The Fur-Bearing Trout Theory Of Marketing

by | Sep 22, 2014 | Promotions | 0 comments

We’re fighting every second of every minute of every day for Brain Time with the audience and Radio needs to take a step back and take a look not at the messages we’re attempting to market to the listeners, but the ways that we deliver those messages. Spam on Facebook isn’t going to cut it in 2014.

 

We’re fighting every second of every minute of every day for Brain Time with the audience and Radio needs to take a step back and take a look not at the messages we’re attempting to market to the listeners, but the ways that we deliver those messages. Spam on Facebook isn’t going to cut it in 2014.

“Mrs. Radzek”. What an awful name perhaps only out-done by “Scut Farkus”. She ruled our 10th grade classroom with a heavy hand and haunts my dreams to this day. But there’s one positive thing she left me with and that’s an appreciation for Marshall McLuhan and “The Medium Is The Massage”.

It’s an amazing book. Read it.

the-medium-is-the-massage

 

It basically, and I’m going to butcher this I know, states that the medium defines how the message is delivered and the way the message is presented dictates whether the message is received or discarded

 

20 years ago it was estimated that the average consumer in the US was hit with 3000 advertising messages. In 2014, it’s up to 5000+.

 

Seemingly everything can be sold now. It’s just not the videos before you can see your video, or Tweets and social media spam, it’s the white paper that rolls out on doctors examining tables that’s been logoed with products for kids and their parents. Talking urinal screens. Parachuting tampons onto a beach in Germany.

The trays you put your bag in when going through TSA. If an agency could sell space on a cloud, they’d do it. And are probably working on the technology now.

 

So think: of the 5000 messages you were hit with in the last 24 hours, what were the ones that you remember?

 

I’m going to guess that maybe two or three slipped through your Iron Shield and implanted themselves in your brain and that probably there was something about the way it was delivered to you that made it get through the defenses.

 

It’s like sending out press releases. That ceased to be effective in 1994. If you want to get press to cover you, you need to find alternative means, like imagining who would be most offended by your event or promotion, letting them know and having thembeat down the doors of the TV stations in outrage. It’s how we got Pot 107.1 in Denver on CNN: I emailed all of the conservative anti-dope groups in Colorado as a “concerned citizen” and did they know about this abomination? This ALL MARIJUANA format? They ran with it from there.
The Greatest 48 Hour Fauxrmat

 

Taking your message and inverting it will work. Doubt me? Take your website and turn it upside down for a day. Or take a billboard and flip it for a week. You will activate a sizeable portion of the community who will call to let you know about the agencies error. Any time you activate people, you win.

Fur Bearing Trout
All of which has a thin connection to the genius of Wilbur Foshay. The Bernie Madoff of the early 1900’s he found himself run out of Minnesota and with a lot of time on his hands, got himself appointed the head of the Salida, Colorado Chamber Of Commerce.

 

How does someone with no money and few resources draw tourists and anglers to this remote spot to enjoy the natural wildlife and all that it offered?

 

He got a trout. He sewed fur on it. And sent the photo to newspapers all over the country stating that the mountain streams were so fresh yet frigid, that the fish had evolved fur coats to stay warm.

 

Soon, Salida was filled with sportsmen, their rods, reels and bait buckets, all angling for the elusive fur-bearing trout.

 

Mission accomplished.

 

We’re fighting every second of every minute of every day for Brain Time with the audience and Radio needs to take a step back and take a look not at the messages we’re attempting to market to the listeners, but the ways that we deliver those messages. Spam on Facebook isn’t going to cut it in 2014.