Truly Deeply/Madly

The Mys­tery of the Blocked-out Store Win­dow
I was on my Sun­day run the other morn­ing, look­ing for any dis­trac­tion from the headache of the night before, when I came across a famil­iar urban retail sight; the empty store with win­dows blocked-out by news­pa­pers. Almost uni­ver­sally it seems, once a retailer takes a lease, before they even begin their fit-out, the first thing they do is cover the win­dows — often with old newspaper.

This par­tic­u­lar shop is part of a small retail/residential devel­op­ment that has been in progress for the last 12 months, and is located on the cor­ner of a high traf­fic inter­sec­tion. No doubt many other locals and passers-by have the same level of curios­ity as I do to see what shop will be open­ing in this newly built retail space. As I stum­bled past at a slow slog it occurred to me that a great brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion oppor­tu­nity was going beg­ging right there on that street corner.

Miss­ing the Oppor­tu­nity to Make an Impres­sion
With all of the car, pedes­trian and tram traf­fic pass­ing this cor­ner store every day, what a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity the new ten­ants have to cover the win­dows with a great big ad. The win­dows are as large as a bill­board and well illu­mi­nated. For a frac­tion of the cost of the store fit-out, the mys­te­ri­ous retailer-to-be could be actively mar­ket­ing them­selves and their brand to their future cus­tomers. In fact if I were in the new tenant’s shoes, I would have had a go at get­ting the land-lord to cover the cost of the win­dow ad as part of the lease agreement.

This is what we call a Blank Can­vas.
We spend much of our lives work­ing with big brands; defin­ing their rea­son for being — their com­pet­i­tive mar­ket posi­tion, and pro­vid­ing clar­ity around how to bring those brands to life to achieve the objec­tives of the busi­ness. Many of the strate­gies employed by the large and expe­ri­enced brands trans­late across to small and medium sized busi­nesses; some work even bet­ter for smaller enter­prises. Blank Can­vases are one of those strate­gies that are just as effec­tive, if-not more-so for the smaller guys.

A Blank Can­vas is any oppor­tu­nity or chan­nel avail­able to com­mu­ni­cate your brand that is cur­rently not being used by the com­pe­ti­tion. As long as a Blank Can­vas is appro­pri­ate for your brand and rel­e­vant to your mar­ket, it will usu­ally deliver a much higher ROI than tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties thanks to increased ‘cut through’.

Recently we worked with a local home build­ing com­pany called Nava Homes.
Ini­tially we devel­oped their dif­fer­en­ti­ated mar­ket propo­si­tion and defined their brand, but the real high value work was in the trans­for­ma­tion of their mar­ket­ing strat­egy from tra­di­tional chan­nels to Blank Can­vases. As a home builder, Nava had a num­ber of dis­play homes located in dis­play vil­lages around Mel­bourne. The vast major­ity of Nava’s mar­ket­ing bud­get was spent on tra­di­tional news­pa­per ads, aimed at dri­ving traf­fic to the dis­play vil­lages their dis­play homes were located-in. The prob­lem was that as a smaller player, Nava’s ads were buried deep in the real estate sec­tion of the local news­pa­pers. The first pages were filled with double-page spread, full colour ads from the big­ger home builders who’s ads were aimed at guess what… dri­ving traf­fic to those very same dis­play villages.

There was no way with our clients mar­ket­ing bud­get that Nava could ever own the news­pa­per adver­tis­ing space — that was a brand can­vas crowded with big play­ers. What we iden­ti­fied as a Blank Can­vas was the oppor­tu­nity to own the car parks at the dis­play vil­lages. Our strat­egy was — ‘Let the big brands drive home buy­ers to the dis­play vil­lages, but once they arrive, let’s dis­pro­por­tion­ately attract their atten­tion and direct them to our Ital­ian Fam­ily Liv­ing Nava Homes.’ Whilst Nava’s mar­ket­ing bud­get would never be enough to stand-out in the new­pa­pers, it was ample to make a big splash at the dis­play vil­lage carparks — which were rel­a­tively Blank Canvases.

A Strat­egy from the Big Brands for Brands of Every Size
All brands; B2B, B2C, retail, man­u­fac­tur­ing, pro­fes­sional ser­vices, not-for-profit, multi­na­tional, small or medium sized, have the poten­tial to unlock the power of their own Blank Can­vases, and increase the ROI for their mar­ket­ing and brand com­mu­ni­ca­tions. If you’d like some help iden­ti­fy­ing the Blank Can­vases for your brand, let us know — we’d be only too happy to be of assistance.

David Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist.
If you’d like daily updates of our brand think­ing, you can fol­low me on Twit­ter here.

Tags: Blank Canvases, Brand Agency, Brand Communication, Brand Communications, Brand Design, Brand Experience, Brand Strategy, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne, Guerilla Marketing, Marketing ROI, Marketing-Innovation

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 9:23 am and is filed under Experiences, Small Brands Big Personalities, Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.