In order to get consumers (whether they are retail or service customers or business-to-business audiences) to notice an business message, many companies resort to loudness and one-upmanship. Neither of these tactics works in the long run.

If your competition is talking loudly and you decide to yell louder, what do you think they will do? Yep. They’ll start to scream. Nobody wins a shouting match when it comes to advertising. And usually you’ll find you even lose a few customers in the impact because they can’t stand the noise.

It’s the same with one-upmanship. If you have to compete on more and better coupons or more and better discounts, giveaways or incentives unrelated to your core product, your revenue per sale decreases as well as your number of sales.

Customers see these types of games as gimmicky, imitation and disingenuous; and they leave. The ones who do stay now view you and your competitors as commodities with no difference except your price. That is a dangerous place for a company to find itself.

The answer to clutter is not more clutter; it’s finding who wants to hear you and speaking to them. So how do you compete if you can’t out yell or out discount your competition? You get rebellious and radical with your advertising.

Do those text scare you? That’s okay. Remember, you’re existence courageous now. You can handle it. Besides, rebellious and radical aren’t dirty words. They will help you draw attention away from your competition without resorting to noisy and insulting your customers.

It’s not most existence outrageous just to get attention; it’s most existence remarkable. An business crusade with a strong rebellious strategy is, by its very nature, different from anything your audience will find from your competitors’ marketing efforts. It’s unexpected. It’s surprising. It’s effective.

There are two keys to creating a successfully rebellious business campaign. The first is the big idea. This intent comes from a strategy that is derived directly from your customers and their relationship with your brand. You arrive at this intent finished a discipline called account planning. We’ll get into the details of both the big intent and account planning in later articles.

The second key to a successfully rebellious business crusade is attention. You can’t gain attention if you don’t learn to identify and then steer clear of the norm. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is or how large your potential market, if your direct audience doesn’t pay attention to your message, your ad budget has been wasted.

Think most these two keys while you flip finished the newspaper or a magazine. Ponder them while you watch TV. You should notice something almost immediately. Most ads today don’t seem to be based on any big idea. Many are so boring that you flip right past them without noticing them. Others get your attention but the ads don’t have much to do with the product so you quickly forget the brand the ad was supposed to sell you. What an opportunity for your brand!

Now, there is a caveat to existence rebellious. Your ads should never be different just for difference sake. The difference should be derived from your brand’s uniqueness.•

This article introduced the second of twelve steps. Challenge yourself, your staff and your ad agency to revolutionize your business program. If you missed the first step, contact the author for a complimentary copy. And, remember, every revolution begins with just one step.