The Power of Boring: What Toothpaste Can Teach us about Marketing Strategy

Image credit: William Warby via Unsplash

A friend of mine started a toothpaste company. 

He got a bit of stick for it. “Why toothpaste? I can’t imagine anything more boring,” people said.

What they didn’t get is that he didn’t want to launch a company that was interesting, he wanted to launch one that was successful. 

He chose toothpaste because it was boring.

Because he knew that no one else wanted to do it. So that meant his chance of success was higher.

And after a few years and a lot of hard work his company is flying. 

There are clear benefits to being ‘boring’. 

Whether you’re launching a business, or working in marketing, an ability to focus on areas that others discount as too dull can give your brand or client an unfair advantage. 

As an industry we’re obsessed with shiny new things. We were dazzled by the Metaverse and then seduced by AI. 

We’ve welcomed blockchain, one-to-one messaging, chat-bots and AR into our bizarre pantheon of Marketing gods.  

We want back-slappingly clever, industry-first, PR-friendly, award-winning, champagne-in-Cannes campaigns. 

We want to hack behaviour. 

To leverage cutting-edge tech. 

To do something profoundly and inescapably ‘new’.

Sometimes ‘new’ really is better, because the technological advantages or financial incentives add up in its favour. But more often than not, a better-trodden path is the quickest route to success.

So why do we favour the ‘new’ so much within marketing?

Some of it is driven, often subconsciously, by a self-serving desire to get innovative work on CVs and in Pitch Decks. Some of it is fuelled by Novelty Bias, the natural human tendency to think something new is inherently better than something older. Some of it is caused by a misunderstanding of a concept called First-Mover Advantage.

Many assume that First-Mover Advantage is a hard-and-fast rule, but in fact it only holds true in certain situations, and you also often see a First-Mover Disadvantage.

After all, Apple didn’t make the first smartphone, Tesla didn’t make the first electric car, and the first UK TV ad was run by Gibbs SR Toothpaste, a brand long-since lost to the sands of time.

Being first can be risky and expensive and you don’t get the key benefit of learning from others’ mistakes and successes. When planning media, it’s crucial to assess your goals and check you’re not putting too much budget towards testing.

The problem with doing the new and trendy thing is that because it's so desirable, everyone wants to do it, so the price goes up. From a media planning perspective, less ‘sexy’ media channels often provide more cost-efficient reach than their trendy competitors and give you a chance to steal market share while your competitors busy themselves with the latest fad. 

So instead of looking at your Threads strategy, what if you reappraised Direct Mail, or daytime terrestrial TV? 

There are oceans of untapped potential within media that some marketers don’t want to touch because they’re thought of as ‘boring’ or ‘tired’.

In an industry obsessed with innovation, it takes bravery to be boring. But times are tough for a lot of brands at the moment, and they need their marketers to bring this bravery and show the value of tried-and-tested, brilliantly boring marketing.

The Toothpaste Method… 

Try the three-step Toothpaste Method for marketing planning:

1. Write down the problem you’re trying to solve. 

2. List the potential solutions and order them in terms of how ‘sexy’ they are.

3. Go the whole way to the bottom of your list and find your ‘toothpaste’. 

It might be boring, but it might also be the best way to solve your problem.