Here is an article written by Geoffrey James for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.
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Marketing talent is rare enough, but marketing genius only happens once or twice in a lifetime.
Here are more than a dozen men and women throughout history who changed the face of marketing, creating entirely new concepts, or bringing good ideas to full fruition. If you think you might be a marketing genius, or just wish you were one, these are the luminaries whose thinking processes you should learn to emulate. Although, in some cases, you might want to pick a different industry than the ones these geniuses chose.
[Actually, here are five of the 16. To read the complete article, please click here.]
John R. Brinkley, Inventor of Broadcast Advertising
Hard to believe it now, but radio was once originally considered akin to a public library, a cultural asset free of commercials. All of that changed when Quack Physician John Brinkley built his own radio station in 1923 to hype his cure for male impotence, which consisted of implanting goat testicles in the human body. Brinkley combined entertainment (booking some of the great country music acts of his day), bible readings, and a strong sense for the memorable turn of phrase. His most memorable catch phrase: “You’ll be a ram-what-am… with every lamb.” Now THAT’s infotainment!
Mary Kay Ash, Inventor of Network Marketing.
Network marketing (recruiting independent-agents to serve as distributors of goods and services, and then encouraging them to build and manage their own sales force) had been around for several decades when Mary Kay Ash founded her world famous cosmetics firm in 1963. But older companies, like Amway and Weight Watchers, failed to do what Mary Kay did: turn the network marketing concept from something on the fringe into an integral part of America’s middle-class culture. She did this by tapping a great underutilized workforce: the housewives who were sick of the June Cleaver act, but didn’t want a traditional 9 to 5 job. Her most brilliant move: awarding top sellers pink Cadillacs, thereby transforming them into mobile advertisements for the company’s products. Beautiful.
George Wilkes, Inventor of Eye Candy
The journalist George Wilkes, along with his friend Enoch Camp, founded the world’s first girlie magazine, National Police Gazette, way back in 1845. The Gazette was packaged as a trade magazine for law enforcement, but featured numerous engravings and photographs of scantily-clad actresses, strippers and prostitutes. These pictures were often facing pages of advertisements, which in those days were dull by comparison. Later, of course, the eye candy ended up in the ads, but Wilkes was the first to use sex to sell an unrelated product.
Andre Citroen, Inventor of the Electric Billboard The founder of the Citroen automobile firm was always something of marketing genius. He was one of the first auto execs to sponsor car races, for instance, and he promoted his car plant to tourists as “the most beautiful in Europe.” However, his real masterwork was renting the Eiffel Tower in 1925 and having the Citroen brand name emblazoned with in 125,000 incandescent lights. The sign remained in place until the company went bankrupt in 1934, partly because of the incredibly high electricity bills. (The first act of the new owners was to flip the off switch.) The lesson here: no matter how brilliant the marketing, it’s got to pay for itself somehow.
Conrad Gessner, Inventor of Viral Marketing Viral marketing consists of creating a trend that carries along by word of mouth, creating demand for a product that previously wasn’t on anybody’s radar screen. People tend to think of it as an Internet phenomenon, but it’s actually far older. Some scholars believe it began way back in 1559, when the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner waxed lyrical about the beauties of the tulip — a flower then not well known in Europe. His remarks eventually spawned (in 1634… thing move a bit slower without the Web) what’s now known as “Tulipmania.” During the craze, some bulbs sold for the contemporary equivalent of several million dollars. One tulip fancier actually murdered his manservant for eating a particularly prized bulb, believing it to be an onion. Now, that’s brand loyalty with a vengeance!
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Geoffrey James has sold and written hundreds of features, articles and columns for national publications including Wired, Men’s Health, Business 2.0, SellingPower, Brand World, Computer Gaming World, CIO and The New York Times. He is the author of seven books, including Business Wisdom of the Electronic Elite and The Tao of Programming.