Pulling Back a Stump - The dangers of reaching outside the box.
I love the time in which we live. I am currently writing this on my phone/PDA while waiting for a client to meet me at Chili’s for a casual lunch. I am 20 minutes early and have time to kill. So I will enjoy my iced tea and share some musings with you, my friends.
I just finished meeting with a client about half an hour ago. He is a smart, funny and an all around good guy. Our conversation floated between his current project and industry news and personal challenges with life family and the world.
We were discussing the MAC awards and the Maquee winning campaign “Consolidate Your Bills” which consisted of a variety of men in white undershirts with “BILL” stenciled on the front. It was an amusing campaign and definitely “outside the box”.
During our conversation, I made the off-hand comment “Sometimes when you reach out of the box, you bring back a stump.” we both chuckled and moved on. But the comment stuck with me.
Usually during our creative meetings at the agency, we try to come up with at least 2 creative options for our clients. A conservative option and a wild “outside the box” option. 99 percent of the time the client selects the conservative option. The campaign does well and everyone feels good. The other 1 percent of the time the wild concept is selected and is then watered down during the revision process to the flavor of chicken broth. The idea behind the trimming of the idea is to not offend. Offend who? The older members, the board, the original SEG, or some other group within the CU - take your pick.
Well that is a strategy that I understand, but I can’t always get on board with - and here is why. Even the most innocuous campaign will make someone mad at you. We did a campaign that consisted of bright colored backgrounds and cute but funny dogs prominently displayed. Each dog represented a different loan product. It was a fun campaign, mildly conservative (in my opinion as a Gen X representative) but remains one of my favorite campaigns ever. What happened? A member came in and complained “are you calling your members dogs?”. Oh boy - here we go.
Another campaign was a die cut suitcase that when opened had photos of clothes and travel accessories for a visa campaign with a vacation incentive. Included in the package were a pair of die cut cardstock flip-flops that had printed on the bottom more information on the product. What happened? Well this campaign launched about the time the Bush/Kerry debates were heating up. A member came in and slammed the flip flops on the counter and asked “what is the meaning of this? Are you trying to imply that John Kerry is a flipflopper?” we were stunned.
I have a hundred examples like this. Bizarre member responses to simple and harmless campaigns. So, we see that staying in the box, doesn’t always work. So what happens when you stick a hand out of the box to test some wild ideas?
Our agency ran a campaign (this was before I joined the team) a few years ago for a client that depicted the CEO of the credit union in a straight jacket who is lying next to an overturn rocking chair. He had little cars twirling around his head a-la Looney Tunes. It was fun and campy and interesting and the results were good… until the reporters showed up.
It seems our lighthearted campaign offended some folks who represented the mentally disabled. The good news; the credit union received national exposure. The bad news; the credit union received national attention.
I guess we pulled back a stump on that one.
But lets take a look at banking phenomenon, Washington Mutual. Their campaigns are regularly strange, irreverent, and completely relevant to who they are targeting - the 18 to 35 crowd. WaMu sees double digit growth year after year in their target demographic. What is the difference?
WaMu takes the good with the bad. The people that get offended are not the folks they are trying to attract. They are incredibly successful at gaining the attention they want - and accept the negative attention as acceptable collateral damage. And this buys them credibility with their target.
So what does this teach us?
When you reach into the unknown, you have to be careful. Look around, listen for noises, hold your breath and stick your arm out. You could pull back a stump, maybe suffer a few nibbles… but if you know what you are reaching for, you could come back with a fistfull of dollars.
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[...] What we do is subjective, but open to scrutiny and measured for effectiveness. How scary is that? Think about the real life scenario. A Marketing Coordinator or V.P. of Marketing is looking at a piece and is saying to themselves “I know these people are good at what they do, but this is not something that I can get behind”. Basically, the marketing person needs to be confident in the piece in case it all goes south and the campaign is not effective - at least they went with their gut instead of looking back and saying “I KNEW I should have canned this concept!”. So we know why great concepts get shelved. Sometimes reaching out can get you bitten. [...]