Create, or die.
That's pretty much it today.
Now, I know that sounds dramatic. After all, there are plenty of sleepy businesses doing quite well, thank you very much, in tired markets. But, come the apocalypse, those businesses will be in a world of hurt.
Apocalypse?
Yeah, think about advertising. Was there a more established formula than advertising's? The past 50 years had taught everyone what ads were: messages beamed at eyeballs. Oh, sure, people complained, but we kept buying and buying and buying.
Then, the apocalypse.
The Internet showed advertisers that their customers were sick of being interrupted and spoken to like idiots. So sick, in fact, that we'd do anything in our power to shut off those interruptions.
But that didn't make us unwilling to buy, nor did it make us any less curious about what to buy. It just made us less willing to listen to those blaring, blinking irritants.
So...what's a marketer to do?
Well, how 'bout what Diesel's doing? How about not just affiliating your brand with all things hip, but actually doing hip things? Like sponsoring a competition amongst artists and designers to create something interesting, provocative, beautiful on a very large scale. That's what they did in Diesel Wall.
And then, just to be sure we all understand why they're doing this, they speak to us in a voice that very many of us find very familiar:
In any given moment in our daily lives we are bombarded by messages we didn't ask to see. A never ending stream of mass produced cerebral pollution offering at absolute best nothing more than needless want. Diesel Wall was born out of a need to salvage what precious public space is left and to fill it with something worth saying. We will take your powers of disuasion [sic]; your ability to disrupt; incite; excite; inspire and intrigue; to make comment; to make beautiful; to make real; to make people think again. The ultimate goal of Diesel Wall is to create a fusion between the private space of galleries/institutions and the open space of the city…to drive new direction in urban landscapes and recharge them with creativity.
"Cerebral pollution." Doesn't sound like the kind of thing a brand would want to be associated with today. Is your company, "message green"?
See? That's the difference relentless creativity makes.
Hat tip: The continually excellent IF! from PSFK
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