are etched into stone tablets. Lest that happen we have to listen to voices other than our own, to the opinions and lessons learnt from people who are not experts in our biz or any other biz for that matter. In fact, be a little wary of experts because they have mastered the thing they do so well, they don’t know how to do it differently. I prefer to rub elbows with the experiences of interesting people who have done interesting things at interesting times. Folks who have lived, with a capital l, I, v, e, d (the alphabets are in lower case because my creative ego needed to be indulged, in that sense it is rather like a cat).
The following dudes and dudettes are some of they things they shared at a conference on creativity.
PROMOTE YOUR SETBACKS
Chicago-based rap star and Kanye West-protege Kid Sister (aka Melisa Young) said midway through making her debut studio album, “Ultraviolet,” that she wasn’t satisfied with the tracks. It was a risky move, but she told her label, Downtown Records, it’d be best to double back and perfect the songs to make a genre-defining splash. With their support and a solid publicist, Kid Sister chose to share the delay of her album release with the press — turning what could have been a blemish on a budding artist's start into momentum that helped build anticipation for the album, out next week.
STEP OUT OF “STYLISTIC STRAIGHT JACKETS”
While that piece of advice came specifically from Sam Calagione, founder and president of cult microbrewery Dogfish Head, Momofuku’s Mr. Chang offered up a poignant example: in the early days of Momofuku, the struggling young restaurateur was told by his accountant he had one month left before he ran out of money. So he said screw it — and blew up the menu. He quit trying to do “authentic” ramen and started to create something that was delicious and interesting. “Who cares about authenticity if it tastes like crap?”
THINK OUTSIDE YOUR INDUSTRY
Whether it’s science or design or food, you can learn by stealing from other fields — especially in times of disruption. Arkadi Kuhlmann, chairman and president of ING Direct USA, said the banking-industry turmoil represents an opportunity for players who can figure out how to connect with consumers in a different way. “If you think about it as banking, you'll go nowhere,” he said. “If you think about it as a retail experience, the possibilities are endless.”
INVEST IN THE PRODUCT AS MARKETING
Dogfish Head doesn’t do TV or radio advertising, and it only advertises in beer-industry trades to “give back to the media that supports the industry.” It would rather reinvest in the product, such as, say, dropping $140,000 on a Paraguayan tank whose wood will imbue its beer with a character no mass brewer could ever offer. “We’re going to make stuff so different that our portfolio of beer acts as a de facto sales force or ad campaign,” Mr. Calagione said.
There are so many brilliant people out there and the internet has made it possible to learn from them. If there is stuff that has caught your fancy, I will thank you to share it with me. The email is bobby.pawar@mudra. Gracias, mere mitron.
(The author is the Chief Creative Officer of Mudra)
