Struggling for inspiration? Looking for a unique way to connect to customers? Consider topical advertising.

It doesn’t require money. It just requires wit.

This age-old, and common, practice is where the canny advertiser gains recognition through piggy backing off a popular event or day of the year. It is a form of media promotion designed to highlight specific content.

Think Valentine’s Day ads for jewellers and restaurants, flag-waving Australia Day window displays in butchers and hardware stores and Foxtel’s “Happy EOFYS” ads.

And it can be extended to topical current events or occurrences.

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a sign outside a New York drycleaners offered a 50% discount for cleaning blue dresses.

During the Olympics, a small bakery in London was found to have infringed the Games’ logo copyright by putting in its window display five large, round bagels. When the bakery was forced to take down the bagels, a rival bakery stuck up its own window display – five square bagels – to the mirth of all passers-by.

And a couple of stand-out topical press ads you may remember:

  • Veet’s – ‘Goodbye Bush’, run at the inauguration of President Obama and the farewell of George Bush.
  • Michael Hill Jeweller – ‘Solar Eclipse’, using the image of a solar eclipse to promote their brand. The advert ran for two days after the event.

Topical advertising takes effort and requires a good idea to support it. But done properly, it can be extremely effective in building and maintaining a loyal customer base.

Rowan Dean (an award-winning creative director, advertising media specialist and social media commentator) offers the following advice on smarter topical marketing:

DO:

  1. Be witty – Humour is a quick and easy way to grab people’s attention and establish your personality and your brand’s values.
  2. Be consistent – Once you have a good idea, stay with it, even if it requires extra effort.
  3. Be true to yourself – Allow your personality to infuse your brand personality where possible.
  4. Be relevant but imaginative – The trick in all topical advertising is finding a clever or unusual way of linking a specific or local event to your particular brand values or product attributes.

DON’T:

  1. Be offensive or divisive – The aim is to get people to like and admire your efforts, not to offend people so they walk the other way.
  2. Be too complicated or contrived – Nobody likes a “try-hard”.

April 2013