IN BAITING A MOUSE-TRAP WITH CHEESE, ALWAYS LEAVE ROOM FOR THE MOUSE

Gulf Business Review, Gulf News Online, Communicate Magazine

I think you’ll find the saying useful whether you work in marketing or you’re an account person or a creative person, whenever we work on a new campaign or idea for launching a new product, we usually try to find the one thing that makes our product desirable, the USP, the thing that gives our readers, viewers, users Goosebumps, the thing that make them run to our showroom or store, make them click on our banners, buy our book, share or content, the thing that make competition look weak... We look for the bait.

Most of who work in advertising hate to admit that what we do is more or less setting traps – and not in the dark medieval evil sense – but to catch a mouse you need a trap, to make the trap work you need a bait. That’s simply how marketing works. It’s built on curiosity.

Sometimes you know what your product have, and the USP is obvious, it makes your job easier, you don’t have to scratch your head so much to make it work, and that’s good, though because it’s so obvious and easy to catch the first thing you do, you put it directly in your customers face, which in due course makes it un-attractive, too flashy, too obvious, too mainstream, you automatically eliminate all sense of curiosity that the customer may have.

That’s when you have to remember this saying:

"In baiting a mouse-trap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse"

Make room for those who are interested to ask questions, to think about it a bit, let them discover the benefit, they will feel rewarded and would want to show it to others, they would want to show the world how smart they were when they made a discovery on their own.

I’m not talking here about a teaser campaigns here don't get me wrong, that’s too obvious. I’m talking about not putting all your cards on the table before the game even starts.

We all know how horrible it is to know the ending of a movie before watching it, in many ways that’s how customers feel when you reveal everything for them, you will worry about competition and you’ll ask the question “What if some one beats us to it?”

If you have a good story to tell, a strong product, with enough suspense you don’t need to worry about that, by the time they figure it out, you would be long gone.

So choose wisely what you want to share, and when you want to share it. It makes a big difference.