Marketing In The New Age

In the fast paced digital media frenzied world of today, it’s nice to see a little old school every once in a while.  We’re used to seeing ads on TV’s in elevators, transit hubs, waiting areas and even bathrooms.  How do you make an impact on people and get your point across in today’s digital age, where people pay about as much attention to what the media is throwing at them as to an errant car alarm at 6pm?

If you want to look at the success of guerilla marketing, it’s pretty much a requirement that you look up Banksy.  Banksy is a graffiti artist from England that started becoming well known around 2003.  He shows up in the middle of the night, installs a piece of art, then disappears again.  Much of his art is done with stencils, which allows for an easy install and a fast getaway.

To listen to some talk of him, he is a nuisance, a criminal, a desecrator of property.  To others he is a renowned and revered artist.  Some pieces of his work sell upwards of $200 000 CDN, and others have been labeled as vandalism and unceremoniously removed with little fanfare or acknowledgement of talent.  One of his best known images, Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction shown holding bananas instead of guns was removed by a graffiti cleanup crew.

So why do people sit up and take notice when he has something to say?  It’s much easier to look at a picture and see it in front of you than it is to read some bloated self serving essay in the Sunday op-ed pages.  He gets his point across, simply and usually in a way that makes you stop in your tracks and stare while digging furiously around in your bag for your digital camera so you can capture the moment.

I think the success of the images comes from the fact that they are funny and well done, but if you look a little deeper, you will see that the works take on some serious social issues such as war, poverty and violence.

The point I’m trying to make, is if you’re having some problems getting your ideas and arguments noticed and feel like you’re lost in the endless ocean of websites and products that are exactly like yours, you need to think outside the box.  You may create more buzz than you ever thought possible.