One of my all time favorite movies is Grosse Pointe Blank. Aside from the great acting and dialogue, there are some great quote gems hidden within. One such example is a scene where Marcella (played by Joan Cusack) is talking on the phone. She’s dealing with a mishandled order in her normal no-nonsense way, then when that call concludes, she clicks back over to a conversation with a friend of hers that goes something like this:
“…it’s not going to be a boring soup! It just, that’s just the base! You put the chicken in, you gotta add other flavors. Carrots and celery are just a base of a soup!”
Why has this line always stuck with me? Because it is a great analogy for so many other things – like marketing.
Before going all out with things that are out of the norm, it pays to make sure you travel there from a good base. Cover the tried-and-true. Are they going to be groundbreaking efforts? Probably not – but they should not be ignored.
For example: if you’ve got a new book coming out, it sounds great to run a giant scavenger hunt where you encourage your readers to go all over the place and take photos of things that relate to your book in hopes of winning a prize – but you also want to be sure you take advantage of simpler things like GoodReads giveaways, NetGalley reviewers, Fb posts and ads, etc.
Those are the base of the soup.