"If it's been done before, it may not be worth doing again."
Do you know who said that? I did. At least, I think I did. I don't recall anyone else saying it, and when I do a quick look online, I can't find it attributed to anyone in particular. So, I guess that means I said it and it is now officially attributed to me.
The best marketers are the ones who do things differently. They are the ones who approach a solution with a strategy that builds off historical insight and create something new. Cannes is approaching and not one award, not a single one, will be given for "Best Optimized" campaign. Optimization is good. It is iterative. It will help you meet your objectives, but per my last article here, it is NOT where the magic happens. No marketer ever became a marketer because they wanted to optimize the S%#@ out of a campaign. We all became a marketer because we wanted to be creative, but were probably pretty bad at drawing and design.
Great marketing stems from originality or alternative thinking. I am a proud and disgruntled member of Gen X and we grew up being called slackers, but in truth, we just never wanted to do things the same way as our parents. Now we are parents, and we still do things differently. We created and blew up "alternative radio". Our music and our lifestyle choices were considered an "alternative" to those that came before us, and we bring that methodology into our work every day.
I pride myself on ALT/Marketing and ALT/Advertising. These are the crafts of marketing and advertising where we build ideas off alternatives to the mainstream.
ALT/Advertising was the Internet in 1995-2005. Data was ALT/Advertising from 2005-2015. DOOH is ALT/Advertising. Generative Search is now ALT/Advertising. VPP or Virtual Product Placement powered by AI, which I do at Rembrand, is ALT/Advertising. These are the new and innovative forms of advertising that will grow quickly and begin to usurp the world of traditional digital (and yes, that is a real phrase). Traditional Digital advertising is search, display, and interruptive video. Native ads are a borderline between traditional and alternative. They are the "Jim Rose Circus" of advertising circa 2009. They used to be edgy, but they kept getting overshadowed by something more "out there".
ALT/Marketing was experiential. Branded Content was ALT/Marketing. These were alternatives to the traditional approaches that fast become adopted across the landscape and which started showing up in mainstream brands and campaigns. There's nothing wrong with a tactic that graduates from Alternative to the Mainstream. It's a sign that it worked, and it worked well enough to scale and be utilized by general marketers. ALT/Advertising and ALT/Marketing are fun, and they are a directional signal of where things are headed.
For Alternative methods to work, you have to be watching the trends. When I was in school, a professor told me that to be great at marketing and advertising, I should become a student of popular culture. He suggested to study the masses and watch what they get excited about. What shows and movies are trending? What celebrities are influencing the general consumers? What books and music are shaping the zeitgeist? If you can see these trends, analyze them, and determine what is making them work, you can harness that insight and put it to use for your campaigns.
Once again, this is where the magic happens. This is the wizardry in a world of muggles that will help you to stand out and succeed. The ability to harness magic and do magic tricks that capture attention will also be more interesting and more intriguing than any presentation of the facts that a traditional (i.e. boring) marketer will build their campaigns on.
Now - why should you care?
The answer is simple. Don't lose sight of what makes your role fun. Don't forget why you got into what you do. Be sure you are taking the time to come up with Alternative ideas and Alternative approaches. Be creative. Don't shoot for iteration. Shoot for radical change. Don't aim to be an evolutionary marketer. Intend to be revolutionary. Take risks. Go all in. Do what gets you excited because those are where the best ideas will come from, and those are the things that will make and shape your career.
For me, I have to remind myself of this regularly. It is very easy to get caught up in reports, emails, and the daily grind of being a marketer. Sometimes I need to shock my system and remind myself that ALternative thinking is the key to any success in my career. I get swallowed up reading about data and reporting and metrics when I should be using that brain power to create and ideate and be, well... different!
I hope this reminds you of the same.