Marketing trends don’t just come up and hit you over the heat with a mallet. If you want to know what the latest trends are in the digital marketing game you’ve got to get out and about, snoop around, look through keyholes, chat up the opposition, and eat more bran for breakfast.
Take the example of Floogle Street Brewery — who make toothpicks. Their sales were flatlining until the marketing team went out to size up the competition and see why the average man on the street no longer bought as many toothpicks. What they quickly found out was that toothpicks are made by prison labor and that dentists no longer recommend toothpicks to their patients because of the danger of getting a splinter stuck in the gums. So the Floogle Street Brewery team created an online ad campaign that highlights the fact that the company management “has been out of jail since 1995” and a “Plant a Toothpick, Save a Forest!” public service announcement that is garnering kudos from all quarters. In fact, the Floogle Street Brewery team won the coveted 2017 Redrash Trophy, named after Thomas Redrash, who marketed the short-lived but very famous aftershave he named after himself, from distilled poison ivy. He was run out of town on a third rail, which everyone admitted was an electrifying experience.
The point is that marketers make their own trends. Remember that for every lazy marketer who merely jumps on the bandwagon and follows the herd for a long and prosperous career in sales and marketing, there are dozens of fearless pioneers who turn the tide and break the rules, not to mention skip the gutter, to achieve that momentary greatness that puts them in marketing Valhalla. And, in the case of Floogle Street Brewery, puts their own company out of business. But everyone knows you can’t break eggs without making omelettes.
