I ask you, is the word 'Free' taken? Well, in a way it is since Seth wrote his latest book. And same's the case with the Pug in the Hutch ad, the champagne glass in Sex in the City, Austin Powers' hairy chest, or the cover of the book that you're now reading. Once it's a out and out in a big way, it's taken. And then if you make a serious attempt at being of the same kind using the same fascimile or the same approach in the same fashion you are washed out. That's how it works(does'nt work) for so many ads, so many books, music albums, movies, shops, cars, or simply us...everything and everyone and everyone involved in everything, just trying and trying hard to outdo each other mowing the same lawn in faster and cheaper and savvier ways.
Why I bring this up is this. A guy who read my proposal on www.changethis.com, told me I made sense!(The guy who had the patience to read the whole damn 'briefer'. Honestly I din't know one was s'pposed to paste just a breather into the topic at hand)Anyways, so he didn't understand why I called it "Free Gift".....a gift is free anyhow, isn't it?
Genuine question.Well here's why:
- As I said, it's about what I fail to concur from the book it's aimed at(a pretty good read though). I could've called it "The Gift", but then betraying the counterattraction thanks to which I wrote it, veiling the very cause of the germination of the alterthought, plus giving up piggybacking on the rehashed title of a popular book that's already "taken".
A campaign, brand, commercial or anything can standout so long as it isn't just a rip off from the first. If the cause why the second appeared on the scene is because of the ideas it got from the first or because the first did well, that is good so long as the second has more than this cause to exist. So long as it has a reason to exist and exist uniquely and differently from the first. The easy part is not to concur with the first. Tough is to back it up with reason.
To have substantial reason for it's rhyme.
- Is a gift truly free? Or does it exist in the unseeable font-3 "conditions apply" marketing doodad at the remotest corner of the print or commercial ad. You would'nt leap two centimeters on a gift jazz no more, not because you are'nt interested but because there are just too many gifts around and commonly how each has a 'catch'!
A trite example would be the numerous charging regimes(easily over a hundred in any country) each of the cellular operators douche you with. Each scheme offering you great bundling and free talktime and messaging and the world...but magically each amounting the same to the dimes and nickles. And the Gift does come, that is if you do not find thineself 'locked up' somehow for the next two years in that special gift offering.
It's remarkable how much mathematics, planning and head scratching goes in offering myriad such offers that 'must' all converge to be the same, just like Tarantino'ian parallel stories closing on in the end.
Only here, the truth is a mystery not to be revealed.
Get the picture, Dwight?
Comments