Unsung marketing heroes

OK. We’ve all heard a lot about how much of a marketing genius Steve Jobs was. (Is it pronounced Jobs or Jobes?) And I suppose he had his good days. Or did he just apply nice design to a computer revolution that was happening anyway. Who knows?

But what about those anonymous marketers who convince an unsuspecting world to hand over good money for stuff that a few years earlier no one would have dreamt of paying for.

Here’s my list of award winning products, brands and ideas that seem so normal now but are really quite strange. Their inventors, though unknown, impress me daily. In no particular order:

1. The ‘bad fashion never goes out of style’ award. Men in tights. The sports version are called ‘skins’. Almost acceptable on professional male athletes. NOT acceptable on the rest of us blokes. MAMIL. Stands for Middle Aged Men In Lycra. 10 years ago they would have got you beaten up.

2. The ‘Make people want to pay for a (nearly) free thing’ award. Water. In a bottle. For $3. So common it’s … like water. But who-ever convinced us to pay 3000 times more for 'bottled' over 'tap' is a true marketing genius. AND there’s an additional litter problem. Good work.

3. The ‘Make people want to pay for an absolutely free thing’ award. Pay TV. Same old junk, full of ads. Costs over a grand a year. Cha-ching!

4. The ‘We’re your customer AND your competitor’ award. We’ll sell your premium brand along side OUR premium brand. Coles and Woolworths have turned win/win into win/lose. Guess who loses?

5. The ‘You pay us to advertise ourselves’ award. Marketers use Brand Power and What’s New to create low-ish priced TVCs. Fine. But how did BP and WN convince the same marketers to forgo 3 seconds of their 30 sec spot (10%!) to advertise … BP and WN? That’s new!

6. The ‘Pay for cool mechanical technology and never use it’ award.  At most, 1% of 4WD owners ever take them off road. But 100% of 4WD owners pay for 4WD technology. This mechanical stuff might add 20% to the cost of the vehicle yet it mostly sits unused until the car dies. (How many car manufacturers don’t even put the 4WD stuff in, I wonder? Who would ever know?)

7. The ‘Make people want to pay 20 times as much to make a worse phone call’ award. OK I said we’d look beyond Steve Jobs (Jobes?). And the iPhone is of course a mini computer. BUT a $25 Nokia still sounds better and has fewer drop-outs … and it comes with a torch!

I’m sure there are more and I’d love to hear about them. But for now let’s honour the unsung heroes who have turned ‘a little bit crazy’ into ‘perfectly acceptable’ and made their companies very rich.

TIPS FOR MARKETERS
A stupid idea today may be marketing genius tomorrow.