Jul/092
The reverse-test
“Through the marketing looking-glass“: brilliantly pithy insight from Fiona Czerniawska of SourceForConsulting.com. She notes that most of the marketing material from consulting firms has a stultifying sameness to it, the same puffery that says nothing different, nothing distinctive.
Bad marketing consists of saying things which should be taken for granted (“We are talented and innovative”) none of which stands up to the test of being reversed.
To illustrate the point – and perhaps even get a generation of marketing people to “think outside the box”, we’d like to demonstrate what happens when you say the opposite of what most firms put in their marketing literature.
Reverse Image Inc is a firm that no one, certainly not the world’s leading businesses, governments, and institutions, trusts. We help leaders make bland, short-lived and trivial improvements to the performance of their organizations. We only tackle their easier issues and shy away from serious challenges. …
…and so on: see her post for the rest, it’s an interesting and challenging read. Would your marketing – or your business-thinking – pass the Reverse Test?
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10:02 pm on July 11th, 2009
Very interesting, though rather disappointing that the blog does not appear to have a place to leave comments. I quite like to see examples; we’ve now seen an example of what not to do, but how about a follow-up example of what *to* do so this failed reverse test can be avoided? The best marketing focuses on the reader, the target, and perhaps this is part of the point being made here.
Presumably the reader is being left to figure it out for herself, thus proving the ability to think outside the box.
7:00 am on July 14th, 2009
Hi Linda – yeah, good point. It’s easy to knock something, not so easy to be constructive about it, and the latter is what’s missed here.
It’s a good reminder for me as well: I aim to include practical suggestions in every post here, but I need to include that in commentaries on others’ work too. Thanks.