A Rhyme4You

Sorry. I’m not going to produce this month’s B2Seed in poetry.

Like many of you, I grew up hearing nursery rhymes and, while I may not know why the itsy-bitsy spider crawled up the water spout, I can tell you one thing: Most anything that is universally familiar can become fodder for successful advertising.

Three or four years ago I had a client tell me they wanted something different than the normal, usual advertising so we tossed around a wide range of ideas and creative concepts as a team. One of the possibilities we liked a lot was involving stories familiar to most of us – tales like Goldilocks (“this _____ was just right”) or even Peter Piper. You get the idea. It seemed promising, but as we pulled it together it became obvious the concept was too far outside of that client’s comfort zone.

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Oh well.

We moved along to the next round of creative concepts and only rarely thought of how much fun that campaign would have been to produce. Until, that is, I saw Geico Insurance using a similar approach in one of their far-out television commercials. They caught the attention of their audience with the first lines of childhood favorites, like Humpty Dumpty and Little Miss Muppet, and then changed the endings to convey the importance of having homeowners and renters insurance. Brilliant.

The Connection2You

People love to toss around the “out of the box” terminology, but frequently don’t want the discomfort that comes with implementing or executing that way-out-thereconcept. And that doesn’t just apply to advertising or marketing. It is a common challenge with all kinds of business solutions. People think they want something new or different – until they are exposed to the new or different idea and see the risk associated with it.

To go forward you may just have to embrace something as crazy as a fable or a nursery rhyme. Just ask Geico.

B2C Enterprises is an award-winning advertising, marketing, and business development firm. If you’d like to talk about how we can help you with your marketing, or see some examples of our work, just call 540.904.1229.