Need a sticky marketing idea? Try offending someone

For many of us small-business owners, marketing is the hardest part of the job. At EBW, we’ve learned the hard way that none of our four members are much good at it. We’ve taken to hiring freelance publicists project by project, which is fine, though we’re yet to generate the kind of social epidemic we dream about.

So we’re spending a lot of time checking out other businesses’ marketing campaigns and trying to learn from them. And I’ve thought that perhaps we should try being offensive. Offence just looks so marvellously easy.

Apple’s simple PC vs Mac series, which makes PC users like me out to be Luddites, has done well for them (cleverly, it also pokes a little fun at poncy Mac users). The hilarious, super-low-budget Miss Teen Carolina spin-off Everywhere Like Such As Maps is great for FarkTV. And, as we know, Nando’s regularly offend in South Africa most successfully.

Then again, badly wrought offence can be a disaster. This horrendous Apple-ad-knock-off by Nintendo pops right out the top of the offensive scale into the stratoffence, the region of hot air that lies just beyond conscious thought. My local Congregationalist Church has just put a billboard up in the stratoffence too: “Try Jesus this Christmas, if you don’t like him the Devil will take you back”.

It won’t get me there on Tuesday, but it’s stuck in my head like a plastic knife at Halloween. I know that whatever my religious views happen to be on Christmas morning, I’m going to wake up thinking about it.