The best marketing ideas are not always new marketing ideas

In my last blog I said that marketing is a fascinating business to be in because there is always something new happening. However, that is not to say that the best things in marketing are only the new things. The traditional marketing mix of 4 Ps – price, place, product and promotion – is still as relevant today as it ever was, though I always prefer the mix that includes a 5th P – people. There are also advertising themes that are donkey’s years old that are still relevant in today’s marketplace.

We talk about Experiential Marketing, Viral Marketing and Guerrilla Marketing as if they are new phonomema but that is not so. The names are new but the marketing styles have been in evidence for a long time. I have seen graffitti saying “Wall Drug Store 3426 miles that way” at Lands End. I have seen Wall Drug Store graffitti in the London Underground. Apparently, US servicemen from South Dakota left Wall Drug Store directions all over Europe in the Second World War. How’s that for viral marketing?

How about the old travelling medicine shows? The idea of a showman peddling miracle cures offering samples to a “plant” in the audience to illustrate the miracle goes back to the middle ages but flourished in the USA in the late 1800s. Is this not an example of a forerunner to Experiential Marketing? Fairgrounds and Showgrounds have always been fair game for Guerrilla Marketing ploys but we just didn’t give it that name.

Advertising themes also go way back. How about “before and after” themes? Back in the 1700s “before and after” pictures were used in a type of pop-up book using layers and flaps to illustrate the work of Capability Brown, the English lanscape gardener. This type of ad was also a regular feature on trade cards in the mid to late 1800s and is still going strong today. Manufacturers of beauty products are lovers of this tried and tested form of advertising. A spotty face – a clear complexion. A big fat belly – a slim and toned figure. 

Our own range of products, in fact, features many ideas that go back eons. The fold that is featured in our starburst product goes back to ancient China and very early origami. Information discs can be traced back to 1540. The first recorded instance of pop-up mechanisms featuring in a book goes back to 1304.

There’s a saying that goes “the old ones are the best”. So it would seem!