🤢What's “gross-marketing” & how to use it

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Week conquered. Weekend reward coming, but first, today’s Main Thing→ “gross marketing.”

First time hearing that term? Me too, but I don’t know what else to call it. Don’t worry, you don’t need a barf bag, and you’ll walk away with unique ways to promote your wares or at least grab attention. 

Then, we’ll close the week with This Week’s Marketing Wrap-Up.

Appetizer: The product that was a no-brainer upgrade & hit $2.4 billion.  

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The Main Thing

What’s Gross Marketing?

Every brand wants to duplicate Liquid Death’s success but most are scared to roll the dice on uniqueness like Liquid Death does.

I don’t see Pepsi or Whole Foods having the guts to run a “lick a sweaty man’s back’ TV commercial. 

That kind of advertisement is gross marketing. 

Something most brands would not want anywhere near their product. 

The “suits” believe anything icky will stick to their brand. Yet, fans of Liquid Death are chugging gallons of that overpriced canned water and never once thinking the water tastes like a big man’s sweaty back.

“Brand safety” is way too cautious most of the time. 

Now, I’ve got two examples of gross marketing that would be guaranteed to grab attention. One for a product. One for a service.

Guaranteed! But 99.7% of companies would never use anything like these stories to get attention for their brand.

Why? Again, people in charge would think the grossness would stick to their product. You might even agree with the “suits” after you see the examples.

Exhibit A: Gross Marketing for a Product

This was a legit story about a decade ago. 

Young man got hit by a train (he survived somehow). Dude was walking on the tracks wearing headphones. 

Over-the-ear type that keep the sound out. 

You know dang well how loud a train is when you’re near one, right?

Not only the sound, but it’s a violent rumbling too.

Yet, this guy never heard the roaring train, loud horn, and never felt the shaking tracks.

Terrible accident, but says a lot about those headphones.

• They kept all the noise out

• The music was all the user heard

• No distractions

• The guy was in his own world

Pretty desirable features in noise-cancelling headphones, huh?

Exhibit B: Gross Marketing for a Service

Heard a retired Boston detective interview on my ride home Tuesday. 

She had wild stories. 

One was a case where a pregnant woman had a baby in a bathroom, then dropped the newborn baby in a sidewalk trashcan (baby was rescued by a passerby or I wouldn’t use this story).

No idea why she didn’t drop the kid off at a hospital or church. Anyway… this woman delivered her own baby by herself. In a freaking bathroom.

After she was arrested, the cops checked the bathroom. And get this…

Clean as a whistle. No sign of a baby being born there.

How’s that possible?

The bathroom was in the home of one of the woman’s customers. She was his cleaning lady.

Get that? She was so good at cleaning that you couldn’t tell she delivered a baby in the bathroom. 

Even being exhausted from delivering her own child, she brought her A-game when it came to cleaning.

Now, you don’t want a psycho like her in your home who’s ok with dropping a helpless baby in a garbage can. But if you want your home spotless, that is the kind of mindset you want in a house cleaner.

The Bottom Line

Both those examples are ridiculous, despite being true events.

And no, Clorox isn’t gonna hire that lady as an influencer to push their bleach products. 

However, if you want to point out the best features of your products and services, you should look for the following to help you highlight those features:

• Extreme news events

• Extreme use cases

• Extreme customers using your products in outside-the-box ways

Any of those can give you ideas for ad campaigns that stand out. 

And standing out is the only way to get anyone’s attention. Attention is insanely scarce today, in case you haven’t noticed. 

So, for those who think the examples I used are too extreme… keep dreaming of having Liquid Death type success while playing it super-safe.  

Ok. Done with that and now comes This Week’s Marketing Wrap-Up…

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Shane McLendon - Copy Kingpin

"The theory of marketing is solid, but the practice of marketing leaves much to be desired". ~Philip Kotler