Accidental marketing
A key goal of marketing is to come up with a message that conveys your meaning so effectively that it goes viral. Sometimes, unfortunately, this happens by accident.
“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime adviser to Mr. Romney, said in response to a question about pivoting to a matchup with Mr. Obama and appealing to moderate swing voters. “Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”
In a book called Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath offer an acronym that describes memorable messages: SUCCES (yes, it’s one S short). It stands for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Story-Containing.
Unfortunately for the Romney campaign, Mr. Fehrnstrom’s remark covered the bases nicely.
Simple? Yes.
Unexpected? No question.
Concrete? What could be more concrete than the image of a toy that almost anyone can picture, and that many of us played with as children?
It’s not fun to go into my account and see 40 messages from spammers, but once in a while there’s an entertaining one. Here’s a message from funnywalrus12. (I’ve deleted the link that was the reason for it all, pour décourager les autres.)
