A story.
It was a typical winter evening in Minnesota. Precipitation was falling and that meant the freeway traffic was stalling to a crawl. Lucky for me, that meant my commute home would be twice as long as it needed to be. I found my mind wondering as I rolled along barely breaking 5 miles-per-hour.
I noticed things.
Things like how much I was starting to crave McDonald’s french fries.
“Ahh. That’s why,” I said to myself as I exited in pursuit of some golden arches.
Dinner time was coming and I would be stuck in traffic, so the fries would tide me over.
You see, for the last half hour I had been following behind and sometime along a semi with a “Going, going, gone” french fries ad on the trailer.
That got me thinking about a recent presentation from one of the great online marketers of our time out peddling one of their latest books. (Disclosure, I bought the book so I won’t bash too hard here but my point is one to make none the less.)
I won’t name names, but this nationally acclaimed marketer, speaker and best-selling author had recently published a piece of content that railed on all marketing tactics that were not online and social in nature. The content was calling out-of-home and any terrestrial or traditional tactic dead and ineffective.
“Ineffective?!” I thought to myself as I pulled up to the drive up window.
“Can I get a large order of fries and a small diet coke,” I requested through the speaker.
As I pulled back on the freeway noshing on warm, salty goodness I noticed a billboard announcing that my favorite wine store was opening a retail location in my neighborhood.
“Awesome-sauce!” I announced to myself and my radio.
Again, I found my mind wandering back to said marketing expert. Surely, this can’t be what they meant. Ineffective?
I made it home an hour and a half later filled up on fries and aware of the commercial going-ons of my neighborhood. All of this marketing goodness happened not because of social networking. Not because of an email. Not because of sms marketing software. Not because of an app.
Action and awareness occurred because of out-of-home advertising. Because of traditional, terrestrial marketing that has a time and a place.
The lesson here: beware of counsel that advises a silver bullet. Offline tactics have their place and strong marketing crosses all channels and touch-points while going beyond the walls of a marketing team into the fiber of your whole organization. If a tactic delivers results, don’t let some author peddling a book fill you up on hyperbole telling you a tactic is wrong or dead.
Fish where the fish are. You’d be crazy not to. On Twin Cities freeways between November and March, there’s a lot of fish stuck in traffic seeing trucks and seeing billboards.
Just sayin’.
What do you think? Where else are you integrating your marketing at and seeing results beyond online marketing?
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