Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Just Push The Easy Button
by
The Staples ”Easy Button” advertising campaign is one of those rare pieces of communication that works itself into the public vernacular. It reminds me of Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” slogan with Clara Peller back in the ‘80s. That line even found its way into the presidential campaign of Walter “Fritz” Mondale.
It’s human nature for people to want the easy button. These days I know plenty of marketing people who would like to have one. There’s all that competition out there. You have CEOs, CFOs and boards of directors asking for accountability in marketing. There are time-crunched, empowered consumers ready and enabled to ignore or avert boring, irrelevant messages. You can hear the marketer’s cry, “Hey, this is tough...let’s just push the easy button.”
Unfortunately, if there is an easy button in marketing, it is difficult to find. It still takes having or building a great brand that stands for something. It still requires finding a Purple Cow to set you apart from the crowd. It will always require compelling targeted messages (like the Easy Button) that break through the cacaphonous marketing noise.
Business communications today compels a paradigm shift that what you do in marketing is worth measuring. It’s a paradigm shift because too often people just want to add “the measurement thing” as frosting on the old cake. Building accountability in the new marketing era often requires preparing a fresh cake from scratch with wonderful ingredients you already possess and others you can add.
If you do all these things, people will say you and your company make it look easy. You’ll know better.
