Monday, 24 August 2009

Dull is the New Interesting

To my enormous and increasing regret I’m old enough (and then some) to remember the big, so-called dot.com bubble of the late 1990s. Back then, the race was on to build a website. Why? If your idea was good enough, you could build one and make your millions. And that’s why millions did it. The trouble is, they concentrated on the last two thirds of that last sentence and conveniently forgot about the first.

Which is why there never were millions of millionaires.

Notwithstanding, countless websites were born. If you had some sort of commercial enterprise, a website was your shop window on the world. You had to have one. And Noah-like, you said: ‘if we build it, they will come’. The more enlightened of us saw the error of this approach. We knew websites needed promoting. 10k animated GIFs were waiting to be born – they just needed a reason. And driving traffic to our websites was it.

Right, we said: website, tick. Marketing to make people go to website, tick. What next? Just sit back like a city fat cat and see the pounds roll in, of course. What could possibly go wrong?

But like a smile that slowly fades from the face once you’ve told a joke that nobody has found funny, it became increasingly apparent that nobody was coming.

So we were left with websites that nobody came to. Time to put our thinking caps on, and we did: many inventive solutions were tried. Of course, high interest products always fared better. For boys, fast cars are always going to be cool; as are hi-fi’s, new TV’s, cameras, and trainers. Basically everything we spend time mooning over on Ebay. For girls, I guess it’s some of the above plus fashion, travel, shoes, beauty, handbags, jewellery (not that we’re stereotyping here).

But what about washing-up liquid? What about shoe polish?

The makers of shoe polish have to shift units just like the makers of computer consoles or designer shoes. The trouble is, unless you have a totally out-of-control fetish, why would you give up even 0.0001% of your day to delve into the murky world of shoe polish?

So if you have a low-interest product, two approaches suggest themselves: the first is: Can we be useful? Can we provide a service? Does our presentation of it respond to a user need?

Usually not – it’s a bolt-on. The story goes like this: Look at this shoe polish. It’s the best shoe polish in the world. You must buy it for the following reasons. Oh, and here’s some fluffy stuff to show we’ve thought around our little problem (that no one’s interested in shoe polish), like a funny quiz about shoes, for example, or an article about how to make your feet ‘smile’. And so on.

Mildly entertaining it may be (although probably not) but it’s not useful. It doesn’t start with a need. It’s still push with fluff on, not pull.

The second approach is an advertising trick as old as the hills: if there’s nothing that interesting about the product, create some theatre.

Goodby Silverstein’s Hotel 626 is a perfect example of this. It’s slickly done, it’s highly entertaining, it’s genuinely scary, and it’s bloody good.

It’s advertising Doritos. That’s right, Doritos. The target market’s teens – nobody loves a good scare like a teenager – and it was created to answer the brief that Doritos wanted to announce that they were re-introducing two flavours. Once the agency insight had the insight that these two flavours were being brought back from the dead, the rest kind of writes itself (although absolutely no credit taken away).

But the point is that it’s no longer a message – and a rather unremarkable one at that – it’s an experience. One that people come to. Engage with. Pass on. For free.

Ten years ago, if there was a Doritos website (and I’m guessing there was) the announcement of two old flavours would have appeared in the form of a 120x60 pixel button on the homepage.

Nowadays, with the advancement of technology, the increase in common bandwidth and the courage to create something truly excellent and memorable, people have willingly, joyfully, not just taken on that message, but have taken an incredible brand experience away with them too.

Ewan McGee
Creative Director

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