The Hindu Business Line : Cut through the message clutter

THE world is too noisy, and you want to get your message across. Nobody is going to hear you if you speak softly. What you may need is Bang! by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, a book from Currency Doubleday (www.currencybooks.com) to create a marketing campaign that cuts through the message clutter and creates a marketing explosion. "If Al Gore had had this book in 2000, George W. Bush wouldn't be sitting in the White House," is among the "advance praise" on the back cover. The blurb gives a formula to evolve "big bang" ideas. "Having enough time to work on a project can be a disadvantage" and "working in a small, cramped space is often the best way to come up with big ideas."

Because information age has morphed into information overload, we are bombarded by messages everywhere. That is when you need a big bang that disrupts. "It is about ideas that are simply too outrageous, too different, too polarising to go unnoticed." Also, such ideas are illogical: "SUVs are totally illogical, yet they are the most popular new car design in decades." Big bangs have immediate and irreversible impact: "They are discontinuously innovative, rejecting the notion of incremental or evolutionary thinking."

This is no `vision' business, say the authors. "Nowhere is the need to lose the vision thing greater than in marketing." You gasp, as if blinded, but here is why. "The consumer is a moving target. A specific vision for your company or brand today could easily be outdated tomorrow. If you have a vision, you live in a future that is predetermined by the past."

And don't complain about space when you start a business. Looking for comfortable space to grow into is the "first mistake" because "the amount of extra space is inversely proportioned to creative output." What happens when you cram 17 people into 700 square feet? "When people are close together, they think faster, they work faster, and they focus faster."

To be effective you need to cut the bureaucracy. How to do that? Here is a well-dressed woman's favourite trick when getting dressed for the evening: "Look in the mirror, and take one accessory off." If you have seven layers of managers, you need to extrapolate the tip.

Chapter 4 titled `Create chaos' begins thus: Apart from mom and pop, "the one thing you can't order from Amazon.com is a great idea. Yet it's the most valuable commodity in marketing." To get ideas, you need disorganisation, say the authors. That will set you on a non-linear way of thinking. An anecdote is about how Thaler's team created an ad for Parmalat's vitamin-E enriched milk, calling it `Skin Milk', because it helped the skin stay vibrant and clear. It is a different story that now the food company that milked is getting skinned by its creditors.

Chapter 5 is when you "stop thinking." As nineteenth-century mathematician Henri Poincare put it, "It is by logic that we prove. But it is by intuition that we discover." Shouldn't one be hip in marketing? No, it is often "the kiss of death" because trends come and go. "That means they can become outdated in a nanosecond."

All ideas are not equal. Some are so-so, some right. Some are too complicated, some clichéd. Some are funny but off the mark. There is that one idea that can take the product "through the roof." So, work is not over when you generate ideas. "Choosing the one that will strike gold" is major work. How to spot gold? "Big ideas are rarely complex." Marketing people often fall into the trap of confusion when they try and create something big. "In their desire to create a memorable logo or tagline, they forget that the message must be crystal clear." Next, the ad must sell. "A lot of advertising is amusing, but it doesn't sell the product". Another indicator of a big bang is whether it can make a good news story. "Don't worry about whether the news is good or bad. Just get covered. People forget what the content of a story was, but they remember your name." Get bang-ed!

Book courtesy: Fountainhead

CatalystBooks@hotmail.com

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