THE F WORD

Posted at 22:54

It’s funny how your mind works isn’t it? Or at least it’s funny how mine works. I had the idea for this blog the other day and then started thinking about which two people might illustrate it best…

And strangely they’re both called Ramsay… well one’s called Ramsey, but let’s not spoil a good story.

I’m sure you’re familiar with Gordon Ramsay. He’s the chef who’s made bad language his trademark. There’s no doubt that it’s raised his profile, and probably made him a great deal of money. But here’s the interesting thing for our purpose here…

Once you’ve watched him for a short while, his language starts to lose all impact. It may be shocking and jolting at first, but pretty soon you become accustomed to it. It becomes the norm. And I dare say it’s the same for the people on the direct receiving end of his ‘communications’. After a short time, they simply don’t notice the language, or at least aren’t affected emotionally by it.

Now I want to contrast that with another Ramsey… Sir Alf who was of course England football manager at the time of the 1966 world cup.

According to his players, Sir Alf rarely swore… but when he did, he was guaranteed to have the complete, undivided attention of whoever he was speaking to. Why? Because they knew something had changed. This wasn’t the norm. Something different was happening. It impacted on them at an emotional level.

Now before you run away with the idea that I’m trying to teach you how to swear in only the right places, I think I’d better explain that this has a far wider implication.

You see, a lot of marketers do nothing but ‘shout and swear’. One of my favourite jokes from The Two Ronnies came from the little fella when he said…

“I remember the day very clearly because DFS had a sale on.”

DFS are at the Gordon Ramsay end of the spectrum. There’s as much impact in the news that there’s a sale on at DFS as there is in Gordon Ramsay using his 20th ‘F’ word of the day. It’s the norm, it’s what we expect. It coveys nor engenders any emotion. It becomes wallpaper.

And it’s the same with the words and concepts put forward in advertisements and other marketing communications. If everything is always the ‘biggest’, ‘best’, ‘most exciting’ or whatever superlative you might choose – where is there to go from there? There’s no shock, no surprise, no jolt to the emotions. And these things are necessary when you’re hoping to persuade people to listen to you.

So, to return to the analogy, the key, I think, is to be sparing with your ‘swearing’, and build up a wide repertoire of ‘words’. You need to be constantly coming up with new ‘shock’ tactics which grab your potential customers by the throat and force them to pay attention to you.

It’s not going to be easy of course, but if it was, everybody would be doing it already.

THE F WORD

   

1 Comment:

1. Someone said...
   6 December 2010 at 01:11  
   i think you are completely right here. marketing campaigns used to be insanely simple. "best what ever here" and the clicks came pouring in. sales left and right. Well now everything is "the best whatever here" and a CTR of 5% gets you banned by google because they know your clicks are fraudulent because they know your method is too saturated. great food for thought man.

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