Worldwide Salon Marketing

Salon Marketing tip: how to be different, not better

by Greg Milner on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 10:59 am

Air travel has become so routine these days, few regular flyers (like me) pay much attention to those same-same safety videos the airlines play on the overhead screens just before take-off.

Look around the cabin, and you’ll see a sea of heads buried in magazines or books, while the flight attendants stare stonily down the length of the cabin, clearly as bored with the whole ritual as the passengers.

But in New Zealand, they do things differently.

On our flight down to Queenstown today, there were hoots of laughter at Air New Zealand’s brilliantly innovative and hilarious new in-flight safety video.

With tongue firmly in cheek, the company uses a sharp wit combined with the country’s borderline-insane adoration of anything to do with the national All Blacks rugby team, to focus passengers’ attention on safety-with-a-twist.

There’s a lesson here.
Being boring in your marketing is the only real sin. But how do you make the commonplace stand out? In their terrific book ‘Made to Stick’, authors Chip and Dan Heath write case study after case study on simple ideas that rose above bland, every day ordinariness.

Air New Zealand looked for, and found, a way to get their customers to focus on an important, but routine safety message, by creating a ‘sticky’ idea.
The lesson is simple: look around at what all your competitors are doing. Now look at what you’re doing. Is it the same, or is it different? If the same, what can you find that turns the common into the uncommon, the ordinary into the extraordinary?

A post by Greg Milner The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality. Greg is co-founder and CEO of Worldwide Salon Marketing, a writer, direct response marketing consultant, specialist marketing systems adviser and coach.

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