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I recently saw Morgan Spurlock's (star of Supersize Me) documentary 'The Greatest Movie Ever Sold'.
The documentary is all about advertising and especially product 'placement' in movies and TV shows.
The segment that struck me the most was a piece on San Paulo in Brazil. The sixth largest city in the world.
This is a city who, by their own admission, has no natural beauty so they needed to make their city stand out from the crowd in a different way. The solution they came up with was to ban ALL external advertising in the city.
ALL OF IT!
No billboards, no taxi or bus adverts, no neon signs, not even any awning signs for businesses to let customers know where they are located.
I have to tell you, the vision of different parts of the city sans advertising were stunning.
It almost looked surreal. It was like someone had dropped a bomb on the city and the only thing it had destroyed was the advertising.
It is amazing how we have become so accustomed to the mass of signage and advertising in our world that when we are presented a view of a place where we expect to see it and don't it leaves a BIG impression.
Two things came out of this for me from a business point of view.
One was Spurlock's interviews of local businesses to see how the lack of advertising had changed the way they do business.
Their response? It totally changed the way they work. They went from mostly passive marketing i.e adverts, signs, posters etc. to active marketing - talking to customers, making sure they had dynamic products that generated buzz, to finding ways of making word of mouth marketing work for them.
The results? They were as successful as they were in the days of advertising but they were more engaged with their customers.
The second point for me was if you really want something to stand out then make it look VERY different from what people are used to seeing.
How many of your 'hot' products are surrounded by a mass of 'look at me' signs on your shelves or window displays?
Have a product you want to garner attention and sell through?
Then you have to find a way to make it stand out from 'ugly'.
Don't put more signs and marketing around it - put NONE.
Give it space and prominence.
Make people do a double take when they see it because their mind screams 'something is wrong here'.
They may not figure out why it stands out to them but you'll certainly have their attention.
 | | San Paulo before and after |
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