“I went to school on Tom’s ideas!”
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com
A Clear Eye.
On customers, brands and marketplace success
by Tom Asacker
“I went to school on Tom’s ideas!”
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com
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"An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it."
Here's a magical piece of advertising. Check it out. It utilizes three media (a temporary website, viral email and the telephone) to entice people to a fourth medium (television) to consume the advertised product (the season premiere of Criss Angel's MindFreak on A&E).
Why do I consider it magical, when so much advertising is pure dirt? Because it incorporates the four factors that all great advertising must possess today to engage audiences and move product: It's interesting, relevant, valuable, and diffusible.
Interesting - Is it captivating? Does it stop us and pull us in? Unlike most tedious, intrusive advertising, Angel's promotion is original and compelling. It occupies the mind and creates immersion, while most advertising is trying to create a mere impression.
Relevant - What does the ad "tell" us about the product, and how does it do it? The best advertising attracts us to the advertised product by creatively arousing our desire for the emotional payoff of owning or consuming it; think iPod's dark silhouetted characters dancing against bright-colored backgrounds. It is not overt; we intuit the feeling of owning an iPod.
The Angel ad creates an ideal expectation by doing precisely what Greg Stielstra recommends in his book, Pyro Marketing: Give "people an experience with your product or service. If you want them to laugh, don’t tell them you’re funny; tell them a joke."
Valuable - What value does the ad provide to its audience? That's a strange sounding question, isn't it? Shouldn't the value of an advertisement pass simply to the advertiser (increased sales)? Not any longer. Today there must be mutual benefit. With so much stimulus vying for our limited attention, we'll only trade it for something of value; something that provides entertainment, learning, social currency or meaning. Angel's ad is entertaining, and it allows the viewer to pass it along to his or her friend and gain a bit of social capital.
Diffusible - Is the ad designed to be spreadable? Word-of-mouth is a critical component given our highly fragmented media environment. It is simply cost prohibitive or even impossible to reach a large percentage of the marketplace through advertising alone. The Angel ad is a perfect example of viral advertising. It gives the viewer something to share via email (a surprise), and something to talk about with family and friends (how did he do that?). It's also fast, fun, easy to share and easy to understand.
So that's it. Follow the example of Criss Angel and start turning your marketing ideas from dust into magic!
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"Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas."
- Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
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