The Art of Standing Out (Or Why Most Modern Marketing Sucks)

“Whatever you do, you need to stand out.” So says advertising legend Dave Trott. Why? Because it’s the only way to get noticed.

Ever wondered why your marketing isn’t working? You’re not alone.

According to Dave Trott – the legendary creative behind some of the most iconic ads of the past 30 years, including Cadbury’s Flake, Ariston and Toshiba – £18.3 billion was spent on marketing in the UK alone last year. And nearly 90 percent of that marketing wasn’t even noticed.

90 percent. Wow. Not disliked; only seven percent of advertising falls into that category. And being disliked at least means you’ve got through to someone. You don’t have to be liked to be successful.

No, that 90 percent wasn’t noticed at all. It didn’t even register. It was just wallpaper, blending into the background of our daily lives. The unread billboards on our morning commute, the unseen ads we skip through while waiting for the next hit of our favourite show.

Clearly, we need to change the question we’re asking about our advertising. Not “will this look right?” Not “what is our brand message?” But “will anyone even notice?”

Because if you’re not being noticed, you may as well not bother.

“Just doing the same as everybody else isn’t enough,” says Trott. “You’re going to have to out-think these guys. These guys that are bigger than you, tougher than you, faster than you, richer than you, better looking than you: how are you going to beat people that are better than you? That’s the real question. And to do that, you have to get upstream of the problem and understand how to change the context.”

Asking the right question is a good start. Why? Because advertising is a cut-throat, zero-sum game: for every winner, there’s a loser. If people are buying your product, that’s money they’re not spending on your competitors. If they’re watching your ad, that’s time that takes them away from watching or doing something else. And of course, the opposite is true, too.

Trott’s point is simple: attention is a finite resource, so don’t waste time on imitation. Don’t follow the latest trend because everyone else is doing it. That’s the wallpaper. You need to stand out and be different – and of course, that takes creativity.

“Every problem is a new problem, so you can’t just slot into a formula,” he says. “You can’t look at D&AD for what everybody did last year. You can’t look at Cannes for what won last year because that’s just more of the same. So what you have to do is you have to start again, reinventing the wheel, and get upstream and look at it differently.”

Picasso once famously said that “taste is the enemy of creativity” – and he knew a thing or two about getting noticed. Taste is something we all agree on. It obeys certain recognised standards. We’re comfortable with it – and thereby it can’t be new, it can’t be creative.

What Picasso did was refuse to be restricted by conventional thinking. He embraced different ways of looking at the world, different means of expression. And that’s what separates the truly creative from the rest: the works of art from the wallpaper.

Trott is full of anecdotes, as I discovered when I interviewed him recently. He’s collected them together in his brilliant book, Predatory Thinking. It’s full of short, sharp stories that illustrate why following the herd makes you easy prey for the wolves of competition – and why changing the context of your problem, looking at it differently, is critical to success.

Check out part one of my MeetTheBoss TV interview with him here.

Topics:

Digital-Marketing, Strategy, Marketing, Leadership