Is 2011 the year of Deviant Marketing?

One of the best things about participating in Twitter chats like #blogchat on Sunday nights at 6 p.m. Pacific Time is meeting new and interesting folks like our next guest blogger, Joshua Duncan. Take it away, Joshua.

Have you ever aspired to be deviant? Surprising as it may be, I have spent the last week thinking hard about it.

Now, before you get the wrong idea, let me be quick to add that this has all been done under the umbrella of marketing strategy (as opposed to many other directions).

A recent AdAge had a lessons learned article from the 2010 IDEA conference and one of the take-always was on fostering a “deviant culture.” The idea being that it takes a deviant culture to foster boundary-busting behavior to standout from all the noise.

So what exactly does this mean?

I have to admit that I am still trying to wrap my head around it. Being deviant in my mind is about crossing the line. It is about going past interesting, past outrageous, and past the point of feeling comfortable.

I spent some time looking for examples of deviant marketing that would expand my definition and the only ideas that I could come up with were guerrilla-marketing stunts. Some of these stunts definitely got people talking, but not always in a good way (see the Light Bright bomb scare of 2007 example).

Is this really what it takes to standout in 2011?

Something about this just doesn’t feel right. Being deviant seems like a firecracker strategy where you get a quick burst of attention and then have to move onto something else. Being deviant doesn’t seem very sustainable.

The challenge still remains that it is becoming tougher and tougher to stand out and get attention in this hyper-media drenched society. Being straight laced is more often than not going to appear to be dull.

Is it possible that what they are really trying to say is to be interesting?

Some of my favorite brands have done an amazing job baking personality into their marketing, products and company culture. Take a look at New Belgium Brewery or Trader Joe’s to see some great examples of companies doing it right.

Just because you are in B2B marketing doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun with it. Check out what Cisco is doing with their social media efforts on the B2B side to liven up their communications (have you seen their rapping intern?).

Marketing legend, David Ogilvy, had this to say about a company’s image,

You now have to decide what image you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities and they can make or break them in the marketplace.

My vote is that before you head down the path of trying something outlandish just for the sake of it, spend the time working on your company’s personality and incorporating it into your message. If done right this can become a core differentiator in the marketplace and can be a lot of fun!

So what do you think?

Bio: Josh Duncan is a marketing practitioner currently working at Zenoss, an enterprise software startup. Josh can be found writing about marketing and customer experience on his blog and on Twitter.

Photo credit: Code Arachnid