Marketing Snippet: Memorable Trumps Good
I would like to introduce you to a man. This man is a feature — nay, a legend — in his hometown, which happens to be my hometown. His influence upon this city can be felt the moment you step off the ferry and gaze upon his majestic visage.
His name is Gordy Dodd, and if you live in Victoria you have almost certainly noticed his new bus ad campaign, featuring 007 Dodd, Superman Dodd, and a few others. Dodd, and his company Dodd’s furniture, have produced a number of highly entertaining videos, although unfortunately only a select few are available online. These videos have burrowed their way into the hearts and minds of Victorians everywhere, and whether they like him or hate him, you can be damn sure that almost any Victorian you ask can remember him. But what makes Gordy Dodd so memorable?
Uniqueness
Gordy Dodd is not a beautiful man. In fact, he has a very distinct homeliness about him (I’m sure he knows it, but I’ll sure feel bad if he has to hear it from me). Plus, even with all the years he’s been on TV, he still has an incredibly strong accent. Even better, his ads go over and above regular low-rent-local-business-loudmouth territory and into a strange world of bad costumes, worse acting, and the sense that Gordy is going to crack up any second until you realize that, no, that’s just his face.
Gordy has been the Hulk, Harry Potter (”Even a muggle knows our savings are magic”… but add a strong indian accent), Elvis, and many more. He’s made full-scale bollywoodesque ads featuring what probably constitutes a solid majority of his female relatives, dancing in saris. Rest assured that the link above contains a fraction of a fraction of Dodds’ full repetoire.
His delivery is priceless – there is no worse actor in the world than Gordy Dodd, and he the fact that he tries so hard makes you love him all the same. But what he lacks in acting, he seems to make up for in marketing genius and sheer gumption.
And you can bet that he’s never paid more he makes from selling a couch to make them.
Repetition
Gordy Dodd is everyhere. His mug has been gracing local TV screens for years and years. He appears on buses, in newspapers, on magazines. All this further separates Dodd from the crappy carpet salesmen with similar budgets – not only will they not dress up in spandex on TV, they’ll only try once or twice and then give up because almost everyone ignores them. Nowadays, when Gordy releases a new ad, you can be sure that it will come up as water-cooler talk.
Be Memorable
So what can we learn from Dodd’s Furniture? Here, I’ll illustrate it with another example.
QUICK! Picture in your head, in detail, an Olympic games logo.
I’ll wait, although I bet you see where this is going already.
Was it London 2012 (click to see the logo)? I bet for a lot of you, it was. Even though statistically you probably hate it, you can be sure that the 2012 logo is going to be hard to forget. And don’t you say that’s just because of the controversy – if it wasn’t for the logo’s decided “uniqueness”, it never would have gotten that sort of press in the first place (no such thing as bad publicity).
Being memorable is not the same as being good. And unless you’re trying to showcase your design/directorial/creative talents, being memorable is just as good and probably better. If you can hit that water-cooler-talk sweet spot among your clientèle, success is sure to be yours.