We don’t cost an arm and a leg, we just want your tows . . .
is the ad I heard on the radio this week in Nebraska for, you guessed it, a towing company! I laughed out loud – sorta makes the whole towing process more palatable with a laugh. Okay, probably not, but wouldn’t you rather use that company as opposed to another one? And that’s what marketing using humor is all about – grabbing people’s attention and making yourself different from the other guys or gals. Towing is a boring topic . . .and one that probably gets no attention unless you need it.
This company made it memorable
(at least for me) by making it funny. You can do what they did too, to make a catchy, funny marketing campaign. If I was coming up with this joke, it would be a 3 step process. First of all, I’d make a list of the words in my industry . . .tow, hitch, drive, ticket, miles, AAA, etc. . and then see if there are other things that these words could mean. . tow=toe, hitch=married/ride, miles = inch/foot/yard, AAA = baseball, ticket=??. They also found phrases that we associate with these words . . .toe, the body part. . .like “arm and leg” “give me a hand” “stubbed your toe” “I’d give my right arm”. . and then they connected the two – the similar word and the phrase to come up with the funny. Using this process, they could have also come up witWe don’t cost an arm and a leg, we just want your tows . . . is the ad I heard on the radio this week in Nebraska for, you guessed it, a towing company! I laughed out loud – sorta makes the whole towing process more palatable with a laugh.
Okay, probably not,
but wouldn’t you rather use that company as opposed to another one? And that’s what marketing using humor is all about – grabbing people’s attention and making yourself different from the other guys or gals. Towing is a boring topic . . .and one that probably gets no attention unless you need it. This company made it memorable (at least for me) by making it funny. You can do what they did too, to make a catchy, funny marketing campaign. If I was coming up with this joke, it would be a 3 step process.
First of all,
I’d make a list of the words in my industry . . .tow, hitch, drive, ticket, miles, AAA, etc. . and then see if there are other things that these words could mean. . tow=toe, hitch=married/ride, miles = inch/foot/yard, AAA = baseball, ticket=??. They also found phrases that we associate with these words . . .toe, the body part. . .like “arm and leg” “give me a hand” “stubbed your toe” “I’d give my right arm”. . and then they connected the two – the similar word and the phrase to come up with the funny. Using this process, they could have also come up with some other slogans. . . “we’ll give you a hand AND a tow”. . .or even used other to come up with “even if you’re single we’ll still get you hitched” or “Triple A is the minor leagues, use OUR tow service.” Okay, that last one is maybe not so funny but I’m on an airplane and I’m coming up with this stuff quick, but you get the idea. . . if I gave it some time I could probably find all sorts of funny words and slogans associated with this industry. And you can too.
Whether your industry is
boring or brilliant, you take a look at the popular words in the industry and play off of those – your marketing will get a jolt of funny and memorable.
Jan
www.TheWorkLady.com
www.ComedyEmcee.com