GRASSROOTS | "No Such Thing As New"
"There is no such thing as a new idea. It is
impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort
of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and
curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations
indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that
have been in use through all the ages.”
I think Mark Twain was on the money with his quote above. Whether you are a writer, a musician or a marketer, it's a challenge to truly come up with something novel. Marketers often run into problems when they believe they can, languishing for hours and days, reaching for the New. But as with a carpenter's toolbox, novelty comes in the form of "curious" combinations, applied to specific use cases.
Guerilla Marketing
I remember reading a case study about Harley Davidson. The brand emotionally connected with its customers in a way others only dreamed about. Because of my interest in psychology and sociology, I was fascinated by Harley's H.O.G. Chapters that consisted of proud, incredibly loyal members who'd ride out together to meet at diferent rallies. As if members of a religious institution, many of these Harley owners would make an annual pilgrimmage to the national Harley event. Not too shabby, I thought to myself.
Behind any brand, behind any cult, there is logic–a structure that gives that brand shape. You just have to see how all the parts fit together. So I took what I learned from Harley and gave it new life in Animal. We created the Animal Barbell Club to hearken back to old-school weightlifting clubs of the 60s and 70s. Instead of a community of riders, we created a community of lifters–what we call "Brotherhood" in Animal parlance.
Also known as “ABC” for short, I wanted to associate these individual groups with those basic wooden building blocks we played with when we first started learning our ABCs. At the 500 foot level, these individual clubs represented the basic foundation of the Animal brand–and it put our consumers first. After all, without users, we wouldn’t have a brand. The ABCs were also self-sustaining. With minimal oversight and coordination in Marketing, these clubs could be organically grown. At the peak, there were well over 120 clubs in the U.S. and around the world. The photo below shows the local Philly Chapter of the ABC.
Many of the local ABCs would also plan to gather annually in Columbus, Ohio at the Arnold Sports Festival. The Cage, of course, was the final destination. On Saturday night, we'd rent out an entire gym and hold our special "National ABC" (as seen below).
