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Rock your marketing and advertising like Warren Buffett

Differentiating your brand could be tricky work if your marketing and advertising involves one of the world’s richest men—unless that man is Warren Buffett.

“We thought, What’s the most ridiculous getup we could think up for Warren — and thought, Nah, we can’t do that,” says Phil Ovuka, director of creative media services at Geico.

Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett has become a staple of the Geico employee-created videos used to kick off their annual team meeting. Over the past four years, Buffett has appeared as a hobo and a DJ. This year, his tattooed Axl Rose send-up stole the show and netted thousands of viral impressions.

What can Warren Buffett teach your brand?

Suppose an employee brought you a marketing and advertising idea so off-the-charts outlandish you couldn’t contain your laughter. What would you do?  Dismiss that idea and you lose three ways: employees lose trust in sharing ideas, your brand loses fresh thinking, and you lose an edge that can differentiate you from competitors.

“Differentiate until you want to cry,” says Jon Spoelstra, author of Marketing Outrageously: How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts! Otherwise, you’re just like everyone else.

Spoelstra’s track record of creating marketing and advertising success stories in basketball and arena football are legendary. The way to start, Spoelstra teaches, is “by making new a way of life.”

Step into each day looking at things from new and unexpected perspectives. Slaughter the sacred cows and bring in fresh thinking.  Doing so will make your people happy, your brand strong, and you rich. Ask Warren Buffett about that.

The bigger the response, the better the idea

Ideas everyone agrees on are safe, bland, vanilla. They’re dreck. It’s the thinking that produces ad-speak-laden messages: “family owned with a commitment for quality and your satisfaction.” Gag me.

Marketing and advertising ideas worth exploring are the ones that double over half the room in laughter, while revolting others. Strong reactions tell you that idea carries a charge that will light up a brand. Nurture such thinking in people and you’ll create an unexpected employee benefit: opportunity.

By stepping into his Guns N Roses persona, Warren Buffett tells everyone, Geico is alive with opportunity. The boss is on the team, not in the watchtower. His appearances in those videos is a clarion call to every Geico employee: your ideas are welcome at the top. It’s a marketing and advertising message that resonates with customers too, earning Buffett and company over 327,00 plays on YouTube as of the moment this was written.

Employees created the video, wrote the lyrics, delivered the message. It works because it’s an authentic sentiment delivered by people who believe. This kind of thing only happens when you create a safe space for outrageous ideas.

How welcome are outrageous ideas at the top of your company?

Jon Spoelstra is our brand of crazy. That’s why you’ll find him teaching a class called How To Make Big Things Happen Fast at Wizard Academy. I spent two days attending his first workshop and highly recommend it–especially if you want to find the way to your envelope’s edge. Click here to learn more.

Online advertising in a magazine?

A magazine that updates scores. Ads showing a car driving down the road and, at a touch, reveals specs and customized pricing. News stories that link to background information. Meet the coming face of interactive magazine publishing . Are your online advertising best practices ready for this new technology?

Check out examples interactive advertising in a magazine being developed now. Look past the corpo-speak and see the future of how your customers will be consuming information in the near future. Near as in when the iPad comes out.

Don’t think this advance is way off or reserved just for the big boys. The ability to create this kind of interactive advertising will come to the local level quickly. How can you prepare? Here are three things you can do now:

Give your banners muscle

Consider how you currently execute banner advertising. If your ad simply transports a reader to your home page, you’re missing out. The shortest path to conversion is relevant results; a click is my question, where you take me is the answer.

Instead of just bringing visitors to your home page, choose specific points of your banner ad to bring visitors relevant points on your site. Click on the product, you’re taken to that specific product’s page. Click on copy in your ad and it brings you to an expanded version with more information. The company logo in an ad on the sports page takes visitors to a landing page written for sports-minded customers.

Whether you’re paying by click or impressions, the more efficiently you resolve each click, the more likely you’ll convert visitors into customers. It starts by answering the questions customers are really asking (not the ones you want them to ask) quickly and efficiently.

Show don’t tell with video

Video brings visitors into your business in a way words alone can’t. It’s a form of interactive advertising that communicates differently than cable or TV video; don’t consider using your TV spot on your site as having video. In fact, TV spots on websites can create a conversational disconnect.

Web video works best when it’s person-to-person conversational. Grab a Flip Video camera and welcome a customer as you would when they come into the store. Interview some of your customers. Don’t worry about making it pretty; the more authentic is looks, the more believable the message.

Engage visitors in conversation

Creating polls or surveys is an easy way to solicit customer input and generate better engagement. Survey Monkey gives you the ability to conduct live polls of your web visitors and display ongoing results live. Your online advertising immediately appears more connected and customers gain a greater sense of involvement.

You may get some poll results you don’t like. If you have a product or service customers aren’t happy with, they’ll tell you. That’s a good thing. If they’re already unhappy, at least now you have a way of addressing it with them and in front of everyone else. You’ll just have to walk your customer service talk.

Advantage goes to the prepared

Not only will making these adjustments enhance the effectiveness of your online advertising now, but when time comes for interactive media in dynamic publications, you’ll already have the necessary best practices in place.

Clueless is as clueless does

Tell me you haven’t found yourself at one end or the other of an exchange like this. I’m experiencing it with a company I’ve known for years. It’s a case of how a business’ effort to engage in dialog can be worse than not engaging at all.

Talking too much? Or, saying too little?

“People listen when you have something to say. But, they’ll tune out when you talk too much.” Sage advice for living delivered to me by Stu Roberts, program director at WCFR, Springfield, VT where I worked at in my 20’s. Today his advice has become a life-or-death directive for your advertising.

It’s not about being interesting. You have to be more interesting than what’s going on in your customer’s head already. And, nothing sells like self-interest–your customer’s self-interest.

Here’s an example: At least twice a week (often more) I see Facebook posts by a company I know well. I could care less: every freakin’ post exists to promote a sale item at the store. No tips on using the product. No customers experiences stories. No human element. Come see. Come buy. It’s all shill all the time.

The topper: a post on Christmas eve promoting a sale price on an office product that day only till 3pm–a great deal for Ebenezer Scrooge, maybe.

A double-dipped waste of time

Next to forwarded “send this to ten friends or bad things will happen” emails, nothing irritates me like a self-serving Facebook/Linkedin/Twitter post. The business wastes time sending it. I waste time seeing it. They don’t connect. I don’t come buy. A relationship fades.

No post would be better than an all-about-us post. Same goes for blogging: you do it to create a dialog. You write, they read. They respond, you respond. How meaningfully you respond determines growing life or lingering death for the relationship.

Sit on the other side of the table

I own a fancy schmancy Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. It records what I write and transfers it to my computer. Love it. Think everyone should get one. Just like that other company, I get emails and Facebook posts from them too. Difference is, Livescribe provides updates on new feature upgrades and examples of more effective use of the pen–and only an occasional sale message.

They’ve invested in me: helping me get more out of my purchase. I’ve invested in them: probably selling a dozen of these things when clients see how I use it. That’s a solid social media relationship.

Extend the dialog in your advertising

Apple caught social media whispers about iPod Nano users tuning out of their iPod in favor of the radio. While controlling their music experience was important, core iPod customers were seeking out new music by listening to the radio. So, Apple put an FM radio in the latest iPod Nano.

Social media flagged the interest. Apple tested it, produced the product, advertised it. The dialog circle was complete. Nano sales are up.

Intelligence unused is stupid

Advertising’s two-way dialog means your advertising will work better when you provide for customer interaction. Whether it’s emails, blogging, or a survey, give your customers a way to interact with you beyond the basic buying decision. Then, listen. Address concerns. Apply what you learn.

Customers want to help you improve the buying experience–if you’re willing to listen and respond. Information becomes intelligence only when you apply it.

Grooveyard of posts past