Disruptive Marketing and Purple Strawberries

One of the things we do for our clients is manage their marketing. And as the world of the intertubes gets more complicated something that’s more and more apparent is that the best marketing is disruptive marketing.

And it occurs to me that purple strawberries are pretty darned disruptive.
https://youtu.be/wqNdnt-BpbM
There are a surprising number of purple strawberries on the ‘net; just search for the phrase purple strawberries and you’ll see. I believe the one you see on this page originated here, by the way — but I can’t confirm that. I found it here, where one of the smartest marketing guys I know held forth on this disruptive marketing thing.

Jeff Slater’s bio is here. The part about Jeff having cut his teeth creating a brand from scratch is great; if you’re old enough you might remember Rachel’s Brownies. Those little buggers were tasty; even President Reagan thought so.

Disruptive Marketing

Disruptive Marketing has always worked; stop short of offensive and things people don’t expect will always get their attention.

But it’s more important now than ever that you grab targets by the lapels and shake. Want an even better example? This commercial for auto insurance, which started running just a month ago, has almost 8 million shares. This weekend I was out to dinner with three people I know well enough to know that none of them ever notice advertising, and they ALL love this silly raccoons-eating-garbage commercial.

While it’s likely you don’t have the budget for a creative team to churn out raccoons eating garbage, there are other ways to do disruptive marketing. For example, up above I pointed out that I’m not sure where Jeff Slater’s purple strawberry originated. I’ve credited Jeff, and I’ve credited the original art. But I’ve also done a bit of Search Engine Optimization based on this article and these ideas, and my guess is that in the not-too-distant future people searching for “purple strawberries” will find their way here.

Is that disruptive marketing? Once again, let’s talk budgets; we don’t have a GEICO-sized marketing budget here any more than you do. I was writing this story anyway, the subject was marketing, and every now and then being ranked for purple strawberries will get someone’s attention worth getting. You bet it’s disruptive. And that’s marketing.

And always looking for ways to goose things just … that … much … further … works.

We don’t know too many raccoons, but GoosesRUs. Feel like a bit of disruptive marketing?