Astonish Your Customer(s)

Fabreeze - Product-Centric Advertising

Here's one great ad! Here

1. Everyday problem (realistically dramatized)
2. Vividly presented
3. Specific 
4. Visual 
5. No words needed

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

 

 

Does Mass Media Still 'Work'

TV viewing is at an all-time high. Even teens spend way more time watching TV than surfing the web. 

The world's most successful brands have learned to use mass media to achieve share-of-mind ascendancy and make it immensely difficult for new entries into a vast swath of consumer goods and service categories. You want to introduce a new brand of toothpaste or peanut butter? Good luck.

The ability to utilize and influence mass media has become as important as manufacturing and customer service in creating successful marketing enterprises.

You don't have to dig very deep to find examples of awful companies (think banks, telecom, airlines, food) whose reputations among consumers are abysmal, but whose size has allowed them to dominate media and consequently dominate marketing in their categories.

TY: Bob Hoffman, The AdContrarian

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Career Lessons from David Ogilvy

Career Lessons from the Father of Advertising

By Chris Prentice

David Ogilvy, the "father of advertising," would be turning 100 this month if he were still alive. Though Ogilvy died in 1999, the advertising and career advice he gives in his 1963 classic, Confessions of an Advertising Man, still stands up today.  For example, Ogilvy discovered that little brands can compete with big brands by acting like them.  When Ogilvy opened his shop in 1948, it was long before the days of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, now owned by WPP Group Plc, and a leader in the industry. To make ends meet, the agency worked on mostly small accounts such as Wedgewood, Hathaway shirts and Schweppes.  In a risk few others would take, Ogilvy dedicated the entire media spend of these accounts to just one magazine, The New Yorker. By doing so, he brought small brands up to the level of larger ones by acting like them. These campaigns made Ogilvy one of the most recognized names in the ad business. Think big and act big when building your campaigns -- and your career. O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

 

Ubiquity, genuine Ubiquity

I'm driving down the rural, yet well-traveled, roads around my home and it struck me just how ubiquitous utility poles are - there's one every 50 yards on ever road, all over the area. 

The poles are wood, dark brown, rough, tall and generally unadorned, especially when not near an intersection, on a rural road and outside the election season. I'm not sure what entity owns the pole - is it the utility company or a government body. 

Why hasn't anyone thought of a way to utilize this space - for profit, education, beautification, public assistance (e.g. directions), humor?

The people who own NASCAR vehicles and taxi cabs have commercialized just about every interior or exterior inch of the car. Maybe they'd have some great ideas. 

What about the ... billboard companies? graffiti "artists"? schools? cash-strapped local governments? utility companies? What about me? 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

After 33 years I never knew that

This story is not meant as a stereotypical shot at women. 

A few days ago, I was standing next to a very intelligent woman and a truck started backing up thus emitting the beep-beep-beep sound to signal that it is backing up.

The woman exclaimed, "Why don't cars have something similar?"   

I said, "Well, cars do, the white taillights glow when a car is backing up."

The woman said, "Wow, is that what those white lights mean?"

She's been driving for 30+ years and probably saw those white lights about, oh, 10,000 times. She never thought to ask what they meant, nor apparanetly did she have any interest to know. 

Something to think about when we expect our new TV or print ad to have rapid breakthrough and profound influence on the audience. 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

Complicated & Generic v. Simple & Specific

Have you read the Ad Contrarian by Bob Hoffman - you must.

Insightful, experienced, tight and refreshing thinking about advertising, from an ad man who loves advertising, who also happens to be super-smart and practical about the practice of his craft.  

One gem: "I've seen thousands of advertisements that were too complicated or too generic. I've never seen one that was too simple or too specific."

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Brand ads like a political ad

Suppose you only had one or two competitors. 

Suppose you had a meager budget for advertising and you could only spend that money on advertising. 

Suppose one competitor had one or more legitimate "chinks in their armor". 

What kind of message would your craft? 

GIven that it is the political advertising season, would you follow the strategy and tactics commonly and successfully used by candidates, called negative advertising, or attack ads?

You know those ads - a slash and burn ad that points out the foibles of the competitor - sometimes not even mentioning the other candidate. 

Candidates, and 3rd party organizations, run those ads against competitors not to get people to vote for their guy, but so people will not vote for the competitor. 

It is proven to make some voters not vote at all or give the voter a reason to consider other candidates. 

It works - that's why it is used in virtually every election and that's why candidates break their pledge to "refrain from the use of negative ads". 

If you had a small budget, needed to make the most impact and told the truth about your brand competitor, would you do it? Picking a fight with Goliath often draws a crowd, attention and coverage. Suppose paying next month's mortgage depended on the success of your next advertising spend?  

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Awareness & Design

When I marketed Coppertone, we launched the first aerosol sunscreen. It was a tremendous hit. Consumers loved it and in the first three years it generated hundred of millions in sales dollars. Research confirmed that well over 50% of consumer first became aware in the store (not via advertising, PR). 

Nielsen (Bases) study: about 50% of consumers cited in-store as their source of awareness vs. 33% for TV.

The new hot topic of conversation in the CPG industry is shopper marketing. 

I'd start my approach to shopper marketing the way P&G is doing it - meaningful and creative product development and design. If you need to win the war for awareness and interest in-store first and foremost, you better develop and present a product to the consumer that can sell itself. 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.    

How much should you raise ad spending

The Wall Street Journal posted a story saying that big CPG brands plan to significantly raise their ad spending in 2010, to support new innovative products and also coax consumers to (re) purchase premium priced goods.

So, how much will they have to raise spending to grow their brand's market share?

"Among major household products, market share stayed the same or rose 64% of the time over the past 16 quarters when a company's advertising reach exceeded its market share by 50% or more", according to Sanford Bernstein's Mr. Dibaji.  

I'd love to see those numbers parsed further to see how many brands actually grew share, by how much and at what cost.

So, it will take a share of voice at a 150% index to your current maket share to have a 64% likelihood of maintaining or increasing share. Would you make that type on investment on your home - invest a bunch of money for the chance to hold at the same price or secure a slight increase in the appraised value? Not likely.

But, when it comes to ad spending, the following logic often prevails: you need to advertise otherwise you will experience a share loss that will eventually cost the company much more than the money spent on the ads.

Again, for the long term health of the brand, wouldn't it be better to invest the dollars to create a product that will deliver on a promise that your desired audience would love to hear?  

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

  

.01

That is your brand's share of voice if you spend $20,000,000 on advertising. One-tenth of one percent.  

Not true, you say. I spend $15,000,000 and I have a 30% share of voice.

Most brand managers fool themselves into thinking that their brand only competes against their direct competitors for the attention, interest and awareness of the public. Your brand is competing against, well, every other brand, across every category. It's true and it's frightening for most marketers.

So, unless you have a very narrow and clearly identified audience, that also can definitely be reached by a very narrow communication channel, what is your likelihood of breaking through, even with $20M?  

That is why the epi-center of your marketing effort must reside in product innovation, real innovation that creates products that are both relevant and remakable. By creating that type of product, you give your brand and your advertising a chance and you super charge the communication effort because people who use the product will start marketing it for you as well, which begets press coverage and so on.

Use the $20 MM first to get the product right and then communication becomes easy, or at least easier.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

(TY: Eating The Big Fish)