I didn’t shoot the sheriff!
Mainly because I am the bloody sheriff.
I did, however, send out a load of Milky Bars.
There is some logic behind that statement, although if you haven't been following my exploits over the last few weeks you could be forgiven for wondering whether I've finally lost the plot.
The theme of this year's National Entrepreneurs Convention was the Wild West and, never being one to ignore an opportunity to make a bit of a prat of myself in the interests of marketing, I became Sheriff Wilson for a couple of days. David Sekules became Deputy Dave, the EC Portsmouth group became the Portsmouth Posse, we had badges, posters and photographs and generally took the whole thing considerably less seriously than perhaps we should have done.
It worked. People noticed us, joined in with the joke and, more importantly, remembered us.
The Convention is over. The marketing opportunity isn’t.
One of my favourite speakers at the Convention was Helena Langdon, formerly Head of Digital and Communities at innocent drinks, who talked about humour in marketing. One line in particular stayed with me: marketing doesn't have to take itself too seriously to be taken seriously.
I couldn't agree more.
By the time I got home from Birmingham, the Convention was over, but it seemed a shame to pack Sheriff Wilson away with the badge. We'd spent weeks creating all that recognition and having fun with people, so why would I just stop?
I've written before about persistence, and I think there's a tendency to interpret that as simply doing something again and again. Sometimes persistence is actually about recognising when you've got a bit of momentum and finding a way to keep it going.
And that's where the Milky Bar came in.
Those of us of a certain age will remember the Milky Bar Kid: cowboy hat, glasses, heroic stance and a bar of white chocolate. I was already wandering around dressed as a sheriff. It wasn't exactly the greatest creative leap of my 40-year career.
The Milky Bars are on me.
So that's what I've done.
I've put together a small direct mail piece following up on the Convention, popped in one of the Our Creativity… Your Brand! brochures and added the essential ingredient — an actual Milky Bar. The whole lot is going out in a vivid orange padded envelope, because if I'm going to put something through somebody's letterbox, I'd quite like them to notice it before they open it.
And I think that's something we've forgotten a little in our rush towards digital marketing.
Most of us receive an endless stream of emails every day. Some are useful, some get skimmed, plenty disappear without troubling our consciousness at all. But put a bright orange padded envelope on someone's desk and there's a pretty good chance they're going to wonder what's inside it.
Put a chocolate bar inside and you've improved your odds again.
Of course, the Milky Bar isn't really the marketing. It's the excuse.
It gives me a reason to contact people while the Convention, the conversations and the ridiculous Sheriff Wilson posts are still fresh in their minds. Leave it until Christmas and it's just some bloke sending chocolate.
The Milky Bar is the gimmick. The timing is the marketing.
And once I've got their attention, there needs to be something behind the joke. That's why our brochure is in there too. The silly bit might get the envelope opened and hopefully raise a smile, but the work inside reminds people what Wilson Design actually does.
That's the bit I particularly like about this little campaign. It's fun, but it isn't frivolous. There's a proper marketing thought behind it.
It also happens to be another example of something I've been banging on about for the last couple of years: Design + Persistence = Three.
The design gets you noticed. The persistence means you don't disappear again once you've been noticed. Put the two together and you create something else, something bigger — recognition, a conversation, a referral or perhaps an opportunity that neither would necessarily have produced on its own.
I don't know whether sending a Milky Bar through the post will win us more business. That's not really how marketing works, despite our obsession with trying to attribute every enquiry to a click, campaign or spreadsheet.
What I do know is that somebody is going to receive a vivid orange envelope, open it, find a chocolate bar and, with a bit of luck, remember the idiot dressed as a sheriff they met in Birmingham or saw online.
And if they smile before they chuck the wrapper away, that's not a bad place for a conversation to start.
