Marketing when the rubber hits the . . .

I hope you'll forgive me, but I want to unroll this post slowly.

Really good marketing is about finding a new way to get people to think about a product. Interruption advertising was enough in the 1950s, when the world was glued to its television sets, but in the 21st century people are pretty much desensitized to that tactic. A firm marketing strategy doesn't necessarily need to stretch the truth, but it should find a new dimension to talk about.

That's why I'm terribly impressed by the FitKit, which can be downloaded or ordered by malemail by anyone interested in buying custom-sized condoms. It's great in a bunch of different ways.

• It's a product that still automatically generates a head-turn just by marketing it
• They've identified a biological fact that other manufacturers have largely ignored (my college sex ed professor liked to pull one over her foot and up to her knee to show that none of her students were too big to use one), despite clear evidence that there is an unmet need
• They point out that a properly-sized condom is less likely to fail and is more likely to be worn in the first place
• They use a sizing system that doesn't automatically play into male competitiveness, because it's not sequential (although every guy, and some women, that I've showed it to were curious how I measured up)

This campaign downplays titillation, which is good because we know that sex sells and that it's more effective if the rest of us make the jokes. It promotes birth control and disease prevention. It provides an opportunity for privacy, a far cry from the days when a visit to the drugstore could be a blessing or a curse.

Census Bureau shows us all how to market with education

Randy Aimone, my Duct Tape Marketing coach, talks quite a bit about effective advertising. After all, businesses can easily break the bank getting the word out about their services, and it's nice to be able to get an idea of how much return an advertising investment will yield. In particular, Professor Aimone (yes, he is indeed a college professor) warns how interruption advertising just doesn't have the bang for the buck that it used to carry.

Interruption advertising is something you see all the time, whether or not you know it by that name:

• Television commercials (which use technology to actually louder even if they're not legally louder than the program)
  
• Newspaper stories that are continued after two pages of furniture store sales (honestly, do furniture stores just hang a "going out of business" sign outside on opening day?)
• Radio spots that make you cringe (auto dealerships, anyone?)

Today I heard about a brilliant piece of marketing that is sure to be effective because it's not an interruption - and surprisingly, it comes from an organization that isn't exactly known for innovation: the US Government.

The Census Bureau partnered with Telemundo, a large Spanish-language television network, to reach out to this underserved demographic. A character in one of the network's most popular soap operas will be getting a job as a census worker, and spend several episodes explaining how and why people should participate. Both partners have something to gain: the Census Bureau hopes to alleviate fears that illegal aliens will be reported if they are counted (it's not part of their mandate, so they won't be), which will probably help Telemundo's ratings, since census data are used by Nielsen to place those oh-so-powerful boxes in homes (and the more Spanish-speaking homes have Nielsen boxes, the more Telemundo can charge for interruption advertising on its programs).

The idea is innovative, unobtrusive, and will probably be very effective for both partners. Kudos to the person who pitched the idea, and double-kudos to the people that didn't reject it out-of-hand because "that's not the way we do things."