I’d never heard of Stefan Mumaw before last week, but in the span of about an hour he crystallized what marketing has become and what it has the potential to be.
An ad agency creative director, Stefan is the author of a book called, Chasing the Monster Idea. His presentation focused on the seven characteristics of monster ideas. So just exactly what is a monster idea? Here’s his definition:
“The truly monster idea is more than just good; it transcends the boundaries of the problem to solve it so simply and so powerfully that it almost sells itself. It’s the campaign idea that grows on its own, powered by those evangelists who first discover its true value, and it forces everyone else to catch up with it—if they can.”
I’m not going to share his seven characteristics — he shares them in his book. You can download the first chapter free here or get the whole schmere here. Instead, I’ll share my biggest takeaway from his presentation.
In the past, marketers have tended to throw everything inside the kitchen sink and then throw it at a consumer hoping something — anything — might stick. Now we weren’t always quite that ham-fisted. Sometimes we presented them with one unique selling proposition in the form of a creative execution or campaign. Regardless, we told them what we wanted them to know. The goal was to sell them on something.
While we were busy deciding what we wanted them to know, consumers were being rewired. The Product no longer holds weight with them. What does is the other stuff: how that product makes someone feel or the problems it solves. They are not being sold to; they are buyers. Most important of all is the acknowledgement that the marketing universe has shifted into new territory: consumers recognize and often filter out push-style messages.
Stefan’s answer to reach this new breed of consumers is to pique their curiosity and then reward their effort with a good experience.
Marketing with the goal of making people curious? That itself is a monster idea.
Enjoy the season's best from your local farmers — Image picked from Cottle Strawberry Farm
There’s something ultra delicious about picking fresh strawberries in the warm spring sun. They are redder, plumper and oh so very sweeter. My family visits the local farm almost every weekend they’re in season. My four year old, who takes such great care to find the best ones, sneaks a strawberry or two as we carefully pick our way through the rows. They are that irresistible.
As I wander through the field each year, I can’t help but think about this game — the one where mankind and all of his advanced technology cannot outsmart this beautiful recipe of nature, time and weather. Throughout the fall and winter, you can see and taste failure in hard, half-green strawberries forced to ripen as they are shipped across the country (or globe). Strawberries that don’t smell at all like sunshine and sweetness. Imposters.
There was once a time when strawberries could not be found in the off-season and it’s easy to see why. So, more and more, I find myself waiting for the real strawberries. For the next few months, I’ll eat, drink and blend local fresh strawberries into every meal and beverage I can think of.
There’s a short window for one of nature’s greatest gifts. It’s open now at Cottle Strawberry Farm.
Time has never been more precious in (insert what you do for a living here). It’s a universal theme in just about every marketplace today. Profits are razor thin. How quickly can we get it all done? How can we do it differently than (insert competitor who is breathing down your neck)? How can we make (name of widget, service, event) relevant?
A marketing world that once measured budgets in whole dollars now scrutinizes every cent under an electron microscope. Being seen matters. Getting consumer brains to slow down long enough to process why they need to pay attention to you matters.
All the budgetary gnashing adds up to one imperative that even the greatest tactic cannot overcome. Having an effective, sound strategy is today’s marketing imperative. The right strategy answers key questions down the road. Are the (photos, tactics, content or messaging) right on-target or are they off-brand? Should we (reallocate funds, stretch our neck out, pass) on this opportunity?
The right strategy is a both a guideline and roadmap. Without one, you’re certain to wander off course. Even worse? You have nowhere to find your way back to!
When I was young, my father worked in purchasing for a global manufacturer. Decades later, I still feel the excitement of going to the annual Saturday afternoon family day at the plant. It wasn’t just for the softball and barbecue sandwiches. They’d pull back the curtain on the inner workings of something so huge my ten-year-old brain could barely comprehend it. It was a chance to peer past the color-coded lines on the floor to see raw materials, machinery, products and processes up close. To learn how a pile of very interesting things united and became something altogether different.
Those childhood glimpses of where people worked and what they did were so thrilling to me. They helped me understand not only how my father earned a living, but also how the things of our world come to be. Later, when I had manufacturing clients of my own, I scratched and scribbled throughout the requisite kickoff tour. While others barely mustered interest, my heart raced with the opportunity of being so deep inside an organization. For whatever time I was allotted, I questioned, peered and learned. I wanted to leave with a deep understanding of how every facet of this new place worked and, more important, why it mattered.
Each time I get to know a new client or industry, I feel so lucky. I look with excited, inquisitive eyes no matter what they do. I’m certainly no scientist or engineer. I’ve simply come to realize complexity isn’t scary or boring — it’s a million small opportunities to grow smarter. If I ever find myself feeling a little lost or overwhelmed by pounds of new information to digest, I look down and remember the color-coded lines that zig-zag across a factory floor.
Those lines aren’t just a safety zone; they’re a path. The path can lead you backward to a comfort zone of simple things that are known. Things you can understand by expending little-to-no brainpower. But the path has another other direction. It may feel scary. Unknown. In all that uncomfortable uncertainty lies an expanse of breathtaking possibility.
What’s ahead may seem way-over-your-head complicated. But it really isn’t if you just follow the lines. They will take you to interesting places, if you’re willing to go.
With the holidays now passed, we reach the slow slag of winter. The days are painfully short and the dark creeps on long before I’m ready. Every now and again, the cold manages to muster itself to bite through to my bones.
It’s these days I long for spring even though winter’s barely begun.
A few weeks into the stark, grey-brown nakedness of winter, that’s when it catches my eye. I’ve been waiting for it — a tiny, impossibly bright yellow bloom. One pop of color, the only sign of life on a tall shrub of knobby sticks. It’s a teasing breath of a spring to come.
That tiny flower is an annual sign I seek each year. It tells me the audacious forsythia shrub is waiting — holding its burst of bright yellow flowers for The Day. And The Day it blooms never ceases to amaze me. Without spring breezes, warm sunlight or even green leaves, there, in the heart of winter, those bare limbs put on a spectacular show — the very opposite of all that surrounds it.
Even when it’s one early bloom, it captures my attention. I have to step close to admire it. How smart, I think, to bloom when no one else does. And now, when it’s so completely unexpected. How brave to stand out despite the risks of deep cold and frost.
Smart, indeed.
