One of the worst things that you can do when it comes to creating content is get caught up on the idea that what you produce has to be perfect, or capital-G Great. Once you get into the mindset where you’ll accept nothing less than greatness, you’re setting yourself up to get stuck waiting for those great ideas to come to you.
The easiest way to break this habit: Start writing down ideas that are supposed to be bad. Here are twenty dumb advertising ideas to get you started.
- Spraypaint your URL on a subway car
- Offer a $100 gift certificate to anyone who can beat you in a fight
- Shout it from the rooftops, until the police tell you to stop
- Get on American Idol just to promote your brand
- Use all of your advertising budget hiring Don Rickles to make fun of your customers
- You know those “screamer” videos on Youtube? Make one of those, but the video blasts your Summer sale deals at megadecibals
- Spend a decade in a wheelchair, then pretend you were cured by your “miracle product”
- Hire former televangelist Jim Bakker to promote your product via infomercial
- Sponsor a nudist colony to promote your clothing line
- Catvertising: Make some miniature sandwich boards and get a bulk can of tuna to lure some strays in from the alley
- Forget bulk emails, spring for bulk singing-telegrams
- Hand-write your business cards for the next convention, all 2,000 of them
- Hire a gang of bikers to make people come to your store
- Special deal: Every purchase of five dollars or more comes with a free twenty dollar bill
- Blog ghostwriting? Get one of those ghost chaser guys to find you a REAL ghost to create content for your blog
- Just call random phone numbers and see if you can make a sale
- Learn smoke signals, and hope that someone out there knows how to read them
- Promise to hand deliver every single item ordered from your online shop this Christmas
- Rewrite a popular novel in the public domain so that the protagonist is always talking about how they love your brand
- Enter food challenges at local restaurants while wearing a t-shirt promoting your website, hope you don’t throw up on the URL when they take your picture
And here’s one good idea:
- Grab a memo pad and write down whatever ideas come to mind, no matter how bad they are. Sometimes, you only get to your good ideas by working through the lousy ones.
Gilbert S is interested in marketing, film, and advanced technology.
