Thinking Outside - And On Top Of - The Box!

The old catch phrase – now quite the cliché – of ‘thinking outside the box’ takes a literal form in this month’s Be Bold column in which we not only think outside of that confining six-walled box, but ON TOP OF IT as well to win the day!

Last month I was invited to participate on a panel during the Education Day sessions at The SAAC Convention in Long Beach, California. The name of the session was The Power Of Storytelling and consisted of four of us promo industry ‘storytellers’ sharing our experiences where we triumphed with our abilities to put across our strengths and skills via the power of communication. My ‘story’ went over pretty big with the SAAC education attendees, so I thought I’d capture the moment here in my monthly Be Bold, Be Different, Be Memorable blog on PromoCorner.

And, to be sure, I practice what I preach as my story is a PERFECT example of being both bold and memorable! I began by setting the stage… telling the full room that there are many ways to tell a story, using the written word, using the human voice as mankind has done around campfires for generations or on the stage, and by using images with no words of any kind. I said that the case history I was about to share presented me with the unique challenge of having to tell my company’s creative story visually ONLY and at a quick glance while I wasn’t even in the room! And I nailed it!

Years ago, we worked with Fox helping to promote their big theatrical releases to the media. We did a superb job for them on the original ‘ID4’, selling them a countdown clock piece that was so clever, it even made it onto two of the Los Angeles area morning news broadcasts! Because of this win, we were invited to the table to promote the upcoming film ‘Volcano’ with Tommy Lee Jones. In this Summer popcorn flick, an active volcano erupts from within the La Brea tar pits (!!) and threatens all of Los Angeles. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with drought, fires, earthquakes, mudslides, and riots… now we have big honkin’ volcano right on Wilshire boulevard to contend with!

At this time, the Fox folks had invited twelve or fifteen distributors to submit their ideas to promote ‘Volcano’ and these ideas along with samples and pricing must be contained in a white Banker’s box. They would stack up the boxes and go through them, one by one, selecting the best ideas within to promote their cheesy disaster movie. Our contact, who was a real hero from the ‘Independence Day’ promo, told us that these Marketing peeps were life-in-the-fast-lane types with short attention spans and that they would usually find ideas they liked in the first two or three boxes and never even bother to open up the rest of them!! My HALO sales person Renee said, “Rick we MUST somehow get them to open up our box FIRST!! How can we do that??” I thought for a moment with my mighty brain and responded, “Renee, I’ve got this. Give me your Banker’s Box, I’m taking it home for the weekend… see you on Monday!”

Renee had long ago learned to trust me when I had that maniacal glint in my eye. I took the box home and – as if I was working on my 7th Grade Science Project – used a papier-mâché medium called Celluclay to build on top of the box an eighteen inch volcano in superb detail and fully painted in rich shades of brown and tan with bright red lava spilling from the peak of the volcano down the miniature-mountain terrain and even over the edge of the box onto the flat white cardboard sides. Being rather handy at sculpting and painting, it looked truly excellent. And the story that this colorful volcano model told to the Fox marketing team was WE ARE WILDLY CREATIVE! WE THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX! TAKE A LOOK INSIDE FOR OUR VOLCANO SOLUTIONS!

And it worked perfectly. Because there was an eighteen-inch volcano on the lid of our box, they couldn’t put another box on top of our box, they had to put it IN FRONT OF the wall of other boxes and they did indeed open up our box of ideas first!

Luckily, Renee’s great ideas lived up to the promise of the Volcano Box and they picked three of the ideas within for their ‘Volcano’ marketing campaign leading to nearly six figures in promo orders. And we got onto TV again with one of them, delighting the Fox team at the bonus publicity! As suspected, they didn’t even open up ten of the lonely white boxes stacked against that Century City wall.

I finished up my portion of the Storytelling event by summarizing, “Every one of you is a brand and that brand has a very specific story to tell. Think about what makes your brand UNIQUE and be sure to tell that story very clearly and with great flair EVERYWHERE… on your business card, via your website, whenever you quote something, and in your presentations. Don’t be a ‘same as’ – be BOLD, be DIFFERENT, and be MEMORABLE.”

Next month we’re going to continue with this important story-telling differentiator when we discuss how you go to market via your company website and your company catalog/collateral materials. Be here or be squeere. It makes no sense, but it rhymes.

Rick Greene, MAS, is the Western Regional Vice President for Halo Branded Solutions, a Past President of SAAC, and the author of two fantasy novels entitled “Boofalo!” and “Shroom!” available at www.amazon.com.  His third book is a non-fiction biography of character actor Henry Brandon called “Henry Brandon King Of The Bogeymen” published by BearManor Media and is now available everywhere fine books are sold.