In our short marketing course today, here’s a quick look at simple ways you could use creativity to greatly boost the marketing results for your product or business. Adding creative twists to your marketing could quickly jump-start your number of paying customers while reducing the risks involved with growing your business.
Preparing for today’s short marketing course on creativity, I was reading about a company called Grasshopper Group that sent out chocolate covered grasshoppers to local TV stations, trying to bring attention to their new company. When a reporter ate one of the crunchy grasshoppers on-air, it created a tremendous buzz where everyone suddenly seemed to know about this company.
For our short marketing course, this highlights one of the most powerful tools you have to build awareness for your business without having to spend a fortune.
Creativity!
Apple computer has famously flaunted their creativity through products they develop, ads they produce, and even their packaging. Every step of the way, creativity is an important element in what they do, and their success and profits have skyrocketed as a result.
But as you’ll learn in today’s short marketing course, creativity is more a tool for smaller businesses like yours, if you have the courage to be a little out-of-the-box.
Blendtec, the maker of high-power food blenders, created a somewhat tongue-in-cheek YouTube video—of their blender grinding an Apple iPad to dust. As their sales director explained, “If our product can do this to an iPad, just think what it could do to that icy drink you’re trying to blend.”
Who would ever have thought of such an outrageous demonstration as grinding an iPad. Yet this wacky video has been watched by more than 14 million people. It’s one of a series of web videos responsible for quadrupling their business. And except for the cost of the iPad, which they destroyed, the video cost virtually nothing to produce.
Let me repeat that.
They spent almost nothing… and 14 million people saw their video.
How many of you watching today’s short marketing course have even had one million people see your ads? How about 100,000? 10,000?
Another example for today’s short marketing course is Oscar Meyer, the hot dog company. When they wanted to build awareness for their company, they created a wacky car in the shape of a hot dog, called the Wienermobile. Over the decades, updated versions of the Wienermobile have remained a staple of how the company lets people know about their company.
And here’s something I’m not sure many of you watching today’s short marketing course would have the guts to do…
But this plumber took this idea even further. I’m not sure his kids really like being driven to school in their dad’s truck, but you can be sure this is a real conversation piece wherever he drives it.
zChocolat, is a multi-million dollar French company that sells chocolate to oil sheiks and people who want that high-end gift for someone really important. Not only is theirs among the best chocolate in the world, their unusual packaging has made their product a standout even among their competitors.
When you receive a box from zChocolat, it comes in a beautiful wooden box with your name engraved on a brass plate. Now that’s creativity.
What kind of box did you chocolates come in?
And lastly in today’s short marketing course, there’s that company with the wacky name, that invented products to clean up industrial oil spills, leaks and drips.
It was a 40-inch nylon sock filled with corncob, and someone said it looked like a pig wallowing in a puddle of oil. So, against the advice of experts who thought they were nuts, they wanted to name their company Pig Corporation. Fortunately, that name was taken. So co-founder Ben Stapelfeld added the word NEW to the beginning… and New Pig Corporation was born.
Today, after almost 30 years, New Pig Corporation continues to dominate the industry they all but invented, enjoying tremendous and continuous growth year after delightful year.
Their amazing success highlights the power of creativity in helping to build a company. But it also points to the importance of courage.
With New Pig Corp as with others who have stepped beyond the crowd, creativity requires the courage to trust your gut and follow through, even if supposed experts tell you no.
Obviously, don’t be a clown. Make the creativity relevant to what you are selling.
But the point for today’s short marketing course is simple…
If you have the courage to try something truly creative and out-of-the-ordinary, you may follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs and so many others, who proved that creativity may be one of the most important tools you have to help build a successful and profitable business.