Older boy selling bike: It’s got 10 speeds, my friend.
Same boy, slightly older, buying a small motorcycle: Is it fast?
Seller: It’s got a lightning bolt on it, doesn’t it?
Same boy as young man, buying a flashy red car: Is it fast?
Seller: I’m not even sure if it’s street legal.
Same guy, a bit older, buying a Volkswagen and revealing a baby as he asks: Is it safe?
Volkswagen salesman: Of, course, it’s a Volkswagen.
Announcer voice over, about Volkswagen safety.
Great ad so far. Instrumental rock music has been playing in the background, and in the last seconds we realize it is Ted Nugent’s song Stranglehold and we hear these lyrics:
“I’ve got you in a stranglehold baby.”
An ad about safety, where the customer is shown holding an infant, that ends with the words “I’ve got you in a stranglehold baby.” What were they thinking?
People usually scrutinize advertising promises carefully, reacting to each claim of “new and improved” with “prove it to me.” But it’s election season, that season where people decide to believe the most ludicrous claims that can possibly be crammed into a :30 second spot.
“Candidate A has ties to Z.”
“My opponent, candidate B, said C that proves Y.”
“If elected, I pledge to do C because I believe in X.”
I’m not a political commentator, so I will never offer any opinions or views on particular politicians on this blog. But I am a marketing commentator.
So, to sort through this craziness, I want to suggest a simple “rule” for how to interpret political advertising:
Scrutinize political advertising the way
you would scrutinize car advertising
As you watch a political ad, imagine that the product is not a candidate, but a car. Imagine that every nasty thing said by one candidate about another is a Lexus dealer saying something nasty about an Accura dealer down the street.
“Our rival’s lending policies are unfair to middle America.”
“Our cars will get you to the moon, and save you money!”
Would you believe any of this? Of course not!
“If you buy my car, I pledge to bring you prosperity, even if it
requires me to suspend the laws of economics and physics.”
“My opponent may claim that his car is made in America,
but can he prove it? Show us the bills of lading!”
Each political party and most candidates are guilty of this. And we citizens suffer, not only because we don’t get accurate political information, but because we have to suffer through these ads if we choose to have the television on.
The only winners? Ad agencies, who get to suspend standards of good communication and lower the bar on truth, producing anything that looks or sounds good to a citizenry suspending its sense of judgment. This may even be more fun than working on Super Bowl spots!
I’m organizing my day with my normal tools: laptop, notes from yesterday, a bowl of cereal, and the news on the TV. Suddenly, a commercial for a bipolar depression medication comes on. Since I have a friend with this disease, I start to listen to the ad, which, in the first 15 seconds, seemed compelling. However, the last 45 seconds was overpowered by a voiceover delivering a long list of medical warnings. If you’re a teen, you may commit suicide. If you’re elderly, it may increase your dementia. If you play golf left-handed, it may increase your slice on dogleg par 5′s.
Compulsory medical warnings on TV commercials are stupid. They are unnecessary. These warnings are based on the fallacy that advertising is the deciding factor in creating purchase decisions. It isn’t, especially for these kinds of products. The purpose of pharmaceutical television advertising is to get you to ask your doctor, or to encourage you to tell a loved one to ask his doctor, about the medication. The doctor is responsible for diagnosis and prescription. MSNBC and ABC aren’t. If we can’t trust the doctor to deliver the warnings, then he shouldn’t be prescribing.
And, these warnings are a pain in the you-know-what for the 99% of the people watching the commercial who don’t have Restless Leg Syndrome, or whatever illness is being advertised. We have to listen to a litany of unappetizing side effects and, let’s not kid ourselves, we’re all paying for it. The ad I saw this morning was a :60, and it could have easily been a :30 if it didn’t include warnings about orthostatic hypertention and hallucinations. CNN made some cash, but the rest of us lost out – I’m sure AstraZeneca’s pricing model includes amortization of these premium advertising costs. (Here’s an idea for reducing the cost of health care … maybe Harry, Nancy and Rahm are factoring this into the calculations they are working on right now …)
Advertising is an ever-smaller part of the input to purchase decisions. Come on FDA, get with the times.
Last week (December 6, 2009, page 26), The New York Times Magazine ran a story about a promotion run by Blu Dot, a furniture maker.
Here’s how the promotion worked: Recognizing the accepted New York tradition of picking up your neighbor’s discarded furniture from the sidewalk, Blu Dot placed its chairs next to bags of garbage throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. Chair-drop locations were announced on Twitter, and photos of chair-snatchings were posted to a Flickr account.
Ok, so far this sounds like a creative marketing promotion, recognizing a local cultural habit while using contemporary marketing tools.
But there was one piece of the promotion that really bothered me. Half of the chairs had a hidden G.P.S. transmission device, so that the chair – and its new owner – could be tracked. The idea was to follow-up with the new owners to include them in a video about the promotion.
The article described how one woman noticed the G.P.S. device and ripped it from the chair, but claims nobody else complained about this hidden “bug.” Frankly, I’m surprised, and I highly recommend that anyone who wants to duplicate this promotion ditch the G.P.S. part.
When someone accepts a free product from you they are not giving you permission to follow them home. What Blu Dot did was nothing short of spam: They used electronic means to sneak into people’s homes. No matter how much people like your product, you risk scaring them away if you try to slip surreptitiously into their lives. It’s really bad marketing.
(What’s funny about the premise that a hotel will bend over backwards for a guest who comes through a “low-priced” Internet channel is that the opposite is often true. Check out this post I on wrote tompeters.com.)
Sometimes creative indulgence goes beyond the bounds of taste.
AT&T is running a series of ads for its Internet Connect service that show Bill Kurtis, holding a laptop in various out-of-the-way places, declaring, “I just found the Internet.”
Sounds like a great product, and the basic advertising idea is a good one. But in one execution Kurtis tells viewers that he is on a deserted island as he holds his laptop with the AT&T Internet Connect card stuck in its slide. He declares “I just found the Internet” while he stands in front of a crashed airplane that has “Amelia” painted on its side.
On July 2, 1937, the famous aviator Amelia Earhart, along with her flying partner Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific during an attempt to fly around the globe. They were never found, and were declared dead a year and a half later.
Sorry. But this is just badvertising. Those who don’t know about Amelia Earhart won’t get the reference, and those who do will (ought to?) find it in bad taste.
"When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention" - Tom Peters
"I had to buy two copies. The first one is so dog-eared and underlined I couldn't read it any longer." - Seth Godin
Steve is the author of Brand Harmony and the newly published We:
The Ideal Customer Relationship. Learn more and order direct from our Products
page, or from Amazon.
In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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