As I’m getting older – (I reached 40 this year), I’m starting to realise that there’s very little new under the sun. Most “New” announcements and “New” gizmos are just re-inventions or recycling of existing stuff. Take a look down the toy isle of your local supermarket for instance. I spend a lot of time there with my 6 year old lad, especially as he’s writing his letter to Santa. The toys that are featuring more prominently now are Star Wars, Transformers, Dr Who, Lego and The Smurfs. All the things that where around and that I wanted when I wasn’t far off his age
This isn’t a bad thing though. Often, tired ideas are updated with the use of technology, they’re improved to make them more useful, more appealing and more fun. My lightsaber didn’t make a “Swooshing” noise when I hit my dad with it and we had to pull a string on the back of our action men to make them talk.
The Muppets, one of my all time favourite shows, – I still enjoy watching their movies now, are absolute experts at taking an idea and converting it into their classic humorous stlye.
Take a look at their production of Queens Bohemian Rhapsody for example, it’s hilarious, especially the bit where Animal is calling out for his Mama.
So, where’s the message here, what can we take from this and apply to our businesses. Well for one thing, the same rule applies to marketing. I’ve spent alot of time studying the marketing gurus such as Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer & Joe Vitale and they all do what we should be doing. Building a Swipe File of marketing that works and they employ a technique called Swipe and Deploy
A Swipe file is a collection of adverts, marketing pieces, articles etc that have elements in them that are deemed to be “Good Marketing”. They then re-use those elements, reshaping and remoulding them to fit the product or service that they are creating their new advertising piece for. So for example, they’ll have a swipe file of headlines that they re-use time after time such as “They laughed when I told them that I could teach someone to play the piano in 7 days” and “They laughed when I told them that my accountancy practice could save them £1000s in taxes”
I’ve put together a “Swipe File” of 101 headlines which you can have simply by clicking here. Feel free to deploy them in your own marketing and advertising.
So, are you going to try to re-invent the wheel with your marketing or are you going to be a marketing muppet by taking an existing idea and recreating it to fit your style and brand.
