Casual Fridays

I have a friend who owns a restaurant business. He does all his own marketing and advertising… and he’s quite good at it.  It’s really fascinating to see what he comes up with and how tightly bound it is to his objectives and his brand.  Part of the fascination is of how rare he is. Most small business owners can’t do what he does. Why? Because few people have the same level of creativity, humor and understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

I’m not going to say that every business should hand off every aspect of their marketing to an agency or consultant.  In fact, I think too many businesses live in the extremes on this issue. Either they do it all themselves or they hand it all over to a third party.  In almost every case, I think this is a mistake.

Turn on your TV or tune into your radio and you don’t have to wait long to encounter an advertising train wreck.  You know what I’m talking about. The ads you know are horrible, but you can’t take your eyes off them. Most of these are cases where the advertiser is working directly with a station or a production service, without the advice of a professional.  Some are cases of creativity gone awry as an agency has taken too many liberties with the client’s message and have lost the integrity of the brand which my restaurateur buddy manages so well.

Business Week had a recent article which did a great job of bringing light to this issue entitled Why Your Advertising Isn’t Working.  In this article, Steve McKee does an excellent job of hitting seven of the greatest infractions in advertising.

Here are the top 3:

1. It’s boring. Yep, boring. Why do we watch TV, listen to the radio, read the newspaper, or go online? Three reasons: information, entertainment, and engagement. Ads that fail to offer at least two of these three benefits flop. Just as nobody reads every story in the newspaper, nobody pays attention to every ad. You have to engage your prospects with something that is interesting or entertaining before they’ll give you their valuable time and attention. Creativity has always been the coin of the realm, but in our time-starved culture it’s truer than ever.

2. It’s boorish. You shouldn’t think of your advertising as being about your brand, you should think of it as an extension of your brand (see “A Practical Guide to Branding”). If it’s loud, annoying, insulting, offensive, or self-centered, people will think the same of your products or services (see “The Cocktail Party Test for Advertising”). Remember the first sentence in the best-selling hardback book in U.S. history, The Purpose Driven Life: “It’s not about you.” What’s true in life is true in advertising; if you focus only on what you can get, you’re not going to get much. Instead, focus on giving, and good things will begin to happen.

3. It’s safe. The first time I saw a Ford Taurus (F), I took note, and I suspect you did as well. So did a lot of other people, and the Taurus went on to become the best-selling car in America. If the Taurus had been another in a long line of boxy sedans, it probably would have been just another car. Instead, it turned automotive design conventions upside down and made history. While being different isn’t in and of itself a guarantee of success, what you do is a lot more likely to get noticed if it hasn’t been done before. And keep in mind that when you do something different, people may not like it—at least initially. Most of us were shocked at our first sight of the Taurus’ curved lines, but it went on to have significant influence on automotive design. If you worry too much about offending someone, you’re likely to not attract anyone.

See the rest here.

Whether companies work with agencies or not, they still may fall into these traps.  It’s just a whole lot easier to fall into them if you don’t have a guide.  Choose wisely.

The military spends tons of money to make something blend in and then loses it. Sounds pretty stupid when the army does it, yet advertisers do something even more inept. They spend an insane amount of money buying ad space to get attention, but then camouflage their ads. They still remain invisible because of clutter, attention-spans (Oh, look, there’s a bird!) and generic messages.

Top 5 Ways Advertisers Use Camouflage:

1. Look like the competition.

Ads should highlight what makes you special. To quote the Incredibles, “When everyone is special, then no one is.” That’s especially true when everyone tries to be special in the exact same way.

This Reebok ad is very similar to the Nike ad below (10 years before the Reebok ad).

(source: AdPulp)

Let me emphasize this point.

One of my clients has an employee who previously worked for the competition. Before I worked with this client, their ads were very similar to their biggest competitor’s spots. The employee said before we came in and changed my client’s ads, the competition always knew when my client was advertising because they had more shoppers coming in THEIR doors.

By looking like their competition, my client was sending customers to ‘the enemy.’

2. Advertise where all the competition is.

Why do advertisers have to be right next to their competition? It’s like the CEO went to the marketing department and said, “Castrol is on a NASCAR, why aren’t we?” So then their logo is slapped next to MOROSO and something unreadable (even in a close-up) typed in a script font.

What if you had the audience to yourself, like Sweet Pete’s Bicycle:

(source: Guerrilla Promos)

You get an audience all to yourself.

Likewise, an motor oil company could “rent” a parking spot from their local Auto Zone. Place a temporary sign stating the spot is reserved for users of their product because their engine runs better, fewer leaks, etc.

3. Being irrelevant.

Who cares:

How long your furniture store has been in business?
You’re the #1 car dealer in the metro area?
Your kid is in your TV ad?

When creating your ad, only think and talk of yourself and the customer never will.

Think and talk about the customer and your relationship with them, and they’ll reciprocate.

4. Never change the ‘wrapping paper’.

Has anything changed in your business over the last five years? I would guess so. Then why are you running the same ads?

First, those who didn’t respond to your message yet, won’t.

Second, maybe some responded and didn’t like it. Now they think nothing changed and they’ll still be dissatisfied.

I’m not saying you have to change the brand message, but give it some new wrapping paper every once in a while. If you have a powerful enough message, then it should have legs to adapt.

5. Basically… play it safe.

Being different seems risky. But being the same is even riskier.

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
— General Eric Shinseki, retired Chief of Staff, U. S. Army

—————–

If you’re going to spend money, time and effort crafting a message… don’t throw it all away by painting it camouflage.

Some dreams are lived. Some die. Others change.

For almost two years, I’ve been the creative director at Beyond Marketing & Advertising. I started that endeavor with high expectations for what I could accomplish and what we could create as a company. Some of those expectations were met, others were not. Overall, it was a fun (and educational) ride, but as you can probably tell, that ride is over.

This week, I accepted an offer to join a group of consultants at The Frontline Group. This move will give me more opportunities to work with Word-of-Mouth Marketing efforts, social media and helping clients tap into their own creativity.

I will continue to collaborate with Beyond and will remain in Tulsa, but am excited about the opportunities The Frontline Group represents.

In case you haven’t heard (or experienced it first-hand), Tulsa got pelted by an ice storm this week. It was the worst electrical outage in Oklahoma history. Our home was without power since Sunday. It returned last night, thankfully!

Over 500,000 electrical customers in Oklahoma were without power at one time. Tree limbs snapped under the weight of heavy, frozen rain. Power lines were severed. Transformers blew up across town.

In the aftermath, the city didn’t look the same.

Anyway, it made for a crazy week.

For our business, it’s been a crazy year.

We’ve seen a lot of changes take place at our Tulsa ad agency, Beyond. We’ve had clients leave, while new clients come in the door. It’s been scary and exciting at the same time. Today we realized we only have one client we had December of last year.

(End of the year reflections make you think about things like this. I don’t mention the agency too much, as I don’t want the blog to just be a promotional vehicle for our business… so hang with me here.)

In March of ‘07, we changed the name of the agency from Hahn Promotions to Beyond Marketing & Advertising.

Seems like the metamorphosis is nearly complete.

We’ve got some exciting projects in ‘08, including producing a TV show and working on more grassroots/viral marketing campaigns.

We’ve gained new clients who have latched onto the idea of what Beyond stands for.

We continue to challenge ourselves to live up to the name. To not settle for status quo. To shun the idea of using cookie cutters. To go ‘beyond’ for our clients. It’s not easy, but it is the only way we believe we can do business.

So, the storm has swept through. We got pelted. We lost a few limbs, and in the end…

…our company doesn’t look the same.

What a crazy year.

Be safe. Stay warm.

A few weeks ago, I was doing research on eHarmony commercials. I thought I’d show you what we did with that research.

These were some fun TV ads we created for a Tulsa area business. It really fits their brand, since they’re known for matching people with just the right appliances. We’re hoping to build on this concept.