What You’re Not Doing is What You’re Doing

You’ve created a product, a service, a brand, a message, an avenue for which you will distribute your message. But what you’re not doing is making your product or service the talk of the town. Your product or service may have the best features, benefits, price, value, etc. but if you are not delivering your message in a way that will make people react and share, and ultimately buy your product or service, you’ll never know how much better your company’s profit could be.

Case and point: Living Essentials’ 5-Hour Energy. They’re right here in the Detroit metro area, and props to the company for being quite successful in their sales. They’re at the top, and seem to be reigning over competitors like Monster, Red Bull and other “energy” drinks. Better benefits, better features, better product. What’s not better? The message. It’s nothing to talk about. It’s boring. Even daytime TV ads like Attorney Karl Collins “he is good” ads get people talking, because the ads suck. Is having an ad that people talk about because it sucks better than having an ad that no one talks about? Us industry experts will likely agree, yes.

While their target audience is the booming age of the internet, the twenty and thirty somethings, similarly sized companies are taking advantage of the tools at hand to market to this audience and creating “buzz”. Carl Sperber, creative director at 5-Hour Energy, says its campaigns are targeted to adults instead of teenagers. And with more adults using social media than teenagers, the share-worthiness of their ads should be their main focus. Best of all, they have the budget. In 2010, they reportedly have a $60 million budget for advertising. There’s nothing you can’t do with that amount of money.

I’m excited to see if there will be more creativity spur from this Detroit rising company. I’d love to see a local company, other than Ford or GM, be undeniably successful.

Who am I to say these things about 5-Hour Energy? I’m the owner of a Detroit Advertising and Marketing Agency. I deliver unleashed creativity in my ideas, put them in motion and return enormous results.