Wise business people shop around for marketing services before they buy. If you think such Marketing Wisdom is part of our DNA and therefore is so basic that it doesn’t deserve mentioning, you’re mistaken. I can relate countless first-hand stories of frustrated and disappointed businesses that have approached me, hat in hand, after fruitlessly squandering their marketing funds with a college friend, relative, acquaintance from Rotary or a member of their tip club.

“Can you help us?” They ask. Our previous firm… (fill in any sad story you like) …and now we have little money left and the deadline is nearly here.” If they’re really honest, they might add something along the lines of, “Of course we should have hired a professional like you in the first place, but we thought we could help out our (friend, relative, acquaintance from Rotary, or fellow tip club member) and get a deal in the process.”

Now that they have no choice but hire a professional, they often feel that said professional can whip up a serviceable solution with a wave of a mouse. Unfortunately, there is no Santa Claus, Virginia. The longer I work in this field the more I understand that competent, effective marketing requires time and resources. Fortunately for the hat-in-hand business, I’ve been in marketing long enough that I can always create something that suffices within the remaining time.

Sadly, such last-minute solutions are never anything near what I could have accomplished had I the time and the money available when the client first began the effort. Perhaps you’re thinking that these circumstances are really an opportunity in disguise, and that the business person who I’ve saved from disaster finally understands that one gets what one pays for and becomes a loyal client of mine.

As if… Generally, the business folk whose bacon I’ve just yanked from the fire are so embarrassed to have such a naïve blunder exposed that they never return. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

The wisdom here is that smart businesses who want good marketing do their homework, create a short list of comparable firms that meet their marketing needs and budget and – if they’re really smart – make their choice after paying each candidate to do a small, sample project.

Of course, lots of businesses will compile a list of candidate firms and review resumes and portfolios. Then way too many of them will next request that each candidate submit a speculative (“spec”) solution to the proposed assignment. “After all,” one such firm told me. “You don’t buy the cow without sampling the milk.”

Such is the ambient level of business savvy. The problem with this kind of…ignorance…is that marketing doesn’t come from a cow.

The marketing firms that are so hungry or so foolish that they will agree do spec work for these “tire kickers” rarely do their best work for spec and – frankly – they’d be even more foolish to do so. A good business relationship is based on mutual respect, and few business people will respect you for betting your business on their whim, or agreeing to be treated like a cow.

If you want good marketing help, do shop around, but shop smartly and with respect for your potential marketing partner.

A profound piece of Marketing Wisdom is that when the marketing environment is the most intense, the ones who succeed are most likely those who figured out how to lighten up. “Are you nuts?” I hear a pinched voice squawk from the back row. “But it’s really scary out there. We can’t afford to mess about with our measly marketing budget. We need to be careful and prudent.” Hmmm… What being “careful and prudent” really means is that if (most likely, when) your tepid efforts fail to move the needle, at least you won’t be criticized for doing something stupid.

All I can say, is, “Lighten up!”

By way of example here are three campaigns that have impressed me with the relevant silliness, by which I mean the campaigns are light-hearted but the humor is based on the brand premise.

Faux Mini Cooper campaign – Counter Counterfeit Commission. When the revived Mini-Cooper brand scooted on to the market some years back a number of serious-sounding consumer advisory commercials appeared on TV drawing the view to this website:

http://www.counterfeitmini.com/detect_a_fake.php

The premise of the campaign was brilliant. Call attention to this Dinky Toy on steroids by warning consumers about hucksters who by means of some half-baked racing stripes are attempting to pass off rust bucket clunkers as Mini-Coopers.

Duck Brand Tape – Stuck At Prom Contest. According to Wikipedia, Duct, or duck, tape was developed during WWII to seal ammunition cases. It went on to be used to repair almost everything else including jeeps, planes and weapons. In the last 60 or so years, the vinyl-backed fabric tape has acquired an almost mythic reputation as an all-purpose solution for fixing just about anything. The folks at Duck Brand Tape hit upon a wonderful way to highlight the often-absurd uses folks have for their product. Every year they encourage high school students to make the Prom outfits from Duck tape and submit photos. Check it out.

http://www.stuckatprom.com/contests/prom/

Best Buy – Geek Squad. I love this mostly because the brains at Best Buy took what was once a derisive term and while not making it cool, made it relevant and useful. The distinctive black and white VW Beetles and the geek garbed techs make the in-store service, or house calls seem unusual and – dare I say it – hip. If you need to be reminded go to:

http://www.geeksquad.com/

Okay, okay, so let’s say that I’ve convinced you that wacky creativity will make your molehill marketing budget look and act like a mountain of moolah. Before you tap into your inner creative genius here are a couple of cautionary guidelines.

1) Don’t steal.  I have been present at a number of “brainstorming” meetings where the client’s hot flash was to co-opt an idea that he’d seen the night before on TV. In one case the client wanted to create viral videos using the Trunk Monkey idea. Never mind that the idea came from a series of syndicated commercials created by an agency that derives its primary revenue from licensing them to car dealers all over the world. (Thank you again Wikipedia.) Suffice it to say, had we proceeded, the agency’s legal team would have been in immediate contact. 

2) Run your ideas by an impartial jury. Perhaps you’re the funniest guy down at Red’s Recovery Room and your jokes have them falling off their bar stools at happy hour. Still, when you come up with a sure-fire marketing concept, do yourself a favor and run it by one or two of your more sober friends. Better yet, run it by your mother-in-law. If she likes it, you’re solid. Here’s an example of someone who didn’t screen his idea before hiring the sign company. Bad Ass Coffee is the name of a strip mall coffee shop not far from where I live. Every time I drive by I can’t help wondered why anyone would want “ass coffee” even if it were good.

3) Hire someone who creates for a living. Honestly, there are folks out there who make their living thinking up ideas for other people who need the help. Compared to the cost of the damage one can inflict on business with homemade creativity these professionals are a bargain. Some years back I was working on a brand of varietal grape juice. It was non-alcohol wine made from appellation grapes, in other words, sophisticated juice. The brand’s owner wanted us to shoot a TV spot featuring an airline pilot addressing his passengers in one scene and the parents of a teenaged driver addressing a car full of kids in the next. Both were to turn towards the camera and say, by way of recommending our client’s product, “Get Juiced.” Fortunately for him we were able to dissuade him from producing that concept, but he was never convinced that he wasn’t a creative genius.

By the way, if I have to tell you why his suggestion was possibly the worst advertising idea I’ve run into, perhaps you are that undiscovered creative genius.

Oh, and before I forget, what do feral cats have to do with marketing wisdom? A few days ago a particularly aggressive telemarketer called to promote a once-pervasive but recently irrelevant book full of ads of businesses and their phone numbers. When my always polite wife politely declined their offer, the voice on the line demanded to know what sort of marketing we did. My wife replied that we trap feral cats, stencil our logo on their fur, and release them back into the wild.

There’s a fundamental piece of Marketing Wisdom that relates as well to politics as it does in commercial marketing, and that is: The best campaigns don’t always succeed and the worst don’t always fail. Counterintuitive though this maxim may seem the reasons behind it read like the Seven Deadly Sins. By the way, if you can’t rattle off from the top of your at least some of those seven this message probably isn’t meant for you.

In my opinion, pride is the most insidious of the seven. In this case it’s the pride that the professionals who make a living designing marketing messages for politicians and less animate products have in their mighty intelligence. These pros are invariably smart, articulate, passionate and persuasive about what they do, and therein lies the challenge because – in commercial marketing as well as the political kind – there is no one so smart that he or she won’t inevitably outsmart him- or herself.

Granted it’s a scary thing to discover that your number one asset, your brain, can hurt you every bit as much as it can help you. However, in this as with many things fear is the beginning of wisdom. Fortunately, the average body is equipped with a variety of other useful tools to assist you when you suspect that your cerebral cortex has its own agenda. These loyal assets are your eyes, your ears, and your “gut.”

To use your eyes, you first have to learn how to see. Please bear with me. I promise that I’m not spinning off into Zen word games. What I’m talking about is akin to learning how to draw. When shown a can of soup and asked to draw it most beginning art students will draw what their experience tells them is a can soup is supposed to look like…two shallow ovals connected by two parallel lines. Then the art teacher begins the process of teaching them how to see with their eyes and not their mind.

In like fashion when looking at a marketing concepts, put any preconceived notions aside and ask yourself some basic questions like, “Do I understand this concept? Does it persuade me? Would I be proud to tell a stranger that I was responsible for it?” Never, under any circumstances, fall into the trap of thinking that, “…it doesn’t’ work for me but it will impress the people I’m trying to reach.”

Your ears can be a vigorous ally if you’ll let them, but you have to be willing to listen to what you’re hearing. Sometimes this means hearing things that aren’t being clearly articulated. This is especially true when it comes to employees and others beholden to you who may be too polite (or afraid) to tell you what they really think about your marketing brainstorm. So listen carefully for qualified endorsements, faint praise and other damning kinds of support.

Of the three, your best ally is your gut. And let me stress yet again, that listening to your gut is not the same as believing your own press releases. I know a well-seasoned political consultant who refers to politicians who live inside an echo chamber. As such, the only thing they hear is what they say. You can imagine how difficult it is to confront anyone who is besotted with his or her own greatness with any information that doesn’t corroborate their beliefs.

However, if you develop the ability to shut out all the voices – especially your own – you may well find an inner wisdom that will keep you from backing and/or funding all sorts of foolishness. Mind you, your guts aren’t always a perfect bellweather, but if you heed them you’ll never find yourself saying, “You know, I knew something wasn’t right, but I went along anyway.”