Marketing Brilliance Courtesy of Homer Simpson

by Morgan Brown

Mortgage Banker

Author website

When it comes down to it I’m more of a marketing guy than a mortgage guy. Sure I own a mortgage company but I wasn’t brought in to do the selling or the secondary marketing or the finances or office admin – I was brought in to be “the marketing guy,” to bring in the leads and market our company. It’s my background and my passion. So even though I spend a lot of time dealing with all of the items listed above it is the marketing that really gets me excited.

With that introduction you’ll understand why I’ve so hastily penned this post about out-of-the-box marketing after reading this article about 7-11 and The Simpsons teaming up to transform 11 7-11’s across the country in to Kwik-E-Marts to promote the upcoming movie.

To promote the movie not only did they completely redo the exterior of the store, but consider the other details:

• Green aprons for staff (a la Apu)
• Squishee cups instead of slurpee cups
• Buzz soda 6-packs for sale
• Pink frosting-covered donuts with sprinkles
• Radioactive Man comic books
• All new signage “Thank you for loitering.”
• Tons of Simpson-esque memorabilia products

People drove from miles around and waited in a huge line just to get inside. Once they were inside it felt like being in the cartoon. You can see more photos from the Burbank store here.

Can you imagine the creative meeting that led to this? Can you imagine the scared conformists who thought the idea was too risky to be pitched to the client? Those that thought this could never be pulled off, that no one would go for it, that people wouldn’t care? Can you imagine the courage of those who conceived of the idea had to push it through the doubters and those that said “we should just do a viral internet video?”

Can you imagine what it would take to come up with something as remarkable as this to market your business? Every time I see something like this I shake my head and give a silent round of applause to the marketers that made this happen. I immediately think how can I do that with mortgages? Where haven’t I pushed and where haven’t I pushed enough? How can I be fearless in my marketing? How can I push past the common place and typical to truly make a unique experience out of our marketing and service offering?
I think that every time a triumph like this is achieved it demands that you as marketers of yourself and business take a moment out of your execution mode to put on the imagination cap – to brainstorm, to let go and think big, crazy, enormous dreams about your business and marketing. Energize your thinking knowing that out there are amazing things being done every day that you can tap in to by refusing to be limited by the obvious.

The exercise is easy in theory. Take your audience, look at their passions and emotions as they relate to you and your company. Then look for the intersection of those passions and emotions with your business offering – determine where you can WOW! them in that wonderful, nebulous, uncharted realm of emotions and go for it! It need not be expensive it need not be grand – it must be amazing and remarkable.

Refuse to be conventional, refuse to simply do what everyone else does, refuse to be mediocre and average – do something amazing. Our industry, your company, your employees, your customers, your soul NEED it now! I urge all of you to take 5 minutes out of the grind; to kick back and dream of the things that could be and to think of one WOW! idea that you’ll implement this week. WOW! just one customer, try just one thing that energizes your soul and makes you remarkable. Push past the doubts and reasons why not and just do it. It will feel exhilarating to everyone involved.