03/22/16

The Nebraska License Plate: A Long Overdue Lesson

People will purchase $2,000 plane tickets to see the Louvre or the Sistine Chapel. Nothing attracts quite like beauty. It draws massive crowds.

But in a different case, just hours ago, Nebraska unveiled something less than beautiful—the new license plate design—which has drawn crowds online not to praise it, but to ridicule it.

A likewise-embarrassing event also happened in 2009, when Nebraska displayed license plate designs online and put them up for public vote. This, of course, attracted Internet trolls coast-to-coast. In an act of organized mischief, a flood of votes poured in selecting the worst design option—which arguably succeeded.

Big deal, though, right? It’s just a thin aluminum plate. People will get over the issue.

Not to a seasoned marketer. To them, a botched plate is tantamount to thousands of missed opportunities.

Our license plate doubles as a tiny, yet noteworthy, billboard installed on countless vehicles, many of which travel out of state like over-the-road ambassadors. It partially represents who we are as Nebraskans.

So:

How cool would it be if our plate was designed impeccably, in an effort to show the true beauty and expressive power present in Nebraska, thus converting folly into opportunity? Imagine the statewide and nationwide press we’d get (we really would). We can convert a thin slice of aluminum into gold.

Imagine if we applied this approach to every piece of marketing we presented through our organizations instead of throwing it to the wind? That’s how we’ll draw the right kind of attention, like with the ’94-’95 Huskers: hard-working talent.

Perhaps that’s the lesson here, like with any marketing effort: “Good enough” should never be good enough in Nebraska. Hire talent that represents your mission and your voice to exaction. Because people admire beautiful things.

Nebraska can shine. It’s just a matter of tapping into our best talents. And Nebraska’s got plenty of it, ready to go like a rodeo bull in a cage.

Jim Hoke, Senior Copywriter

As the Senior Copywriter at OBI, Jim works with the creative team to develop ideas that sell and captivate. He uses his 10 years of experience to ensure that we are always on-point and our messages are never soft, dull or commonplace. Jim’s kind-heart and eloquence with words allows him to always deliver the best results for clients.