Maybe it’s time for marketing creative to stop thinking big and starting getting mini.

From the very beginning of our careers in marketing, we’re always being told that “think big” = “better.” Big ideas get your clients’ products noticed. They advance your career by getting your own ideas noticed. And they justify big budgets (whether you really need them or not).

Maybe it’s time to think again, to “think small.”  A few good reasons:
•    The current b2b marketing emphasis is on small business.
•    In today’s economy, most marketers are working with smaller budgets.
•    The Internet, and especially social media, help marketers efficiently target small audiences.
•    Smaller marketing initiatives can be green, using fewer resources.
•    Many marketers are discovering the advantages of working with a smaller agency (full disclosure: self-interest at work here).

But there’s one more way to think small….and this is the big idea.  To get your ideas notice, miniaturize your creative executions. For example:
•    Remember making dioramas in grade school? In the UK, East Coast Trains is reviving the idea to promote its “miniature” fares.
•    A different way to do dioramas – in Melbourne, Australia City Search took them out of the ad and onto the street.
•    Be smart and small with a half-size Smart Car wrap. Stand out among all the other marketers wrapping full-size Hummers and city busses with their promotional messages.
•    Use a few square inches to get noticed with a creative business card – like this graduate student’s electronic interactive card, and this security consultant’s card with built-in lockpicks.
•    When other direct marketers are sinking their hopes and their budgets into oversize dimensional mailers, consider sending something small, like this world’s smallest direct mail piece for Volkswagen Passat.
•    Billboards are big. But this report from New Zealand shows they don’t have to be, to be effective communicators.
•    And finally, the idea that claims to be the world’s smallest ad (and probably is): An Olympus mailer sent to scientist prospects for high-end microscopes, with a customer survey that could only be read through a microscope.

Give it a little thought: When everyone is shouting, why should you expect your yell to be heard? Try whispering instead. Because smaller and better can be better than just plain bigger.

Now I’m really confused.

I was sitting there sipping my morning coffee, searching through the “usual suspects” websites – Ad Age, Wall Street Journal, Promo, Brandweek and others – looking for ideas that might help our clients, or inspire a blog post, or just make me a little smarter

8:49 AM: At BtoB I saw this headline: “SMBs Adopting Social Media As A Key Marketing Tool.” I learned that “Small and midsize businesses are aggressively using social media to promote themselves” and “45% also have a presence on Facebook and Twitter with the express intent of promoting their businesses.”

9:50 AM: Same day, second cup of coffee, still searching. On Bob Bly’s Blog I spotted this headline: “Small Business Says Social Networking Doesn’t Work.” Interesting, I thought, as I read that “more than three out of four small business owners have not found social networking sites to be helpful in either generating new business leads or expanding their businesses during the last year.”

Hey! This contradicts what I just read!

Who should I believe? The BtoB article reported on a survey 2400+ selected small businesses by Internet research company Internet2Go and social network MerchantCircle. Bob Bly’s post was a response to a Marketing Charts report on Citibank telephone survey of small businesses.
•    I’ve always enjoyed, respected and usually agreed with Bob Bly’s take on marketing, especially his recurring demand that social media marketing demonstrate some kind of measurable, meaningful business results.
•    As far as I know, Citibank has no stake small businesses using or not using social networks for marketing. But MerchantCircle may have such a stake, because it’s a social network for small businesses.
•    On the other hand, Greg Sterling makes a very good case for why MerchantCircle/Internet2Go’s research trumps Citibank’s.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The mark of a first rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

I guess my mind is not first rate. I’m really confused. Won’t you please comment, and help me make up my mind?

Heaven? Or the hot place? We’re anxiously waiting to fill in the blank for the big agency/small business local marketing initiative reported in the August 31 Advertising Age. It’s directly relevant to something our agency is doing right now.

Pop-up retail is a marketing practice that’s been around for several years. Now RCKR/Y&R in London has taken the concept one step further, with a storefront satellite agency to serve “Mom and Pop” businesses – sellers of pierogi dumplings and frozen banana treats, a tattoo parlor, a liquor store and more.

Robinson & Maites is already working on a similar marketing initiative for a Chicago-area guitar store and school. It takes advantage of our experience marketing to small business. (It also lets us indulge our personal musical interests – the R&M team includes a guitar player, a banjo player and a hammer dulcimer player.)

How much can Goliath help David?
So we congratulate RCKR/Y&R on their efforts to help their small business neighbors. But will big advertising agency capabilities be relevant to the needs of very local small businesses?

Now that we’re developing marketing for a small business (instead of marketing to small business) we’re discovering a different world. For years we’ve worked with Fortune 1000 clients to develop local marketing targeting small business. They’re usually an extension/reinforcement of a national brand program, template programs designed to work in all markets, to achieve both national brand objectives and generic small business objectives.

Different challenges vs. deep pockets
But now we’re working with one specific retailer, with very specific objectives, in one very tightly defined geographic market. The new challenges include:
•    Cost-efficient targeting and media selection. How do you identify and reach guitar players and prospects only, in one small geographic area?
•    Execution resources. The obvious challenge – small businesses just can’t afford to throw money at their marketing problems.
•    Minimal economies of scale. Just one business bears the cost of program development; it can’t be amortized across multiple similar businesses.
•    Local market knowledge. We have to identify opportunities are in seven or eight specific communities, not in “suburbs” in general.
•    Multiple audiences for same product.  Teen guitar players and adult guitar players respond to different kinds of message. But it doesn’t make sense to run multiple campaigns.
•    Need for results now. Image-building is secondary for small local businesses. Their marketing must generate ROI – traffic and sales – fast.

This is a work-in-progress report
For both RCKR/Y&R and for Robinson & Maites. We’re pretty sure we’ll reach “heaven” (or at least a pretty nice place) with our small business client. We’re not so sure about theirs.  Big ad agencies have always aimed their efforts at long term perception change, not quick behavior change. And they’ve always had deep pockets to help them do it. That’s why we wonder how well RCKR/Y&R’s efforts will succeed against these challenges.

This promotion is not.

Small businesses are like stray dogs. That’s what Office Depot seems to be saying with the theme of their current promotion: “Adopt A Small Business Contest.” And that’s just the most noticeable of all the marketing mistakes in this dog of a promotion.

Today, many large businesses are targeting small business customers. Some of them make mistakes; it may be because they’re just learning how to approach this market. But as a retailer with a long record of service and a physical presence in local small business communities, you’d think that Office Depot would know better.

Why do we hate this promotion? Let us count the ways:

1. The main theme is insulting, and irrelevant too
Start with the “Adopt A Small Business” theme. Not only is it potentially insulting, it’s irrelevant. Nowhere in the promotion is anyone invited to do anything vaguely like adopting a homeless dog, or a stretch of littered highway, or a small business in need of help.

2. Theme overload is confusing
In addition to “Adopt A Small Business,” the promotion website shouts out “Survival Of The Smartest” and “Small Business Self-Bailout.” Was someone trying to satisfy all the creative factions at Office Depot? Which idea are we supposed to pay attention to? Are these themes supposed to make small businesses feel good, let alone participate in this promotion?

3. The prizes are boring
The contest prizes have powerful appeal for small business people…the ones with insomnia. Each prize is all Office Depot: A $1300 gift card, a year of technical support, and another $110 gift card for copying/printing/shipping. We can hear the snoring starting now. Yes, we know that high value is important in prizes. But excitement is far more important, and these prizes are self-serving, and about as exciting as a ream of copy paper. We detect multiple business units at Office Depot, each trying to be sure they have some “presence” in the promotion.

4. Participation involves way too much work
The idea seems to be that small business people have to work hard. So let’s make them work even harder. To enter the contest, Office Depot tells customers to “upload a 2-minute video that explains the smart things your small business is doing to survive these challenging times, and how Office Depot is helping you get through them.” How much time and effort are small businesses willing to waste, for an off chance to win $2000 in office supplies? The one thing small businesses need most is more time to focus on their business.

5. Support communications are just plain dumb
There’s a long history of very funny comedy duos: Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Cheech and Chong , Burns and Allen and more. But Office Depot’s Matt and Matt will never be among them. Imagine a couple of fresh-faced, entry level assistant brand manager types pretending to be small business owners, trying to do stand-up comedy. In the online video introducing the program, one Matt recites the contest rules while the other Matt makes dopey remarks. Nice try, but not funny. In another video, Matt and Matt narrate as a female small business owner beats up on a “Recession Aggression” beanbag chair. The point of this video is….who knows?

All this leads to the ultimate question – a modern day, marketing-oriented version of  “Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” To which we answer: “Well, the rotating panoramic in-store display graphics were kind of cool.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t make up for this dog of a promotion being all bark and no bite. Maybe it’s time Office Depot got a bit smarter.

Apologies, to Mick pictured above. He’s too good to be associated with this “promotion”, but he is darn good looking…and a smart dog.