Looking for a new batch of creative ideas? Ask your customers for their input.
At the New England Mail Order Association spring conference, Champlain College professor Rob Williams suggested that marketers should make marketing more interactive by letting customers participate in the creative process.
For example, companies could encourage customers to send in photos or videos of themselves using their products and post them on their Web site, he said.
To give the audience an idea of what could be created, Williams shared some video and audio spots he had students at Burlington College in Vermont create about NEMOA members. Two young men recaptured the excitement of children playing with Legos, while another created a fairly sophisticated TV spot for Bliss, using photography from the company’s Web site. One even used Austin Powers and Dr. Evil action figures to hawk Green Mountain Coffee, an off-the-wall idea no “professional” marketer probably would have ever dreamed up, he said.
Today’s customer is over-saturated with ads, said Williams; letting them in on the process is one way of cutting through the clutter.
The NEMOA conference in Cambridge, MA concluded on Friday.
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