Why this idea means business : We explore the benefits of non-obvious marketing. Learn why being obvious is rarely the best choice. Read this to learn how to make your marketing stand out more.
How much is this idea worth?
Idea : To stand out more to potential customers by making less obvious marketing choices. Based on our standard business case assumptions, the value of this idea is :-
- Source of business – More customers
- Skill area – Creativity | Marketing
- Commercial hypothesis :-
- # customers = 1,000
- Spend/month = $100
- Est. new customers = +75 (+7.5%)
- Est. sales increase = +$7.5k (monthly) | +$90k (annual)
The obvious answer is tempting when you face a gnarly marketing problem. When you’re under pressure, just choose the obvious and move on. After all, why dick around looking for anything else, right?
For example, your brand health tracker shows a dip in awareness. Obvious marketing answer. Brief the agency to make a new advert.
The CEO wants your strategy on AI in marketing as they’ve just seen a TED Talk about it. Obvious marketing answer. Call in a consultant.
A retailer tells you to fix your low Rate of Sale. Obvious marketing answer. Push out a quick price promotion.
All obvious, right?
But all right? Hmmm, maybe not.
Why obvious answers are tempting
Obvious answers are usually the first ones to pop into your head. That “pop” is your brain cells connecting with other brain cells to find an answer.
Our problem-solving brain digs into our memories to look for answers. The “obvious” answer comes to us first, as it has the strongest memory connection.
For example, we know from experience that running a new advert raises awareness. And that consultants have expertise in subjects we don’t. And that price promotions boost your Rate of Sale.
Not knowing the answer to a problem makes us tense. The obvious answer makes that tension go away. We think, aha! We have a solution, we know what to do, let’s go do it. Our brains much prefer doing something (sometimes called the action bias) to spending time exploring whether there might be a better answer.
The obvious word association test
There has been much psychological research on this over the years. One notable example was a study done by Professor Charlan Nemeth.
She asked her students to do a simple word association test, saying the first word that came into their minds when prompted by another word.
When prompted by the word “blue”, 40% of people had the same response. You might be thinking it yourself right now.
They said “sky”. Or if not sky, another 40% said either “colour” or another colour like green or yellow. Only 20% made more creative associations, e.g. jeans or sadness.
The same happened when they used “green”. This time, the most obvious response was “grass”. Or they also said “colour” or another colour. Only about 20% again came up with something else, e.g., money or nature.
This study highlighted that when put on the spot, our brains mostly default to obvious answers.
Why you should go beyond the obvious marketing answer
There are obvious (!) problems with this.
For example, the creative process usually starts with the view that there are many possible answers to any particular problem.
The first step is to generate this long list of possible answers. But if you just pick the first obvious answer, you potentially throw away a far better answer among all those other, less obvious ideas.
Then comes an even bigger problem.
Because it’s easy to pick an obvious answer, it’s likely that other people with the same problem will also choose the obvious answer. That’s not great when it’s a competitor. Or a retail customer. Or a consumer. If everyone comes up with the obvious answer, your answer won’t stand out. And the answer itself will probably be dull. Obvious answers generally offer nothing new, exciting or remarkable.
You need to look harder for ideas that are less obvious.
A few examples of non-obvious marketing answers
So, back to our previous examples.
First, anything you do to make “noise” in the market helps with awareness. But advertising isn’t the only way to make noise.
For example, you could use public relations. A sponsorship. An event. Working with an influencer. You could create more provocative social media posts that get customers talking about your brand. You could use your CRM program to get existing customers to recommend you to friends and build awareness via word of mouth.
All less obvious marketing activities that could fix your awareness problem.
On the AI challenge, if you’re smart, you’ve worked out how it works. You know that if everyone uses it the same way, everyone gets the same obvious results. So your less obvious answer is that you’ll use it selectively, for things it’s good at. For example, doing logical analysis or making research easier. But for activities such as brand comms that require a more human, emotion-led approach, you won’t use AI.
And for the retailer Rate of Sale booster, why not blitz customers in the affected areas with more targeted digital media? Or work on creating stronger in-store displays and signage. You could even send a team into the affected stores to drum up business directly. Just some less obvious ways to boost Rate of Sale than a knee-jerk price cut.
Finding non-obvious marketing answers - Time
You might look at these examples and think, well, these aren’t that non-obvious. You could have come up with similar answers if you’d had enough time.
But that’s part of the problem. In many businesses, you don’t get time to explore beyond the obvious. You feel pressured to act, so you automatically jump to the obvious answer. But this short-term focus means you miss out on all those less obvious but better answers, because you never give yourself the time to find them.
The longer you let your brain work on answers, the likelier you’ll come up with a beyond-the-obvious idea that no one’s ever thought of before.
Finding non-obvious marketing answers - Process
Allowing time to come up with more, less obvious ideas should be part of your creative process.
It starts with how you create ideas in the first place. This is usually about generating a long list of ideas to work with.
Then it’s about how you craft ideas. How you knock them around to make them sharper and stronger. This should be more than just the typical finance-led approach of cutting costs and squeezing profits.
That approach just leads you to pick safer, more predictable, obvious choices. Whereas the breakthrough idea you’re looking for is more likely to come from taking a calculated risk on a bolder, less obvious choice.
That doesn’t mean every non-obvious idea will be a winner. But compared to obvious ideas, you’re far more likely to find something that hasn’t been done before. That’s where your creative opportunity sits.
Finding non-obvious marketing answers - People
You can spend more time and have a good process, but less obvious ideas only stick when they’re driven by the right people. So, there’s a real creative leadership challenge to get less obvious ideas through your business.
As we already said, people like obvious answers because they relieve the tension of not having an answer. Many people don’t enjoy the process of getting to non-obvious answers because it prolongs that “no answer” tension.
The solution?
Put simply, it’s about educating people on how ideas work. And then having the right people for the right job at each part of the process. You need open-minded people who are OK with the “no answer” tension at the start. And you keep the more close-minded critics for the end of the process, where they can apply more analytical rigour.
Is it ever OK to just do obvious marketing?
There are few cases where obvious marketing is OK. The first is if there’s urgency to do something, so you have zero time to think of a less obvious answer. Something’s on fire, and you must act now. It’s not ideal, but it happens. In those cases, going for what’s obvious is your only choice.
It’s also sometimes OK for low-consequence decisions. For example, when replying to social post comments, you could spend time thinking of something non-obvious to say. But often, just acknowledging, “thanks, appreciate it”, is enough.
Finally, it also differs for market leaders. They want to keep things the same, so obvious ideas can be to their benefit. Obvious ideas usually mean nothing changes, and that’s good for market leaders. It’s why most market leader advertising and innovation is usually obvious. If nothing changes, they stay market leader.
Challenger brands, on the other hand, don’t benefit from obvious ideas. They want to change things. The way to do that is with less obvious marketing. By purposefully being more creative. More maverick.
The benefits of being less obvious
Being less obvious helps make your brand more surprising. And being surprising is a good thing in marketing.
First, it helps you get more attention.
Consumers mostly ignore obvious ideas from brands. Either because they’ve seen them before, or they think they could have come up with them themselves. Do something less obvious, however, and customers are much more likely to notice it.
They’re also way more likely to remember your less obvious idea.
If everyone talks about an obvious idea, no one will remember who came up with it. But if you’re the only brand putting out a less obvious idea, customers will link that idea to your brand in their memory.
And finally, less obvious ideas just create more interest.
Hearing a remarkable idea you’d never have come up with yourself stirs your curiosity. It makes you think and feel differently. So, your brand should ask, do we want to be obvious like everyone else? Or do we want to be attention-grabbing, memorable and interesting by using less obvious marketing?
Conclusion - The benefits of going beyond obvious marketing
You can probably tell that we’re big fans of the less obvious approach to marketing.
It’s not that we’re against obvious ideas. Sometimes they’re your only choice.
But in most cases in marketing, it’s much more rewarding to explore the non-obvious areas. To take the time, build the process and get the right creative people on board.
Seems bloody obvious to us.
Check out our creating ideas article for more on this. Or if you need help going beyond the obvious on a gnarly marketing challenge, you know how to find us. Obviously.
Photo Credits
Thumb up (edited) : Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Man looking at ceiling (adapted) : Photo by Anton Danilov on Unsplash
Prowling cat : Photo by Harry Cunningham on Unsplash
Shout (adapted) : Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash
Clock : Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash
Post-its on wall (adapted) : Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Sprinkles : Photo by Almos Bechtold on Unsplash
Money on fire : Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash
Surprised Baby : Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
