ReThinking Your Approach To Promotional Marketing Solutions
Posted: Thursday, December 11, 2008
by Michael Crooks
Crooks Advertising Alliance
When we go on vacation, my kids and I like to search golf courses for golf balls. My 10 and 12 year olds can look beyond the green and quickly decide the likelihood that golf balls lie there. If it's flat and relatively tree or bush free no balls. However, if beyond the green lies a steep drop-off or thick underbrush with lots of prickers - golf ball gold mine.
We were walking up a fairway about 3 feet into woods when we stopped to watch a golfer tee off. He smacked it hard then followed in his cart looking for his ball. He drove around in circles for a couple of minutes with no luck. Finally, he dropped another ball, whacked it and took off, shooting us a dirty look over his shoulder. I said to my son, "He thinks we stole his ball." We did not. In fact, as we made our way back down the fairway we found the guy's ball. It was less than 3 feet from the cart's tire tracks.
"Dad," my son asked.
"Yeah", I replied.
"How come we can find 50 golf balls without hardly trying and that guy couldn't find one ball that he just hit?"
"Well", I replied with a chuckle, "That guy is looking for A golf ball where he thinks it should be. We're simply looking for golf balls wherever they might be."
And that's when it hit me: "If you limit your search for an idea or solution to where you think it should be, you narrow your entire spectrum of possibility .. and likely your success."
When ReThinking how you approach finding marketing, business .. even personal solutions, it's important to understand what can negatively impact your search.
In the case of golfers, their perception of exactly where the ball lies is often skewed by such things as alcohol, distance, pitch, terrain similarities or being blinded by the sun.
In marketing and business, the perception of exactly where the idea or solution lies may be skewed by budget, time, misinformation, misunderstood information, alcohol or blind ambition.
Have a problem in shipping? First thing most would do is go question the shipping managers. But if you ReThink it, the managers are probably so deep in paperwork they don't have a clue about what's really going on down there anyway. So instead, you look for a solution from the people who actually do the work in shipping, you know, the men and women who actually move the stuff around and know what the problems are and how to fix them.
Here's a more in depth example. Management of a zoo is upset over the amount of trash generated each year by patrons throwing away the map of the zoo at day's end. The first solution would be to get all "tight-fisted" with the number of maps that are handed out by instituting a "one per family" policy and charging for additionals. No one wants to pay for a piece of paper.
However, if you expanded your idea search, you might find another answer such as, print the map on something people won't throw away - like a bandanna. Give one to each group, charge for additionals. People will pay a buck for a souvenir bandana that tells them where the important stuff - such as the restrooms- are. If they turn it in at the end of the day they get their $1 back. The maps can be washed if need be, and reused. Or, underwrite the cost of the bandanna by selling space to a local restaurant or other area attraction that allows the bandanna to be used as a coupon at their establishment. This approach opens the creative door to development of cross-promotion of other owned properties or even reciprocal partnerships.
The point is, you're looking for ideas outside of, "If we give out less maps less maps will get thrown away." Now you're looking for golf balls not A golf ball.
When you look for "ideas" or "solutions" as opposed to "a specific idea" or "a specific solution", you expand your horizons. And when you look for ideas and solutions outside of where you think the answer or solution lies, you expand your horizons even more.
The trick with golf ball hunting is to look where others don't or won't. The same is true for idea hunting. You must allow your mind to go where others fear to tread.
How a golf ball ends up on the backside of a tree away from the direction the ball was shot is beyond me. It doesn't make sense. But you know what? When you find what you're looking for where you find it doesn't have to make sense.
Michael Crooks runs Crooks Advertising Alliance, a creative strike-force specializing in creative problem solving. A regular monthly contributor to Brilliant Results magazine, Crooks' latest project, an ebook "ReThinking Trade Show Giveaways" will soon be available when PromoReThink.com launches in January. Meanwhile, visit www.CrooksAdvertising.com for more insight, articles and to consider having him speak at your event.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I wish it was a little shorter and I understand the alcohol part that should be common knowledge. I am beginning to like marketing much more now.
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