Oddball
marketing is the catchall term I coined several years
ago to describe advertising that does not fit into
traditional advertising categories. It is usually
characterized by a lack of clutter, since the message
is often delivered in a particular space, by that
brand only. Unlike traditional advertising such as
daytime TV which has approximately 18 minutes of advertising
per hour and as many as 50 different ads (given the
mix of 15- and 30-second spots), or magazines in which
as many as 50% or more of all pages are ads, "oddball
marketing" may fare better than traditional advertising
forms in getting noticed and being contextually related
to the brand. Given the expense of TV, and the increasing
likelihood that the ads will be "zapped"
or "TiVo'd", more and more creative media
for delivering advertising messages are being developed
and utilized by a variety of marketers.
While
it can be difficult to conduct a return on investment
analysis for many of these non-traditional vehicles,
it seems the analysis is no more difficult than the
RoI of traditional advertising forms such as TV and
print, which have always been notoriously difficult
to analyze. Aside from the facts that these new forms
of media are often contextually more appropriate than
traditional advertising, and there is usually far
less clutter, the sheer novelty of seeing an ad in
an unusual place attracts attention, in and of itself.
Many of these vehicles reach the audience when they
are captive and have not much else to do, resulting
in more time spent viewing the ad. A prime example
is bathroom stall advertising. I have been collecting
examples of "oddball marketing" for a number
of years, and for the purposes of this article, have
attempted to group examples into somewhat arbitrary
categories. |
