Just Push The Easy Button
The Staples “Easy Button” advertising campaign is one of those rare pieces of communication that works itself into the public vernacular. It reminds me of Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” slogan with Clara Peller back in the ‘80s. That line even found its way into the presidential campaign of Walter “Fritz” Mondale.
It’s human nature for people to want the easy button. These days I know plenty of marketing people who would like to have one. There’s all that competition out there. You have CEOs, CFOs and boards of directors asking for accountability in marketing. There are time-crunched, empowered consumers ready and enabled to ignore or avert boring, irrelevant messages. You can hear the marketer’s cry, “Hey, this is tough…let’s just push the easy button.”
Unfortunately, if there is an easy button in marketing, it is difficult to find. It still takes having or building a great brand that stands for something. It still requires finding a Purple Cow to set you apart from the crowd. It will always require compelling targeted messages (like the Easy Button) that break through the cacaphonous marketing noise.
Business communications today compels a paradigm shift that what you do in marketing is worth measuring. It’s a paradigm shift because too often people just want to add “the measurement thing” as frosting on the old cake. Building accountability in the new marketing era often requires preparing a fresh cake from scratch with wonderful ingredients you already possess and others you can add.
If you do all these things, people will say you and your company make it look easy. You’ll know better.
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Comments
Greg Ness' thoughts, as well as Seth Godin's, on the Staples "Easy button" got me thinking about how that applies to sales. Would a salesperson rather have an "easy" button or a "certain" button? If you're a sales professional, think about that…
Nice post - the easy button would’ve died if it weren’t for consumers - I blogged about it here if you’re interested: http://beingpeterkim.typepad.com/bpk/2006/02/staples_easy_bu.html
Couldn’t give too many details to protect the innocent, but thought readers might find the story interesting.
Thanks Peter,
It is fun to see “the rest of the story” on your link. I think there are many ideas like this that grow organically. It was a great concept to begin with, but this is a case where the consumer was a primary participant in helping it reach its full potential.
Greg
Thing is, I’d respect the whole “Easy Button” campaign MUCH more if they’d used proper grammar in constructing the ads.
http://www.spynotebook.org/bonnie/archives/2005/08/grammar_police.html
From my blog:
“The line in the new Staples back-to-school ad is: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easy button for school?’
COME! ON! SUBJUNCTIVE, anyone?!?
Oh, the irony that it’s a back-to-school ad! Auuuuugh!!!!”
Grammar police, signing off. ;)
Bon,
Maybe the copywriter was a Beach Boys fan (doubtful):
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong…”
Greg
They could have made it _easier_ to understand what it is. I read that page twice. “You’re going to install something on my desktop? What now, what does it do? Is this just a shortcut to your website? Why do I want this?”
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Thank you
Manon Hutton
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