Marketing ideas you wish you had thought of

Have you ever stumbled upon a marketing message that makes you think, “Why didn’t I think of that?!” Pinny Gniwisch of ice.com calls those “A-Ha Moments.” These Eureka! moments bring you — and consumers — out of the lull of a steady stream of marketing messages. They make you stop in your tracks. They surprise you. These moments were the focus of “The A-Ha Moment: Creative, Out-of-the-Box Marketing Concepts by Retailers,” a lively, interactive session that rounded out Tuesday’s Critics’ Corner sessions.

Gniwisch and Jacob Hawkins of Overstock.com took a look at some of their favorite “A-Ha Moments” using a classic ranking scale of 1 to 5 stars. Here were a few of them:

- The next time you’re standing in line at airport security, take a moment to examine the security buckets. Zappos is putting marketing messages in the buckets that you deposit your shoes and bags in for the X-ray machine. While the idea is innovative and new, one session participant noted that she would probably forget to order shoes once she reached her destination and got on a computer.

- Southwest Airlines held a contest called “Are you Nutty Enough to be Southwest’s Next Blog Star?” Gniwisch thought that the blogging medium is well-suited to the personality-filled, casual brand, but Jacobs was curious about the ROI on blogging.

- Green done right. Patagonia let users explore the roots of its products virtually. The company knows it has passionate customers who care about the environment, and it allowed them to trace the origins of a shirt from the cotton sourced abroad to the finished product.

One “A-Ha Moment” that didn’t fare so well in today’s ranking systems? Putting a variety of logos and brand messages on eggs in a carton. The main complaint from Jacobs? “You don’t want people smashing your brand!”

What ads have stopped you in your tracks lately?