The BIG Kahuna

I was supposed to review the book  Pow! Right Between The Eyes by Andy Nulman way back in March but I was travelling outside the US and couldn’t get it done in time. So I’m a day late and a dollar short…

Here’s the surprise:

It’s not that SURPRISING?

Let’s start with some positives. It’s well written and I loved Andy’s sense of humor. It does have some nuggets of fun, creative ideas.

Here are some negatives. Gimmicks are gimmicks. Nowhere in the book is there any strategy relating to leveraging brand identity or branding at all. One of his own examples included Maxim models. Gimmick.

He’s obviously on the word of mouth marketing train, which is fine. But unless it ties back to your brand identity it’s all short lived, like a bad drug. Gimmicks. I don’t like gimmicks.

Here’s what I mean by tying to a brand identity. Volvo’s brand identity is “safe”. They own it. IF they had come out with this promotion it would have been a Pow moment that leveraged their brand. The “double whammy“:

But Volkswagen beat them to it. Was it a POW moment according to Andy? Maybe, did it do anything for Volkswagen? Doubt it. For them it was just a gimmick. People aren’t running out and buying Volkswagen’s because they are “safe”.  Volvo owns that.

So, I do think that surprise marketing can be VERY effective but it needs to be more than just the first giant gorilla baloon at a car dealership. It needs to leverage the brand in some way. Then it becomes doubly effective. And twice as memorable.

Here’s a recent viral campaign from Evian with over 4.5 million views.

Probably a POW moment. For me this is one big gimmick. Will it increase sales? Will it make people drink Evian water more? Doubt it. It’s certainly cute and funny. How does it leverage Evian’s brand identity? Is there a “double whammy”?

Trust me you can be surprising and strategic at the same time. Like this example from Andy’s blog:

http://powrightbetweentheeyes.typepad.com/pow_right_between_the_eye/2009/06/ski-season-in-june-well-here-at-least.html

I’d like to see more of that.

Here’s a link to Andy’s blog:

http://powrightbetweentheeyes.typepad.com/

I don’t think there are enough “double whammy” moments for me to recommend his book but I would recommend his blog if you want to pull out some really great nuggets.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 7:24 am and is filed under Branding News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.