Manizesto

File these under the “I Wish I’d Thought of That” category. Two new magazine ads for have just come out that are simply out of this world cool.

The first is an ad in Vice Magazine from BMW of Canada, in which the glowing, menacing face of the new BMW 1 Series partially shows on the cover when the magazine is in the dark. What a neat, innovative way to showcase a new product. I admire the out-of-the-box thinking of the agency that asked “How can we expand the normal use of a magazine and do something different?”

The second cool idea was an ad from DirecTV in ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated with a message promoting NASCAR and the message “Smell what they [the drivers] smell”. The ad has a scratch & sniff box that smells like rubber. We have long known that smell is a powerful sense that marketers have not been able to leverage to it’s full potential. DirecTV’s marketing teams has definitely pushed the envelope here.

Okay, so you probably don’t have the marketing budget to do this with your small business, but that’s not the point. What I’m saying is you need to learn to think differently about how to market your business, and that is what will open doors for you to be different, stand out, make an impact, increase interest in your products and services, and ultimately drive more sales.

How can you learn to think that way? Start by always asking why. Just because most people buy a yellow page ad, does that mean you should?

Take 10 minutes and look at your marketing efforts, then ask yourself why you decided to do each one. Hopefully you’ll be able to say, “Because I’ve tested it and I know it’s working” and not “Because Joe Marketer said I should” or “The competition is doing it.”