Spicing up a social media campaign

The marketing world is all atwitter (pun intended, of course) with the Old Spice social media success. @edlee pointed out quite correctly on 15 July that the phenomenal message generation was all started with millions of dollars in traditional media—the TV ads and the witty agency that came up with it.

Social media and traditional media don’t have to be bitter enemies: they actually are great friends. We marketers are still in the process of testing how to best use them (educated guesses, but still guesses to some degree). Old Spice just made the commitment. I mean, personal video responses to tweets? That’s commitment that most marketers would run from in horror.

That is, until they figured out to make it a bigger deal than it really is.

“Boldness has genius, power and magic in it,” said Goethe (I’m citing not to show off my superior intellect, but rather so I don't have to go to all the trouble of linking to the quote).*

On the other hand, @edlee also just tweeted that Old Spice sales are down 7% in the US (not including Wal-Mart). Is that A) a game of knock-the-leader-off-the pedestal or B) numbers from before this campaign or C) proof that humor can distract too much from the real product benefits message? Time will tell.

* After posting I nerdily read up on this quote... apparently it is not really by Goethe. It's really by W.H. Murray who claimed it came from Goethe—presumably using an extremely loose translation of G's work.

Write it bad. Real bad.

Sometimes, you just gotta get out of your shell. As a creative, we're expected to be fresh and different and unique and resonant... all the time. It's exhausting.

There are many ways I've stumbled across to overcome this. Things like going to a different location (other than your desk), handwriting (or hand-drawing) rather than using the computer. Little things like these can make a surprising impact on what you create. They'll help you get out of the proverbial box.

The one I haven't seen written down anywhere is doing Bad Writing. You know the stuff. Cringe worthy horrors of adjective-laden, passive-voiced drivel. My technique is to sit down and purposefully write stuff that would never, ever make it to my portfolio. Throw in some needlessly poor grammar, too (see the headline of this post).

While you're at it, set your inner critic free and rip it to pieces for not being bad enough.

If you're a designer, throw color theory out the window, mix 72 different fonts, go wild with visuals that make you want to poke your eyes out.

I have a theory that this stuff sometimes gets bottled up in your system, blocking access to the golden harp-strumming prose and design that you need to make a living.

So open the tap. Let it flow. Write the worst possible stuff you can come up with. Often times after doing that, I walk away and come back. And find that towards the end of my flood of atrocities, there's the nugget of something good.