Couch Cushion Camels

Since moving to North Carolina I've gotten the chance to spend some quality time with my grandmother. One of my favorite parts of spending time with her is hearing the stories about my siblings and myself when we were little. It always amazes me how much of your life you don’t remember when you are young. A few days ago we were sitting down eating dinner and my grandma began to tell me the story of a time when my cousins were visiting. My older brother and my cousins were playing a game and they wouldn't let me play with them. According to my grandma I walked away unfazed and began taking the cushions off of the living room couch. I went into the next room and apparently “built” myself a camel and I began to ride the couch cushion around the room. My brother and cousins took notice and immediately decided that they wanted to ride my couch cushion camel.  Unfortunately for them I only made one camel and my grandmother wasn't about to let them take it away from me. She said it made them so mad that they couldn't play with the camel. It was almost like there really was a camel in the living room, when it was simply just a few couch cushions. Then, after telling the story, she looked at me and said “And that’s one of the reasons you’re in advertising…you have a wild and creative imagination”.

I’ve always had a passion for creativity and wanted that to be part of my future career choice. And my grandmother was right, I’ve always had quite the imagination. The amount of adventures that I created for myself with my imagination when I was little were endless.  And my grandmother is also correct in telling me that that’s why I got into advertising. After all part of an advertisers job is to make people see things or feel things that were maybe invisible or non-existent to them before. Sometimes you have to go out of the box…WAY out of the box…to draw attention to something. You have to be willing to use your imagination and try new things to get a product or an idea to resonate with people. I know I’ve said this exact same thing in my posts before. So why am I saying it now? Because lately my team and I have run into a lot of clients (as I am sure many others in the industry do on a daily basis) that won’t take that small step outside of the box. And it makes it unbelievably hard to do anything creative or attention grabbing to get people interested in their product. And isn’t that kind of the point of hiring an advertising/marketing team?

How are we supposed to tell stories, engage emotions, and create connections between people and products if we keep doing the same old boring things? Let me clarify something really quickly. I understand that not every service or product is elevated by out of the box ideas. For some industries creative humor or off the wall attention grabbers can actually turn someone away from wanting to use the products. But being creative doesn't have to mean making something humorous or completely off the wall. Being creative consists of trying new things and bringing new ideas to the table about how to present a product or service.The problem is that people are so wrapped up in the idea that doing something “out of the box” could frighten away new or existent customers. It’s a natural instinct to want to protect your brand and I sympathize with that. But what’s going to happen if we continue to always play it safe and continue to do the same old boring things over and over. The reality is that other brands that make the decision to try something new are going to crush right where you stand.

So how do we solve this problem?  Advertisers, marketers, and business owners need to start playing on the same team. Communication is vital. The more comfortable you are with someone representing your brand the more comfortable you’ll be letting them try new things. Let the business owner be a part of every step that is taken in creating a new campaign. Keeping each other on the same page through the entire process is vital. Advertisers and marketers need to take into consideration the ideas and concerns of the business owners. At the same time the business owners need to allow the advertisers and marketers to use their industry knowledge to make important decisions. After all most advertisers/marketers do their research and understand the current trends in the industry and might have more knowledge in a certain area than a business owner would. Let each other do the jobs they have been trained to do while taking into account each other’s thoughts and opinions.

At the end of the day both sides need to understand that some things are going to work and others just won’t. You’re never going to know until you try. I think both sides of the equation need to understand that failure is ok. It teaches you what you audience doesn’t respond to so that next time you can do better. If you want to do something amazing with your brand it’s time to start stepping out of the box. Sometimes you have to take off your suit and let your 5 year old couch cushion camel riding inner self out. It’s time to do something epic for your brand!

In the mean time I’ll be in the living room taking my camel out for a spin.