Marketing that makes you go hmmm

How often do you receive, hear, or see an advertisement that just completely confounds and confuses you? Probably more often than the companies who employ these marketers would like. It makes me go hmmm, but not in a good, thoughtful way, more like a who the hell would approve this kind of way.

For example this afternoon I received this email from a comedy club that I had once submitted my name to in hopes of winning free tickets to a future show.

This was the whole email and the title of it was "Yuk Yuk's special Announcement"

Sooooooo, I can surmise from the local service provider that this is a new television station but other than that it really tells me absolutely nothing. The email was also just one big image which I have now copied to make fun of them for not knowing how to market, and it did not click me anywhere. Not to a page dedicated to the television channel or anything. I watch a decent amount of television and i've never heard anything about this channel, I haven't read anything online about it or seen anything in a newspaper.

As far as I know, this is the first effort they have put into marketing this channel. Fail.

Confusing your customers

To write, direct, and produce a 30 second television commercial is expensive, then you get into placing it on television and the costs continue to rise higher and higher.

So why would you waste your companies advertising dollars on something that doesn't explain a competitive advantage of yours, or even really explain what your offering your customers.

Exhibit A: Ramada worldwide




At least there is an offer in the second ad that may help explain what the advertisement is for. What is their message supposed to be though? "Do your thing"
Do you get a lot of scottish kilt wearing business people that like to ride bulls as guests at your hotel? Is that the niche market your targeting with these ads? Because to me you seem to be advertising to just-graduated frat college people that are starting out in the business world and want somewhere they can crash after a party. If that is the message, well then I guess well done. But to me instead of making a couple of crappy 15 second ads, why not create a full 30 second ad that will actually grab peoples attention and tell them why they should stay at your hotel.

Compare that to the Holiday Inn Express commercials, which use the same sort of angle in their ads of not talking about the hotel but rather the person that would stay in it. However, Holiday Inn Express does a lot better job of getting across the message of why or who would stay at their hotels - Smart people. They are telling their audience that their hotel is a no brainer.



The Holiday Inn Express team obviously spends a lot more money on creating their commercials but they are getting a lot more return on their investment than Ramada is in my opinion.

Crying wolf

How often do you see a car advertisement that doesn't tout "Best Deals of the Year", "Sale on Now" or "Now is the time to buy". In fact, there is even a radio ad playing right now that i've heard multiple times that goes a little something like this:

"Sometimes with all the car ads saying "Now is the time to buy" it can be tough to know when the best time is to buy. But this time we mean it, now is the time to get to your Mazda dealer!"

Really? That's what you came up with?

People are completely numb and dull to these car advertising tactics nowadays - they are old and played out. The car companies have cried wolf one too many times and the consumer is onto their tactics. Maybe these have worked in the past but if a company like GM or Chrysler want to actually start gaining traction in the market place maybe they should take a drastic look at their marketing/promotions ideas and come up with something creative for once instead of the tired, old status quo.

The new age consumer is much more cogniscent of marketing, especially old school tactics that companies have been running out for decades. I can't wait for the follow up commercial that touts "Employee pricing on now".

"But people come to our lots when we say sale"

Well maybe you should start from the bottom up and start creating better cars that people enjoy, don't get frustrated with, and will tell all their friends about. Create a long term sales, marketing and production strategy instead of letting your production/design fully determine the marketing strategy.

Just a thought. But what do I know, i'm only a consumer.

Marble: The official cheese of Kliff's Notes

Are you going to go out and buy a block of marble cheese now that you know it is the "Official Cheese" of the world-famous Kliff's Notes blog???

No? Well...shit. Good thing the cheese people aren't paying me then I guess.

This blog post is based on me walking into my local Subway and noticing on the door that Subway is now the "Official Sandwich of the BC Lions". I almost turned around and left, more because I dislike the CFL and the BC Lions than the sandwich shop itself. But do sponsorship dollars, like Subway no doubt had to spend to get this lofty title, spent on these type of sponsorships really work? Will I ultimately buy Gillette deodorant because it is the "Deodorant of the NHL"? Nope, not a chance.

Now there are obviously other parts to these sponsorship deals - exclusive mention on team/league websites, programming, etc. - but the whole "Official so and so" seems like such a joke way to explain things. Sponsorship that is more directly related to the sport/league/event makes sense to me, ie. "Blackberry, the official way to act like your working when really your sitting on your ass eating cheetos" or "Depends, the official diaper of long bowling" works fine for me. But the official sandwich of a football team? Nope, I just don't care.

Microsoft using their customers for more than feedback

Over the past couple of years Microsoft has launched a number of different advertising campaigns and some of them have been incredibly successful, thanks in large part to the use of an adorable little girl


However, none of their advertising ever seems to live up to the stylish, cool Apple advertising. So, most recently they have been using the "We listen to you" sales tactic in their advertisements. Not a bad idea. Let your customers know that you listen to them and value their feedback. Good concept, but as I kept seeing these customer-centric ads I could'nt help but feel like something just wasn't quite right.




Then it hit me.....they are using their customers as scapegoats! "Windows 7 was my idea". So when Windows 7 goes wrong like so many of its predecessors (Vista, XP, etc) then Bill can just point right back at the people complaining and blame it on them. It's pure evil genius! No wonder he is much richer than I am.

You know you've done your job as a marketer when..

When your campaign can make another marketer realize that they need your product then you have officially done your job as a professional marketer.

I realized this after seeing a recent Sensodyne commercial on TV. The commercial was nothing flashy, funny, or attention grabbing, what it did was tell me the benefits of the product and hit the right target market - me. Sometimes marketing can seem complicated, trying to grab peoples attention with a fancy new guerilla campaign featuring monkeys released into the city with a fancy website you designed painted on their backs. But sometimes, it's just as easy to stick to the old mantra of tell your target what you are offering them and what the benefits are to them. Make it look professional and show them you have knowledge in the area.

That's what Sensodyne did, and that's why I use their toothpaste.

This is an older commercial but still follows the same format as the commercial I saw.



Have you thought about dumbing down your marketing and just getting to the point of what you have to offer your target?

Cialis commercials come up limp

As most people in the marketing world know Cialis, Viagra, and other pills aimed at adding some pop to people's peckers have restrictions on the type of things they can say and do in their advertisements. This has led to some amazingly creative work from Viagra and to a lesser extent Cialis.



But some of the latest Cialis commercials are more puzzling than interesting, funny, or attention-grabbing. First they had one featuring a guy at work sitting on some scaffolding (I can't find the commercial on youtube) and then all of a sudden the scaffolding starts moving and being pulled down roads back to his house where his "lady friend" is watering the garden or something. They are clearly going for a symbolism-type commercial but I am totally missing this one.

Then they came up with this

cialis morning from Me on Vimeo.

Here's my idea for the next Viagra/Cialis/Levitra campaign.

A man is rummaging around in his record/CD collection. He picks up a new disc/record and looks at the back of it. He throws it over his shoulder. More rummaging ensues. Again he picks up a disc, looks at the back, thinks about it for a moment and then tosses it over his shoulder. More rummaging. He finds another disc, and a broad smile crosses his face. He removes the disc and puts it in the player. Cut to his wife reading in another room. Marvin Gaye, Let's Get it on, begins to play loudly and the noise enters the room the wife is in. A broad smile crosses her face. Close with the standard Viagra ending.

BAM! That's how its done Cialis.

Is Blue a little red of Green?

Something popped into my head the other day as I was bombarded by green-vertising.

How did "Green" become the word/colour/brand for environmental awareness?

It's like there was never a choice. Green was always the answer, it symbolizes nature afterall. Trees are green, grass is green, plants are green.

But if you're blue, aren't you a little bit pissed off that you were never considered? Blue symbolizes the water, the sky, and cleanliness/freshness. All things that are being attacked by the "green"house gases, pollution, and other unfriendly aspects of this earth we inhabit. When looking at an image of earth from outer space there is more blue on the planet than green, yet Green was the ultimate choice. Maybe it's the connotation of "blue" meaning sad that ultimately won the battle for Green, but wouldn't a colour that was sad better show how the earth felt about the lack of caring for it?

To me Green feels like the Paris Hilton of colours - Using any and every opportunity to get it's name used in the tabloids, television or any other kind of media. It will sell out it's good name to any company to try and promote itself.

"Hey Green, Walmart will turn off their store lights at night if you'll let them use your name."

"Done!"

I bet Blue would be a little more cautious about having their name bandied about all willy-nilly like.

Maybe i'm just getting sick and tired of every company talking about how "green" they are though. Especially these companies that have realized they can save money by being "green" and then try to spin it like they are doing it for the environment.

You may be green, but ultimately you haven't gotten the "Blue" stamp of approval yet.

Great casting can make lasting impact

I don't know that I have ever seen a Banking commercial on TV that has actually made me think about switching banks.....until I saw the Ally commercials in Canada. Absolutely brilliant. They cast the perfect actor to play the role of the "big bank" and the children that they cast to act out the role of the confused consumer are budding stars.

Here is the latest ad from them that has me laughing everytime I see it.




That combined with this ad, which was the first one of theirs I saw make you seriously consider switching to Ally if ever your bank pissed you off.




Brilliant casting leaves a lasting impression in your mind. There are many different ways to make an ad a classic in peoples mind, and casting is clearly one of the best. Just think about the brilliant casting job Apple did for their recent apple v. mac ads, these Ally ads have much the same feel.

Wake up and smell the desperation

McDonald's has made no bones about trying to take a big chunk of the coffee market away from such companies as Starbuck's and Tim Horton's. They pursue this for a good reason, the coffee market is a massive one worldwide and McDonald's already has the distribution and locations in place.

They have tried a number of different marketing tactics from the McCafe setting to advertising their coffee as being high quality for a lower price. Well they seem to have settled on the "free sampling" idea in the end. It seems like every week I am seeing a McDonald's commercial offering people the ability to try one of their coffees for free. And the period of time keeps getting longer and longer - the latest one I saw just yesterday was offering two weeks of free coffee time.

The tactic is a pretty good one, you get people to try your product because you are confident you're making a quality product. The people try your coffee, love it, and become hooked on McCafe coffee! Unfortunately now it is starting to get desperate in my eyes. What it may break down to is coffee snobs who enjoy a fresh brew to start the day, just don't trust the guy that works the fry-olator to make their morning fix. Understandable. There is a certain message that is communicated based on the type of coffee cup you show up with in the morning. Maybe McDonald's isn't matching up in that area.

But how would McDonald's go about fixing those areas? They already have tried the McCafe setting unsuccessfully, and the overhead of hiring a professional barista to work the morning shifts wouldn't make economic sense. So maybe sampling is all they have left, and is somewhat working for them. God knows they could use the revenue.

Bragging

With the Olympics in Canada this year many of the nation's businesses, big and small, helped fundraise and donate money to our athlete's with hopes of helping them make it to the podium. This marketing/communication tactic is great because it works for everyone, consumers feel warm and fuzzy about a company that coordinates a fundraiser like that, the athlete gets funding, and the sponsor gets good, positive exposure.

But is there a need to brag about all you've done for these people? It's not the quote-unquote "canadian way", and it certainly takes away some of the good will of what you've done. Take a look at this Shaw website and definately have a play of their advertisement.

Here are my problems with it:

1. Shaw is asking for donations for the athletes, which people have gratefully done, and then Shaw spins it to sound as if they have given it themselves (maybe they have given a large chunk themselves, but the numbers they advertise on their cheesy "we are the world" type ad match up with those of their ticker on the page)


2. It's all about them. "their" company and what "they" have done for the athletes. The oldest team sport saying in the world has got to be "There's no 'I' in Team", well clearly Shaw forgot about that


3. The tone of the tv spot is just way too over-the-top cheesy. I saw it on television the other day and laughed out loud. It doesn't make one feel patriotic, it makes one embarassed to be a Shaw subscriber. Trying to copy the "we are the world" style for a patriotic commercial is just shoddy.

It's great that companies like Shaw support our athletes and help raise donations towards a relevant cause, but don't brag about it. People know you have been helping athletes, thats why they are donating. They know you have been putting in the effort, so don't act like a 10 year old kid that needs recognition. Are you going to throw a tantrum if we don't acknowledge you? You don't see Molson Canadian bragging about all the money they raised.

Great musical commercials

One of my original posts on this blog was about using music to help create a memorable commercial. Well lots of ads have used this technique since I wrote about it, and its not like my post was anything earth shattering, and some of my recent favourites are these:

Honda Accord 2010 Crosstour commercial


Nissan Titan



Alexander Keith's Beer Birthday commercial


A little different, but a movie trailer (technically still an ad) for Dear John


The musical editing provides the tone and feel for these commercials and draws you into them deeper as a result. They are all really well done and the musical selection is incredible. It still impresses me each time I hear a song in an ad that i've never heard and how powerful it can be to grab the attention of the viewer.

Have you seen any ad's like this lately that utilize a good background song?

Pour some ketchup on me...

Your supposed to be singing that title to yourself to the Def Leppard classic "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and if you weren't before, i'm sure you are now. Have fun listening to that all day in your head, a gift from me to you.



Anyways onto bigger and better things. The ketchup packet has been remade! 40 years is all it took for a ketchup company to create something that gave their consumers the ability to "dip and eat it on-the-go" according to company Vice-President Dave Ciesinski.

It's actually a pretty cool new concept for the company and should please both the "squeezers" and the "dippers". I'm not sure if it should have taken them 40 years to create a new one, but at least they got there.

Makes you wonder if this new design will last another 40 years because where can you possibly go from here. Although that kind of near-sighted thinking wouldn't have allowed them to come up with such brilliant ideas as blue ketchup, and we all know that was a huge success. Is there a way to keep a brand like Heinz on the cutting edge of the Ketchup market? This new package clearly signals that they want to be there, but are efforts like coloured ketchup just a waste of time and money for the company. It certainly created a buzz in the condiment industry for that time period, but the lasting power of the product was minimal.

I wonder what is next for the high-tech ketchup market......what else can there possibly be. Should be an interesting battle for the marketing team, innovating when there is seemingly nothing to innovate....although I guess that is also part of the joy of innovation.

Lamp post on steroids

This is what happens when your lamp post stops playing by the rules and starts shoving needles into it's ass.

Although in this case the shot of choice seems to be caffeine. It's a great creative example from the folks at Cossette West in Vancouver. You have to give credit to whoever thought up this idea, because this is definately thinking way outside the traditional box. A quick google image search didn't return any other examples of using lamp posts in such a way, and it also told me that I was way behind on this story as the image had been used in at least a dozen other blogs. Hmm maybe that's why no one reads my blog. Anyways kudos to the creatives that came up with this idea and Kudos to Vancouver for allowing it to be done. I'm sure it was very effective for passersby, but I wonder if it worked as well on people driving by. I live in the area and drive by that corner once a week, for the life of me I can't remember seeing it. Props to Vancity Buzz blog for the post.

Fast-food weightloss.....nice try

Call a spade a spade, don't call it a diet.

But that is exactly what Taco Bell has seemingly done with their new campaign the "Drive-Thru Diet". The worst part is, i'm sure it will work.....in selling more items for the chain. The bad news is, everyone knows that it won't work in reducing their waist lines but reading a success story and seeing someone that it worked for will impress upon a large portion of the population that this is a way to lose all that flab they have been carrying around. Unfortunately, fast food is one of the main causes of obesity in North America and telling people that they can lose weight by eating drive-thru is a terrible message. People will delude themselves into thinking that they can get one of these Taco Bell fresco items with a large pop and large fries then when they weight themselves in a month they will act shocked that they've in fact gained weight.



So much for corporate responsibility among major fast food chains.

If you really want to do something for the public and help encourage them to lose weight why don't you try this:

"Come into McDonald's and order your favourite meal, but instead of asking to super size it, ask us to slim size it to help your wallet and your waist."

The customer will receive a small fries and diet pop along with the option of making it a salad instead of fries. Also, the customer will receive a discount because their portion is smaller, and in this day and time a penny saved is a penny earned.

It won't make you those 50 extra cents that you make when people supersize but it will be received well by the public. If you are the first restaurant to pitch this idea I believe that you'll see a lot more customers turning up all of a sudden for lunch and dinner. You've just given them two reasons to! Save money and shave a little fat off your meal. Just watch Wendy's, A & W, and Jack in the Box follow suit.

Tourism touts star gazing

Back in the good old days your family would all pack into your station wagon/mini van/camper truck and take a trip out into the woods for some camping. Inevitably when you were bored at night without TV to keep you company you would look up to the heavens and see all the twinkling stars. At that point your father would most likely attempt to act like he knew which one the big dipper was and you didn't have the knowledge to question his random finger pointing.

Well it seems that provinces and states are using a different kind of star gazing to try and attract tourists nowadays.

Today the province of British Columbia unveiled their new Tourism BC 30 second ad and it appears they are stealing a page out of the guvernator's book by flashing celebrities of BC heritage at people.



Now fortunately British Columbia is in fact one of the most beautiful places on earth and some of the footage they use in the commercial shows this natural beauty off quite well. The question is, does the fact that famous people come from BC have any relevance on making people travel to my wonderful province. Now, the current generation of people are certainly celeb-obsessed and maybe the appearance of some well known stars will help to peak this younger generations interest in the west coast, but I wonder if it could have been made just as effective by having real people that experienced it for the first time explaining what BC was like to them. I'm sure you could have found plenty of tourists that would say nice things about the province. I think the ad will be very successful anyways because it is done quite tastefully and shows off a little portion of what BC has to offer.

Anyways, here is the California video, which clearly was successful because it ran for a long time and a second version of it came out after the first to build on the success of the initial launch.



Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting ability still awes me to this day. He just hits his line with such poise and natural talent. I mean, without him movies like Twins and Commando wouldn't have been such instant classics.

So what will BC follow California into next, maybe this.