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When you talk about the amazing things a brand can achieve, few will mention sponsoring a music festival or buying the time of a celebrity to endorse your brand. That’s because these are the easy options, they’re lazy. Lazy brands create content not the context the customers so desire – i.e. lazy brands make the stuff, not the value the stuff creates for the customer.

Remarkable marketing – marketing worth remarking on – requires creativity not money. Of course, it requires the both but it’s the depth of the creativity not the department pockets that defines success.

I’m not talk about the “Big Idea” here – i.e. paying your ad agency to come up with the Monkey on a Trike (copyright Mip Phillips?) the flashmob or whatever, the Britney Spears model of marketing is done. Simply attracting the eyeballs and talking about how many “hits” and “impressions” you get doesn’t work; Ashton Kutcher has 3.7 million Twitter followers but couldn’t convert this content into success at the box office where his movie grossed only $250k and his new TV series was duly cancelled (thanks to @_VNL for the find). Awareness means nothing without creativity.

So if it’s not the sole prerogative of the “creative agencies” who is responsible for the creativity? What we’re talking about is a corporate culture that enables its people to take calculated risks, break a few eggshells.

Here’s the Shaun White half pipe constructed by Red Bull for the snowboarder released only very recently. Rumours have been abound (see Red Bull Project X). Dan Pankraz from DDB (featured here on my Youth Marketing 100 list) first alerted me to the grapevine that something was afoot. Now, it’s public and what better marketing and reinforcement can you achieve than creating something that lasts? Yes, Shaun’s a celebrity but this isn’t about Shaun drinking Red Bull then being seen the next weekend coming out of a club clutching a Monster can in his hand (a la Britney) or worse still, Tiger endorsing Buick (talk about dissonance). This is about adding value, living it.

Red Bull Project X, like Nike 6 in San Clemente and so many of the Next Gen Brands (see the list) focus on connecting the customer, not selling them products. Next Gen Brands sell context not content.

Give the challenge to your average agency and average brand and they’d simply sponsor the Shaun White tour, Shaun White website or get Shaun to feature in some high visibility advertising. We’ve moved on from that model but 95% of brands still languish in the past because they’re afraid of breaking those eggshells.

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