(FORTUNE Magazine) – When Madison Avenue bigfoot Sam Hill talks about great marketers, he's worth listening to--and he doesn't just talk about the usual suspects like Coke. Some of the best marketing ideas of all, says Hill, come from people who are forced to innovate for one reason or another and thus tend to come up with nontraditional marketing approaches. Madonna, for instance, who manages to keep her "brand" permanently in the public eye by changing her image every few years, is one of Hill's favorites. Here are a few other examples of nontraditional marketing successes from Hill, who recently left his post as chief marketing officer at Booz-Allen & Hamilton to become vice chairman at D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles.

--Snap-on Tools. If you hung out much in auto dealerships or garages in years gone by, you may recall Snap-on's famous promotional calendars featuring scantily clad young women holding Snap-on's high-quality, high-priced tools in suggestive positions (discontinued, to the dismay of the company's overwhelmingly male customers, in 1994). But that's not why Hill views Snap-on as a marketing hall-of-famer. Rather it's the micromarketing strategy that the company introduced in the 1920s. First, Snap-on targeted mechanics and other professionals who are passionate about their tools but have little time to shop for them. Then Snap-on's founders came up with the idea of bringing the tools to the customers in a nifty van on the same day, once a week.

When the Depression hit, the company introduced a payment plan to allow cash-starved customers to continue buying its products. Says Hill: "Snap-on found a new way to reach a group of customers who weren't being served and created a way to make its high-quality products affordable." The strategy is still working: Snap-on's revenues have more than doubled since 1986, from $670 million to $1.5 billion. No wonder that Snap-on's competitors have lifted the shtick.

--Providian Bancorp. This credit card marketer targeted a different segment of people than its competitors did. "Providian used data in a way no one ever has before," says Hill. "They set up a marketing department that looks unlike any marketing department that has ever existed on this planet--no brand managers, no product managers, no market research people--and it worked."

Providian collects data on such things as spending habits and payment histories, and mines the info to identify individuals who yearn for credit and are able and willing to pay for it. The company uses proprietary computer modeling to help determine each potential customer's risk of default. Providian has made this work: Over the past ten years, profits have risen from $9 million to $228 million.

--Iams Pet Food. Back in 1946, when Paul Iams founded the company in Dayton, pet food was cheap, not too nutritious, and sold exclusively in supermarkets and the occasional feed store. Iams ignored the traditional channels and went to regional veterinarians, breeders, and pet stores. When current owner Clay Mathile joined the company in the early 1970s, he took the strategy national. Today pet store shelves are packed with a variety of premium pet-food brands. Says Hill: "In hindsight I find it amazing that Ralston Purina and others didn't spot this market, but none of them did. A couple of guys in Dayton outsmarted a whole bunch of very sophisticated marketers." From 1982 to 1996, Iams' annual sales have soared from $16 million to $500 million.

--Du Pont. Long before "Intel Inside," NutraSweet, and other now-celebrated "branded ingredients," there was Du Pont's Teflon, which was trademarked way back in 1946 and has been marketed expressly as a branded ingredient since 1964. Since then, Du Pont has succeeded in transforming ingredients like textile fibers into household names such as Lycra and Stainmaster. Says Hill: "People think that the idea of branding ingredients is new, but Du Pont essentially created it decades ago."

--Erin Davies