One morning, my daughter Lucy, who was six at the time, asked me a question out of the blue. "Daddy?" she asked with a thoughtful look on her face, "When’s the day before tomorrow?" I hadn’t had my first cup of coffee yet, so it took me a moment to process the question. "That’s today," I said. And then it hit me. I smiled. "Lucy, you just invented a whole new way to say the word today."
"Oh," she said, matter-of-factly. Then she went back to watching Elmo and thought nothing more about it.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about it. As a copywriter, I appreciate it when someone finds a fresh new way to say something familiar — even if they’re only six and didn’t intend to. "The day before tomorrow" is so much more thought-provoking than "today." Today is here right now, a deadline that you’ve either met or missed. The day before tomorrow feels like today hasn’t arrived yet. It offers hope: You still have time to start exercising, clean out the garage or accomplish something great at work.
Later that morning, as I sat in front of my computer writing copy for a next-generation surgical tool, I suddenly thought about my daughter. In her innocent way, she reminded me of something important about creative thinking: The need to simplify your mind and look at things differently. I had just written the word optimal for the billionth time. It was a lazy, reflexive, unimaginative choice of words. How could I look at it with new eyes and come up with something more inspiring?
By opening your mind and looking at things upside down, sideways and inside out, you can bring optimal perception-altering creativity to every aspect of marketing and communications. Take a look at the vast ocean of strategies that stress speed, flexibility or breadth of offering. You can find a more unexpected, effective strategy by looking at your customers from a fresh new perspective and gaining an insight nobody’s ever seen before. I’m reminded of an old truth in marketing:
Customers aren’t in need of 1/4-inch drill bits. They’re in need of 1/4-inch holes.
The saying illustrates the importance of focusing more on your customers’ needs than your product’s amazing features. This was brought home once when one of our clients launched a high-performance instrument to the pharmaceutical research market. When their sales goals were disappointing, they looked at the problem from a different angle. Instead of trying to refocus their product message to the same audience, they realized that maybe they weren’t speaking to the right audience — academic researchers. Only after studying this market in-depth did they move ahead with a strategy — a strategy built on a unique convention-shattering insight.
These days, even out-of-the-box thinking needs to be more out-of-the-box. More daring. Audacious. Cranium-blowing. Remember, it’s not too late to start rattling the status quo. After all, it’s only the day before tomorrow.
Tod Brubaker is an associate creative director / copywriter at Seidler Bernstein. He has extensive experience in general consumer and medical B2B advertising and communications. Tod’s work has won numerous industry awards, including Cannes, Addy, Rx Club, and top honors for print from the Johnson & Johnson James E. Burke Marketing Excellence Awards.