Too cute by half is a quarter as effective
- Fri, March 11 2011
- Filed under: Cause-related marketing
Every day, I get several emails from PR firms pitching me some client’s act of charity. Most are inconsequential, a few are bewilderingly bad, and some are too cute by half. Many of the last category are from corporations.
By “too cute by half,” I mean companies taking an overly clever approach to marketing their social good. Here’s a rule of thumb: if you have to take an entire paragraph to explain your campaign and how it benefits charity, that’s not good. If consumers have to think really hard to grasp what you’re asking them to do, then you’re hurting yourself. And if it is real stretch to figure out what a company has to do with a cause, that’s also a problem.
Why not be intuitive, elegantly simple and authentically clear?
What do you think? I can’t help but feel too cute by half is probably a quarter as effective as plain old clarity.