The benefits of original advertising
If traditional advertising techniques aren’t getting the responses or business you want, you may need to think more originally. Try to come up with ideas that no one in your area has done. Try using color printing techniques that no one in your area or product industry has used. Perhaps using the same image in an Andy Warhol silkscreen effect (the same image repeated with alternative color schemes). Here are six examples of original approaches that worked to get the word out to the public or press.1. One woman created a typing service in Antelope, California, and bought a vanity license plate for her car that read "TYPE4U." She had a plate frame created with her telephone number on it. This was a cheap and effective way to get the word out. One day a man followed her for many blocks and asked for her business card. He was a lawyer, frantic for someone to replace his current word processing person. He not only became her first long-term client, he referred her to several other lawyers needing word processing and secretarial help.2. A software company in California wanted to give out software samples on a small budget. A mass mailing or a disk insert in a magazine weren't feasible because of the cost, so an advertising consultant created an ad with an arrow pointing at the binding with copy that stated, "If your demo copy of our software isn't here, call XXX-XXXX." Of course, no one found a disk there, and before they knew it, they had several calls to get the free software.3. A graphic designer in St. Louis, Missouri, learned about some defective shoes available at a bargain price, bought some, and sent one wrapped in a gift box to potential clients with a card that read, "Just trying to get a foot in the door." It worked well and won him new clients.4. One woman from Washington trained her Springer spaniel, Bubba, a few unusual tricks and mailed out media kits promoting him to local television stations. She included a stamped reply postcard with three options: 1. Yes! I'm interested in having Bubba on my show; 2. Not sure if Bubba fits the show format; and 3. Sorry, Bubba’s cute, but not for us. She quickly followed up with anyone who checked off options 1 or 2. She also followed up a few months later with the people who chose option 3 with a picture postcard of the dog. One producer who eventually invited Bubba on her show told the owner, "You wore me out with your persistence, but I'm glad you did!"5. In her book, Taming the Marketing Jungle, Silvana Clark notes a house cleaning company competing with three others in its area. One of the companies, called Fresh as a Daisy, made a more memorable impression than the others by leaving behind a trademark present in every house it cleaned: a vase with three daisies on the kitchen table. "We've had more people call and tell us they've heard about us because of those daisies," said the owner. "We don't have to do any other form of advertising since we began leaving the flowers."6. In the book How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Guy Kawasaki cites a California contractor, required by law to guarantee its work for one year, that takes advantage of the law by calling customers 11 months after an installation to see if they need any repairs before the warranty expires. "The calls generate a small amount of warranty work and a huge amount of new work and referrals," Kawasaki comments.
