WHAT IF THE RISKIEST THING YOU'RE DOING IS PLAYING IT SAFE?

There’s this quote I really love: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” And in marketing, that’s not just a motivational quote. It’s straight facts.

At STRONG PR, Marketing and Events, we believe the best campaigns are the ones that make people stop, look twice and actually feel something. That doesn’t always mean spending more money. It means thinking differently.

And honestly, from as far back as I can remember, I’ve always tried to think differently.

I remember a science project at primary school about volcanoes. Most of the kids arrived with paper mâché volcanoes with a hidden Eno, ready to explode. Meanwhile, Mika decided to choreograph a dance piece and become the lava of the volcano… erupting through the classroom to Michael Jackson’s Beat It. Slightly chaotic? Absolutely. But memorable? Also yes.

And that’s kind of the point.

A recent example of this was our work with Volvo Trucks South Africa at NAMPO Harvest Day. It was Volvo Trucks SA’s first year back at NAMPO since Covid, so we knew the stand couldn’t just be another exhibition space. It needed to feel welcoming, memorable and worth spending time in.

Instead of focusing only on the trucks, we looked at the full visitor experience and created multiple touch points across the stand.

One of the highlights was a collaboration with another one of our clients, Novus Media, who handed out copies of Die Papier newspaper to guests visiting the stand. It created conversation, added personality to the activation and showed how two completely different brands could work together naturally.

We also gave out complimentary coffees to enhance the hospitality experience. Sometimes the smallest details make the biggest impact. A good coffee slows people down, creates a moment to connect and gives visitors a reason to stay a little longer. And if you were at NAMPO this year, you’ll know those icy cold mornings made that coffee feel even more magical.

And then there was Axel, the scarecrow.

We created a fun Instagram competition encouraging guests to snap a picture with a real scarecrow, made from some of my old fancy dress clothes and tag the brand online. Simple? Yes. Effective? Absolutely. It gave people something interactive to do, encouraged user-generated content and extended the campaign beyond the physical stand itself.

That’s what out of the box marketing is really about. It’s not about doing random things for attention. It’s about finding creative ways to make people engage with your brand in a more human way.

The best campaigns are the ones that make people stop scrolling, stop walking or stop rushing for a second and say: “Damn girl, this is cool.”

Sometimes pushing the envelope isn’t about spending more money. It’s about thinking differently.  That’s the kind of work we love doing at STRONG PR. Not just executing a brief, but interrogating it, pushing it and finding the idea behind the idea.

If your brand is ready to stop blending in, let’s talk.