Thursday, September 20, 2012

Can you market the most amazing crash from Pikes Peak International Hill Climb 2012?

On the topic of marketing, whoever designed the roll cage for Jeremy Foley and his co-driver for Pikes Peak Hill Climb that went right off the turn called Devils Playground in a Mitsubishi Evolution 8, really needs to be published around the world for the idea of making something so life saving for an automobile.

Where have you seen that you can drive your speeding car off of a cliff that you would not even walk down, both driver and passenger make it out alive and well from flipping 10 times down hundreds of feet, landing on serious boulders, and ending up with just a couple non-life threatening injuries?

Remember the Mercedes ad where they flip a C-Class in the desert about 4 times and it lands on all fours? That was an ad to support the design of Mercedes' safety. Roll your Benz, and drive off like nothing happened; kind of like a cat.  That is true marketing for the people with money to buy an all-in-one safe, sporty, and luxurious car.

So make a list of your companies product without using bullet points in a brochure, and by separating them, put each one of them in a 3-5 paragraph article about how it benefits the customer or user. Where there is benefit, there is success. And success can be measured not just in sales, but in a voice.

The idea behind creating PR with original content is to create a story, a strong voice, about your company by using a product or service as an avenue.  A story is one of the strongest ways to promote anything.  Like this video of the car crashing off the cliff; its a story, and an extreme one at that.  Your company, in relation to this video, should tell why they are in the business of saving lives, keeping people safe, and making it fun along the way.  Explain "Why" and "How" you made the product, while staying away from fluff, or the history of the company because that is what your website is there to do, not your press release.

When a video like this comes along, the creativity must explode with ideas to benefit your company and your customers, because that is really what it is all about, "the customer."

There is a marketing piece here. Mercedes even did it before this.

Reports say that both guys were flown to a hospital but are expected to make it out with just a few injuries that were non-life threatening.