6 Ways to Succeed Advertising a 'Low Interest' Category

This is our industry’s equivalent of “I got stuck in traffic” or “last night’s beer must have been off.” It’s a flimsy excuse that is used to explain a lack of creativity in categories as diverse as financial services, logistics, household products and B2B.

The sentiment ignores the fact that no sector can really claim to be high-interest: all marketers should remember that consumers have better things to do with their lives than ponder the minutiae of their brands. But even if you accept the notion that some categories are a little drier than others, this shouldn’t be a barrier to creativity. In fact, a lack of intrinsic interest surely makes smart thinking and original execution even more important. And when you think about it, it’s actually easier to stand out against a dull background, so if you find yourself in that kind of category you should count your lucky stars, not curse your misfortune!

With that in mind, here are six ways to stifle consumers’ yawns in supposedly sleepy sectors.

Ladder up

Tires are boring but your kids’ safety isn’t. The same dynamic applies to many other supposedly low-interest categories, so your first step should be to explore what the bigger, emotional benefit is. Obviously, there’s a risk that you stretch the connection to breaking point (like when brands position their accountancy software as ensuring world peace) but there’s usually a credible territory that you can ladder up to without sounding like Miss World. What’s the more interesting role that your brand plays?

Strip it back

Alternatively, strip your message back to the essentials. This goes against the modern desire to fill any communications vacuum with a “highly involving” “backstory” that’s “always on.” Maybe we’d be better to remember Voltaire’s advice: “The secret of being boring is to say everything.” I reckon he would have loved Old Spice’s simple promise that you could “Smell like a man.” How could you clear away all the detail and distil your message to something equally pure?

Say the wrong thing

Here’s another piece of advice from the past: “One way to prevent the conversation from being boring is to say the wrong thing.” That was how the theologian Francis Joseph Sheed spiced up his sermons—but it could equally apply to advertising. In fact, Persil’s “Dirt is good” is a great example of this. In three words it turns a dull category into an interesting point of view. What’s the most heretical thing you could say in your sector?

Do the math

Another way to shake things up is to find a killer stat that reframes the importance of the category. For instance, tonic water is traditionally the boring part of an alcoholic drink. But British tonic brand Fever-Tree has turned this assumption on its head by arguing that “If three-quarters of your drink is the mixer, mix with the best.” How could you redo the math to persuade people that your product is more important than they think?

Create a character

One of the most tried and tested ways to succeed in a low-interest category is to create a high-interest character. The insurance sector alone has given us the Geico gecko, the Aflac duck, the Comparethemarket meerkat and Mayhem. There’s a huge body of evidence that shows these vehicles are unusually effective and yet they’re falling out of favor because they’re often seen as old-fashioned. Even Dos Equis’ “most interesting man in the world” has been fired. But that just leaves a vacancy for you. How can you create a fascinating figurehead for your brand?

Have fun

Finally, if in doubt, just have fun. Apologies if this is stating the obvious but, again, there is a wealth of data that shows humor is particularly effective in low-interest categories—and a ton of research that shows comedic advertising has been in decline for the last 20 years. The pandemic has simply accelerated this, with advertisers opting for a generically worthy tone that ignores the fact that humor is more important in a crisis, not less. How could you buck the trend and get people laughing in your super-serious sector?

Of course, some marketers will always protest that these strategies won’t work in their market because they operate in a uniquely mind-numbing industry. But if you’re one of them, let me take you on a trip to a little place called Boring, Oregon. It’s a community of 8,000 souls, just south of Portland and it does a pretty good of living up to its name.

But get this: Boring has twinned itself with a village called Dull in Scotland and a place called Bland in Australia. Together they market themselves as “The trinity of tedium” and have generated a huge amount of coverage, all over the world. It proves my point that there’s no such thing as a low-interest category: you can make anything interesting, even if your raw material is Boring, Dull and Bland.

How to Keep B2B Marketing Simple and Focused