Are You Too Creative For Your Own Good?
During a casual conversation the other day, someone pointed out something to me that caught me completely off-guard.
There happened to be a FedEx delivery envelope on the table, and my friend said, “It’s just pure genius, FedEx’s logo, isn’t it?”
“You think?”, I said, “It’s just words in block letters.”
“Ha!”, my friend responded, “You mean you’ve never noticed that there’s an arrow between the ‘e’ and the ‘x’?”
I readily admitted that I hadn’t.
But I was intrigued by the simple fact that FedEx’s logo had been in my face for YEARS, yet I had somehow missed the arrow.
So I did a quick poll of several of my friends. NONE of them had ever noticed the arrow either. Ever.
Based on all of this, I couldn’t help but ask a rather poignant question. Is creative genius REALLY so smart if practically everyone is outsmarted by it?
OK, maybe it’s not that we’re all brain-cell deficient for not noticing after all.
In fact, I’d be more inclined to say that it’s some MARKETERS out there who end up ‘outsmarting’ themselves.
And hey…I have to raise my hand here. I’ve certainly not been immune to getting caught up in this sort of thing in the past.
Take, for example, the podcast that Emily and I started back in ’06.
At that time, back in the “Stone Age” of podcasting, I’m not sure there were ANY other “portable radio shows” on iTunes that talked about dating and relationships.
Nevertheless, since the name of our newly-conceived shop was X & Y Communications, we proudly titled our show “X & Y On The Fly”.
You know, as in “one each of the X and the Y chromosome types sort of streaming their thoughts as they go along”. Get it?
Maybe all of that was obvious to you. But more likely, it wasn’t.
Nevertheless, we got the feedburner URL /xyonthefly and away we went.
Sort of.
Actually, it wasn’t until we changed the name of the show to the somewhat cumbersome “X & Y On The Fly — Dating Podcast” that people started subscribing. From there it became the number one show in it’s category for quite a while. Go figure.
Ultimately, having paid attention to what really stoked a fire under other podcasts in other niches, we realized two key “no brainer” facts:
1) Shows with names that reflected EXACTLY what they were about outperformed.
2) Shows with names that could easily be read in BLOCK LETTERS on their respective miniscule “album covers” on iTunes were the ones that got the lion’s share of subscribers.
Maybe “DatingCast” would have been a better name for our FIRST show, after all. But it sure wouldn’t have made us as proud of our own creativity.
Here’s the deal, though. What matters most? Potentially wowing the world with one’s witty genius or GETTING RESULTS?
That question is obviously a rhetorical one.
Even so, I can’t help but notice how many newbies to Internet Entrepreneurship start right out of the gate by apparently attempting to outsmart everyone (and hence, themselves) with “creative marketing” ideas that borderline on the esoteric.
Fortunately (and perhaps ironically) for FedEx, their logo somehow accomplishes the company’s goals…even as it misses the mark of conveying their marketing department’s underlying “genius”.
Will your business be so fortunate?
It’s best to mitigate that risk altogether by finding a healthy balance between focusing on making your purpose/message clear and THEN applying creativity in context with that.
That way you can soon revel in the “genius” of your OVERALL success, right?
Here’s To Greatness,
Scot McKay