Tuesday April 8 8:20 AM
What does a meat thermometer have to do with house painting? It has to do with brains and cement. If done right, using a juxtaposition of two seemingly disparate concepts can help your marketing campaign. A while back Target had an ad campaign that used two otherwise unrelated objects that had something in common, whether a similarity in names, colors, or shape. The ad campaign worked pretty well because it showed the diversity of what Target sells, and it took advantage of the momentary confusion of viewers trying to figure out why those two items were in the same ad. The image of the Target brand was cemented in their brain in that extra few seconds and the 'Aha' moment that followed.

See how that works? You probably thought that brains and cement normally only have one context, and not a pleasant one. Of course, now you have a more unpleasant image cemented in your brain, and you still don't know about the meat thermometer.

When TigerOx Painting came to me looking for a new winter marketing campaign, we sorted through and rejected several ideas as too costly or not interesting enough. I sat down and brainstormed more ideas. What was their goal? To do more interior work. When? During the winter months. The holiday season. When people bake turkeys and hams. And they use meat thermometers to make sure their meat won't kill them.

That lead to an interesting visual with a close-up of a meat thermometer stuck into a baked turkey. That concept was rejected because a close-up photo of a baked turkey is actually pretty disgusting, and to save money they wanted to go one-color which would have rendered the image unintelligible. But they liked the tagline I'd written: "This holiday season let TigerOx make sure your interior is done right," as well as the meat thermometer concept. With a few tweaks the thermometer was on its own but instead of the types of meats displayed with the temperatures at which they're cooked was a list of the TigerOx services.

It was a weird idea, but it worked--it was eye-catching and relevant. It worked really well in black and white, and was easily repurposed to a variety of ad sizes.

Though now I can't stop thinking that I need to figure out an ad campaign based on brains and cement. That would be some graphic design.