Do you recall the Tango soft drink advertising of the 1990′s? In the event you don’t know or remember, Tango was a little sized colas brand in the UK competing against the power of Pepsi and Coca Cola.
They produced advertising along the theme of “You know when you have been Tango-ed” which were outrageous Candid Camera style ads where members of the general public would be anonymously filmed, approached in public and then slapped by a Tango dressed character.
This outrageous kind of advertising was fully different to the normal style of soft drink advertising.
At the turn of the 21st century, a wine brand called Stormhoek started putting cartoons onto their bottle labelling which was also incoporated into their corporate web design. Standard labels were always professionally designed. Stormhoek broke an industry taboo however they stood out on the supermarket shelves and noticeably increased their gross sales.
Another example of breaking an industry taboo was a female toiletry brand called Dove who created deodorants, body washes, and moisturizers, hair and facial care products. Historically advertising for these kinds of products contained super slim models. Dove broke the industry taboo by employing real folk in their ad campaigns which they called the campaign for real beauty.
Breaking such a taboo helped them to better connect to an aging population and noticeably enhance their sales and market share.
A further example of a business breaking a business taboo was Dell PCs. Traditionally PCs needed to be sold through distributors and thru normal retail outlets. Dell took great danger by eliminating each middle man and sell the PCs right to the ultimate user via their internet site, nationwide newspaper and television advertising. Dell became the best selling P. C brand at the time as a result of breaking this norm.
Far too frequently we see struggling firms chasing strategies the way in which the market sector expects. So many start up and net corporations today have no heritage or experience in a sector that they approach the market with a fresh pair of eyes and do something that breaks a taboo.
Occasionally this is the only real way to grow, develop and succeed.
Molly Jamieson writes about corporate web design for Platonik. Their site features many different corporate web design examples.