Anti-marketing monkeys!

Right - let's face this head-on!

In my last blog I talked about that wonderful poster campaign that EC (the large global language school) introduced to the world at a language fair in London in late August this year. I called it a masterstroke of anti-marketing, or something like that - I meant it, too.

And... I happened to mention, in an unguarded moment, that the London School of English had had a similar effect with something they had done with the market a few years ago - namely, the monkey thing above. As a result of this passing comment, I had several messages asking me to explain the 'monkey phenomena' immediately!

So, here goes.

The London School of English decided one summer to wake up a sleepy market, in a way never done before. And they certainly did, too! They produced a brochure with the cover above, which was steeped in simian lore on every subsequent page (from start to finish). It was so wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, it must have given the marketing manager, who devised the campaign, a sore jaw. It sold English courses nicely, but stepped completely clear of the usual banal cliches that English school brochures are so guilty of. No daft 10 unique selling points (which are clearly not that unique) and no endless lines of deliriously happy students all organismically delighted to be learning the past perfect in massive, sunny classrooms.

This was different. This was great anti-marketing. It was risky, dangerous, ground-breaking and innovative. No one had ever done anything like it before. Monkeys indeed! When it hit the market, it was like dropping a large rock into a very stagnant pond. Suddenly, students, agents and competitors were looking at a very intelligent monkey staring back at them, instead of the usual front-covers of smiling students on sunny days cavorting on lawns (yawn).

What a breath of fresh air! At last, something to make you think and actually encourage you to turn to the inside pages with genuine interest, wondering where this nice monkey was going to take you. Hats off to the London School of English for going for the throat and trying to be different back then. And I loved it.

And that was that. Time moved on...

But then, early this year, long after the LSE monkey had happily hopped up its postmodernist tree, I was introduced to the Milner School of English's monkeys!

This is a great little school in Wimbledon, south London and apparently, has a similarly creative, marketing team to the LSE mob. What a wonderful surprise! The monkeys were back! The Milner website featured a picture of two very academic monkeys, discussing the Milner Free Conversation Club. Again, humorous, tongue-in-cheek and clever. And far, far better than two appalling-perfect students smiling at each other on a bench in some ridiculously sun-bathed park in fantasy land.

Pictures like this get you reading. They pull you into the conversation and make you want to find out what's going on.

So, the moral of the story is this: be different, strange, dangerous and do the thing that most people would be too scared to do! You will be remembered!

And that is the whole point of marketing, isn't it?