Creation is a painful, lugubrious process marked by virtually endless trial and error, immense expenditures of time, resources and effort, and at the end of the whole procedure you’re essentially left with no guarantee of success. If you’re completely worn out by driving your brand’s online marketing forward through the application of (gasp!) creativity, you should be aware that there is an alternative that is being used by a growing number of marketers: Replication.

Just appropriate your major brand competitor’s style, approach and even their name, with the absolute minimum number of tweaks possible to avoid an avalanche of subpoenas, and laugh all the way to the bank. A tiny movie studio named Asylum Studios has been turning tidy profits doing just that, and their experience can serve as a guide to any online marketer who wants to consider abandoning the route of innovation (as well as standards, ethics and all that troublesome stuff) in order to clone their competitors for a fast buck.

Schlockfest Mockbusters Produced on Dry Cleaning Budgets

Asylum Studios has become a legend in Hollywood for their ability to crank out full length motion pictures for a total budget that would barely pay for the dry cleaning bill on a major movie set. For around a quarter million dollars, Asylum manages to slap together direct-to-DVD schlockfest mockbusters with titles, covers and promotional material that closely resemble currently premiering Hollywood movies, such as Transmorphers and The Day The Earth Stopped. They even produced a War Of The Worlds and managed to place 100,000 copies in Blockbusters around the country on the day that the $132 million Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise version opened in theaters. Of course what viewers got for their DVD rental cost was a movie that was done on less than 1/500th of the budget and looked even worse with no recognizable faces, even less recognizable talent and special effects that looked like a 13-year-old had been let loose with a copy of Autodesk Maya. However, those little facts did not make the producers lose any sleep since Asylum Studios works on the caveat emptor principle combined with an ensconced attitude that it’s all about the Benjamins.

Replicate to Your Heart’s Content, as Geico Can’t Patent Geckos

The Asylum Studios model can readily be applied to any small business online marketer engaged in a David vs. Goliath struggle against a multinational corporate competitor that is able to command multi-zillion dollar marketing budgets. All you have to do is brand your product in a way that is specifically designed to confuse the consumer. If you’re marketing a watery cheap ketchup you can name it Heintz; pitch a cut rate clumpy makeup branded as Estee Louder; or push a bottom bin network card under the Cissco brand. You can continue the leger de main illusion all the way to your website and social network presence. After all, Pepsi doesn’t own red blue and white color schemes any more than Geico can patent geckos.

Cloning to Achieve the Maximum Customer-Confusion Factor

So on your way to plastering images of a bald muscular dude with his arms crossed for your dollar store cleaning chemicals; a clown for your burger joint; and a bipedal tiger for your breakfast cereal, you might as well clone the entire style, color scheme and layout of those legitimate brands to achieve the maximum customer-confusion factor. By the time the customer realizes that their Garmen GPS uses maps that are even worse than Apple’s iOS6, and that their kid has managed to swallow a knob from their Fishy-Price toy, you’ve got their money and you can just shred their complaints letters. Serves the chumps right anyway for getting sucked in by your transparent ploy.

If you then believe it makes you no better than the Chinese counterfeiters that produce cheap plastic handbags stamped with a Yves Sam Laurent logo or crank out pot metal Rollex wristwatches, then that’s something you’ll have to settle with your conscience, not your bank account. So transmorph from being a legitimate online marketer of reputable products that provide tangible value and cash in today!