“The Febreze Effect” — Some Content Just Stinks

To the average American college student, doing laundry is a right of passage. — Wait. Don’t leave. I promise we’ll get to some valuable marketing insights later. Still with me? Good.

I started doing laundry well before college, but I assume others during this time face domestic challenges they’ve never handled on their own before. While I got a head start making regular trips to the laundromat in high school, my experience didn’t didn’t make those trips any more efficient in college and they definitely didn’t inspire any more enthusiasm for the task. So, when Febreze, a commercial perfume you spray on dirty furniture and laundry, entered the scene in the early 2000s, busy (or lazy) college students like me rejoiced.

Instead of making a weekly trip to the laundromat, suddenly you could skip a week by hosing down your disgusting jeans with perfume and instantly make them April-fresh.

The name Febreze and the marketing that went into it are genius, if you forget about the fact that the product does nothing. (The website claims it kills 99% of bacteria, but if you’ve actually ever worried about bacteria on your clothes, please seek help immediately.) Febreze is described as an “air freshener,” which it is, but everyone I knew back in college used it to spray down their gross clothes and even grosser futons.

As a result, eventually, the once, “April-fresh” fragrance of Febreze became associated, in my mind, with the stench of unwashed fabric. (Sorry, P&G.) I’d go to a buddy’s house whose dirty clothes sat in a pile on the floor and from it reeked the chemical stench of manufactured freshness. Febreze stunk.

That’s the way I feel about a lot of social media and digital marketing tactics these days. In the beginning, when I saw a video thumbnail show up in my feed that showed, say, a still from a security camera, a clerk with an open register, and a red circle drawn around the clerk’s hand, it got my attention. What’s up with that hand?! I thought. Click.

Today? I’ve seen so many red circles drawn around so many random hands, it signals, cheapness. Those once interesting videos are now low-value to me, because its surface has been “Febrezed” with this cheap, overused tactic to make it seem more interesting than it actually is. Next.

So, continuing with the metaphor, how do we, as creatives and marketers, keep content fresh?

The answer is simple: be talented at making innovative content and be talented at convincing marketing teams to take risks.

The latter is probably more important than the former here, since most people in content creative go in with a basic interest in making new things and delight when something innovative makes it through. Marketing is all about metrics and performance — And 99% of the time, what performs is, literally, tried and true. Being in the 99-percentile is a pretty sweet place to be for a lot of stakeholders, but even that is a lofty goal. To really break through and be a game changer — to say, dream up that wild, new, thumbnail innovation that suddenly audiences can’t resist clicking or tapping — takes guts and, more, it takes the skill to convince your client or marketing team to go along for the ride.

So how do you convince people to take chances? Easy. Speak their language. Find “comps,” that is, “comparable” examples of, say, fresh thumbnail creative approaches that have worked in the past and position your idea among them in your deck. (You’re obviously making decks to communicate with your partner teams, right?) Putting your new ideas next to other (proven) ideas elevates them to their (proven) level of success. Following that slide, you should immediately provide metrics. Metrics, I say! Everyone loves numbers. Adding numbers that go along with your proven comps make partner marketing teams or clients quantify the potential of your new idea.

Now, all of the sudden, taking a risk doesn’t seem scary. Now, because looking at the numbers, your idea seems like an opportunity — An opportunity, that, if they champion (and it is indeed a success), will make your partner teams, look like innovators to their partner teams (*cough* *cough* …revenue).

So, help your marketing teams stop spraying Febreze on stale content and do the hard work of actually heading to the laundromat once in a while and scrub your creative until it’s fresh.

Also, buy Febreze. (And please continue to hire me, P&G.)