Category Archives: Advertising

The Elephant and the Fruit Fly

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There are a lot of allegorical references to how speed is the answer to ruling your market. It is true that being first to market is a powerful positioning tool. We have flipped the story of the tortoise and the hare. We have accepted that faster equals better.

But what if the key indicator of success isn’t how fast something happens. What if it isn’t even WHAT happens?

Let’s leave the tortoise and hare behind for a moment and pick up another fable – the Elephant and the Fruit Fly.

Fruit flies are born quickly. They swarm and die quickly. As soon as one dies, it seems it is replaced by ten others. They are annoying, but you don’t really remember one more than another… just that you want to avoid them next time.

What about elephants? They’re not known for their speed, but seeing one is special. If you saw one today, you’d probably tell everybody you know about it. They have personality and character. Elephants are memorable. If one dies, it is not easily replaced.

So, here’s the big question: Between the Elephant and the Fruit Fly, which one does your message resemble?

Why Hire Pros?

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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.

Insight vs. Incite

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As the political rhetoric heats up, it’s interesting to see which messages are insightful and which simply incite.

Does this candidate’s ad really tell you anything new about him, his platform, his party, his opponent?  Or does it simply stimulate something you’ve always believed?  Does it stir emotions and feelings?  Or does it change the way you think about something?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with inciting.  In fact, I think your message is much more potent if it connects on an emotional level.  

What IS dangerous is incite without any insight.

By attaching a new perspective… a new way of thinking… a powerful idea…  to an emotion, you do more than just PUSH people.  You push them in a different direction.

Push them in the door.

Push them in front of a mirror.

Push them in front of a train.

Big difference.

Top 5 Ways Advertisers Use Camouflage

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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.

Brandnesia

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“Ugh, another post about branding. I’ve already heard and read too much about that.”

I agree.

This post isn’t intended to give you more information about branding. It’s intended to help you discard what hasn’t been useful.

I’m reading an interesting new book called The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. Early in the book, he talks about creating a useful website. He dissected the primary components as Brand, Content and Function.

Brand – What will people REMEMBER?

Content – What do people want to KNOW?

Function – What do people want to DO.

That’s as concise and accurate an explanation of branding as I’ve ever heard.

It made me think:

1. This is why most ‘elevator pitches’ don’t work. No matter how short your pitch is, if it’s not memorable, it’s not effective.

2. This is why many branding campaigns don’t work. People won’t remember what they don’t believe.

3. Most vision statements aren’t branded well. They’re usually so long and full of business buzz words, I never remember them. Like branding campaigns, they’re also based on what the company believes about themselves, not what people remember.

Most branding is forgettable. We’re much better at creating brandnesia than brand memory.

How does this change what you put into your:

  • Marketing
  • Resume
  • Website
  • Sermon

Adequate Superfluence

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While attending the ARISE Arts Conference, I sat in on a session called Attack of the Never-Ending Brainstorms by Tony Biaggne. It was an entertaining and enlightening session discussing idea generation for churches (I volunteer on a creative team at Liberty Church in Broken Arrow, OK).

Tony used this Derren Brown video clip as an example:

After viewing the video, two questions come to mind:

1) How can I be better at embedding messages superfluously? I tend to stop promoting a message at the point of adequacy. As Derren shows, there is a level of subliminal saturation to reach in order to be truly persuasive.

2) How many of my decisions are driven by these subliminal messages, instead of being driven by my core beliefs and values? Great! Now I’m even questioning whether eating at Pei Wei last night was my idea or a string of subconscious prompts (probably both in reality).

There is a rule of thumb that people must see your message 5-7 times before they’ll act on it. As with any rule of thumb, there are exceptions. (An incredibly powerful or creative message may be a catalyst at first impression. A boring, uninspired message may never break through.)

But, what if the message is packaged differently each time, or you repeatedly expose people to different elements of the same message – as Derren Brown did?

Maybe the whole isn’t always greater than the sum of its parts.