#Promotions

The rebellious creator

Rebellious creators are visionaries with a calling to change the world. They are not here to be liked, they are here to create things that make a difference. They define themselves, not by their job title, but by the impact they make.

They cannot be put into a single mold as they come from all backgrounds. They are artists, musicians, historians, and even zoologists. Their rebellious spirit is what connects them and motivates them to do things differently—to stand up to the status quo.

They are fearless. They are not afraid to show who they are and what they stand for, and have even gone so far as to raise a skull-and-crossbones flag above their headquarters. They cannot be deterred or ignored, and they are never going away.

They are the crazy ones.

Showcase your cause, not your product

Apple's 1984 ad, which introduced the Macintosh, shows no images and describes no details about the product. It is an ad focused solely on what drives Apple as a company and is considered one of the best television ads of all time.

Turn your ads into manifestos

The Apple store was designed to appeal to non-Apple users and show them what actually is possible with an Apple product. Before opening their doors for the first time, Apple ran this ad, 5 down, 95 to go, as their manifesto to those non-users.

Turn store openings into a party for raving fans

At each Chick-fil-A grand opening, the first one hundred customers receive free meals once a week for one year. This prize has become so popular that raving fans began to camp out in front of stores days before their opening. Seeing an opportunity to build relationships with their customers, Chick-fil-A turned these campouts into one long event with free samplings, a midnight Icedream® party, backstage tours of the restaurant, and live entertainment and activities.

Create messaging that is worth talking about

When first launching this billboard campaign, Chick-fil-A only showed the rubber chicken without any text or logo. It was only after thousands of people drove past it and media chatter began to rise that they added the rest.

Find your Blue Ocean Marketing Strategy

Chick-fil-A's marketing goal was to find an uncontested market space, and then dominate it. With a limited budget, they couldn't compete with TV ads—but what they could do, was focus on billboards, 3D billboards to be precise. At the time, billboards were used only to showcase price points and tell people which exit to take. Chick-fil-A, however, found their Blue Ocean by using billboards to build an emotional connection with their brand. Their rules for billboards were simple:

• Create advertising that is unexpectedly fun. Every billboard had to be endearing and make them laugh.
• Don't show the product. You can't build an emotional connection around a picture of a piece of chicken on a bun, so don't try.
• Don't show prices, deals, or tell people where to turn. Focus on connecting with people through humor, not selling them something. See first rule.

Promote by committee

Besides not having final say on who to hire, Google managers are also not allowed to promote any of their staff without committee approval. This allows promotions to be evaluated equally across the company as managers might define their "best people" differently.

Managers can, however, nominate their employees for a promotion, or individuals can nominate themselves. The promotion committee will then review a promo packet that contains:

• Recommendations from colleagues
• Examples of work, and
• Data showing how the impact you have made merits a promotion

These documents are then compared to a set list of pre-determined criteria and an Unbiasing Performance Review Checklist to ensure fairness. The process takes two to three days, and if rejected, the employee can be nominated again in six months.

Create the anti-advertisement

While Patagonia is in the business to make and sell products, part of their mission is to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. On Black Friday 2012, the biggest shopping day of the year, Patagonia pushed their mission forward by taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times that encouraged customers to only buy what they need with the tagline: Don't Buy This Jacket.

Don't Buy This Jacket

Don't Buy This Jacket copy

It's Black Friday, the day in the year retail turns from red to black and starts to make real money. But Black Friday, and the culture of consumption it reflects, puts the economy of natural systems that support all life firmly in the red. We're now using the resources of one-and-a-half planets on our one and only planet.

Because Patagonia wants to be in business for a good long time—and leave a world inhabitable for our kids—we want to do the opposite of every other business today. We ask you to buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else.

Environmental bankruptcy, as with corporate bankruptcy, can happen very slowly, then all of a sudden. This is what we face unless we slow down, then reverse the damage. We're running short on fresh water, topsoil, fisheries, wetlands—all our planet's natural systems and resources that support business, and life, including our own.

The environmental cost of everything we make is astonishing. Consider the R2 Jacket shown, one of our best sellers. To make it required 135 liters of water, enough to meet the daily needs (three glasses a day) of 45 people. Its journey from its origin as 60 percent recycled polyester to our Reno warehouse generated nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, 24 times the weight of the finished product. This jacket left behind, on its way to Reno, two-thirds its weight in waste.

And this is a 60 percent recycled polyester jacket, knit and sewn to a high standard; it is exceptionally durable, so you won't have to replace it as often. And when it comes to the end of its useful life we'll take it back to recycle into a product of equal value. But, as is true of all the things we can make and you can buy, this jacket comes with an environmental cost higher than its price.

There is much to be done and plenty for us all to do. Don't buy what you don't need. Think twice before you buy anything. Go to patagonia.com/CommonThreads or scan the QR code below. Take the Common Threads Initiative pledge, and join us in the fifth "R," to reimagine a world where we take only what nature can replace.

Patagonia's Conscientious Response to Black Friday Consumer Madness

Be willing to offend

Hidden beneath the tag of Patagonia's Regenerative Organic Stand-Up Shorts reads a message: Vote the Assholes Out. While the tag was printed in 2020, the saying had been used within the Patagonia culture for years as a way to encourage people to vote climate-change deniers out of office. After the phrase was used by Founder Yvon Chouinard in a letter to a non-profit, that was all the approval the design team needed to add it to the shorts.

Use honest imagery to show who your core customers are and what they do

For Patagonia, imagery is not about taking photos of beautiful models backpacking the Appalachian Trail on an autumn day—that is too safe. They also don't set up staged shots of non-customers wearing Patagonia gear—that would be dishonest.

Instead, Patagonia's imagery focuses on capturing real people doing real things. Picture a climber "picnicking on the hood of a rusted Chevy at the base of a climb" or a "euphoric skier rising from a face plant." That's the imagery Patagonia wants, and in order to capture that, they use photos of their actual customers taken by actual customers (or their customers' photographers in the image below).

Greg Epperson's The Flying Baby

Emphasize the experiences you offer, not the product

The Ritz-Carlton used to focus their messaging on the elegance of their properties, but as the company evolved, so has their messaging. Imagery and stories now focus on the unique and exotic experiences that their locations offer, as highlighted in their short-film series, The Stay.

Reinforce your cause in your messaging

Win price wars by knowing your audience

In 1973, as a young airline, Southwest's low cost frequent flights were posing a threat to the market share of the larger well-established Braniff Airlines. Having deep pockets, Braniff launched a campaign that undercut Southwest's $26 flight from Dallas to Houston by half.

With the strong possibility of losing all of their business to Braniff's cheaper flights, Southwest fired back with an ad that read: 'Nobody's going to shoot Southwest Airlines out of the sky for a lousy $13.'

Within the ad, Southwest offered their customers a choice: Southwest would either match Braniff's $13 fare or customers could buy a regular $26 ticket and receive a complimentary fifth of vodka, whiskey, or scotch.

And the result? Besides Southwest becoming the largest distributor of those liquors in Texas during that time,:

• Three quarters of Southwest passengers chose the liquor over the half priced fare.
• Southwest's passenger count went up by 66%.
• Southwest turned its first ever profit that year.

Braniff, on the other hand, reinstated their original higher rates and would eventually cease operations in 1982.

Southwest's victory was a result of the company understanding their audience. Their core customers were business travelers who expensed their trips, and would much rather have a free bottle of booze than help their company save a few dollars.

Southwest's 'Nobody's going to shoot Southwest Airlines out of the sky for a lousy $13' Ad

Fare Play: $13 Bottles of Booze and The Two-Tier Fare System

Forget traditional advertising, just surprise and delight people

Pop quiz: A lone coffee cup is resting on top of a cab as it slowly starts to pull away—what do you do?

If you are the type of person that runs up to warn the cab driver, you would have been pleasantly surprised to receive a Starbucks gift card from the cabbie.

This clever empty magnetic cup was used as a way for Starbucks to surprise and delight potential customers. Instead of advertising in traditional ways like billboards, Starbucks prefers to find ways to bring joy into people's lives. They have even been known to have unadvertised free ice cream socials on hot days and free cups of 'Calm' on Tax Day, as well.

Create buzz about new locations with handshake marketing

When Umpqua Bank opens new stores, they get people talking around town through what they call "handshake marketing." Instead of standard direct mail promotions, they rely on random acts of kindness and will:

• Randomly buy lunch for everyone at a restaurant.
• Buy out a nearby Peet's coffee shop for the morning.
• Leave a gift on nearby doorsteps, like a plant or all the ingredients for a spaghetti dinner, with a note inviting people to stop in.
• Buy an ice cream truck and deliver ice cream around town for a few days or weeks.
• Hand out $5 transit passes to commuters at random times.

Before opening their San Francisco store, Umpqua surrounded it with construction walls and had local artists recreate Twitter messages from people who used the hashtag #umpquasf. Umpqua would then select ones at random and send the tweeter a gift based on their interests. One person received a Nike gift card because he was a huge sports fan.