Capturing reality
Friday, August 29th, 2008 |This video is a great satire on the world of brute force branding. It’s from Geert Desager of bringtheloveback.com.
Archive for the ‘Brute Force Branding’ Category
A web community amused by brute force branding
Thursday, August 28th, 2008 |After years of proudly saying, “I’m am not addicted to any TV shows,” I must humbly admit that I am now hooked on a show. Yes, it’s Mad Men.
Besides the great writing, always-developing characters, and nostalgia for the years I was in diapers, I’ll admit to a warm feeling of schadenfreude watching ad agency execs make asses of themselves. Stupid Super Bowl ads in 2008 can trace their genealogy back to the ill-conceived, liquor-lubricated advertising guess-work of 1960 portrayed on Mad Men.
AMC TV is now running a “You Could Be On Mad Men” contest. The wonderful irony is that a television show about the origins of one-way, brute-force, mass-market advertising is using an up-to-date Web 2.0 forum to engage Mad Men fans in a community of obsession. Viewers have submitted videos of themselves doing one-minute monologues from six of the show’s characters. With tons of creative videos and hundreds of comments on these entries, I suddenly have a window into what other fans are thinking about the show. These demonstrations of admiration from other “customers” beat any ads for the show that the crew at Sterling Cooper could ever come up with.
The entrants didn’t stop at gender boundaries, with men portraying women and vice-versa. This is also ironic, since the show highlights the anachronism of office sexism so vividly. Here’s a creative example of a woman playing the male lead, Don Draper and another of a man playing Don’s wife Betty.
Birds fly away, and so do customers
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 |A few mornings ago, I was taking a relaxing walk with my friend Ezra in the Gan Sacher, a park in Jerusalem.
Birds were everywhere in the park. I had my tiny Flip video camera, and I trained it on the birds as I walked up to them. Of course, as soon as I would get close, the birds’ defensive instincts told them to fly away. As I tried to walk gingerly up to the birds (without much success), it reminded me of the defensive instincts customers employ to survive the barrage of marketing messages that interrupt them everyday.
This silent 90 second film is just a simple thought for today, inspired by birds trying to live their lives without interruption.
The Brute Force Myth
Sunday, July 13th, 2008 |What is the biggest change you need make in your marketing? Embrace new media? Embrace social media? Switch spending from traditional media advertising to other options? Yes, most companies need to do those things, but these changes are secondary to the one really big change you should make, if you haven’t made it already.
The biggest change you need to make in your marketing is to abandon the mindset of “brute force” that has ruled marketing since the mid-20th century. Brute force is the belief that the key to winning customers is to interrupt them as frequently as possible with messages that are as powerful as possible. The brute force philosophy implies that customers are easily swayed, and they are eagerly waiting to receive your communications after which, lemming-like, they will change their behavior.
Listen in on most marketing planning meetings, and you will hear the religion of brute force being preached. “We need a more powerful message to cut through the clutter,” or “we’ll need to increase spending to reach our audience more effectively.” Sales people, also, have been sucked into the brute force vortex. They can be regularly be overheard talking about “getting at bats with a customer” or “giving a pitch.”
Guess what? The days of brute force are waning. The main reason: Customers are not as impressionable as they used to be. They don’t buy your product just because you interrupted them more effectively than another company. The second reason brute force doesn’t work well anymore: Unless you work for Annheuser-Busch or McDonald’s, you don’t have a big enough budget to shout louder than everyone else who is also shouting at your customers.
As Tom Peters once said, “Learning is easy, but unlearning is difficult.” Do your best to unlearn what you’ve been taught about brute force as a marketing strategy. Focus, instead, on what really works: Creating a powerful sense of brand harmony for your customers that helps them hear a clear, compelling story as they interact with your company. Brute force falls on deaf ears, but brand harmony is the first step to creating motivating brand impressions in the minds of your customers.
Retro Bud
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 |
Ok, this is a pretty crappy ad. But I find it more persuasive (and genuine) than “The Great American Lager.”
The answer is “Yes.”
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 |Conseco Fieldhouse, Indianapolis. The Men’s Room, 10 minutes before Springsteen takes the stage.
I overhear a man commenting on this ad …
… asking his friend, “Isn’t it strange to advertise advertising?
At least everything else was well-targeted in the vicinity.
(And, by the way, Bruce got 10,000 people’s undivided attention for 2 hours and 20 minutes.)
The Rule of The Few and The Many
Sunday, March 16th, 2008 |Close your eyes for a minute and think of a few companies you really like doing business with. (You can open them now) Now, try to remember the interactions that influenced your opinions of those companies.
How many were interactions that were created “en masse” for you and other customers, such as ads, web home pages, fine print, FAQ’s, direct mail pieces, etc.?
How many were one-on-one interactions, such as personal advice from a salesperson, a customer service rep fixing a problem for you, a maintenance person trouble-shooting an issue for you, etc.?
Here is the simple truth: Marketing becomes less effective the more people it tries to reach at one time.
No doubt, it’s impossible to talk to customers one at a time, all of the time. It’s even hard to talk to them in small groups all of the time. Hey, even this blog is a form of mass communication. There are times when it is necessary, and even smart, to talk to customers as a group.
But it is also important to recognize that you are always making a compromise as you talk to many customers at one time. The natural tendency in marketing is to gang up communications and reach more customers, concurrently. Don’t look at this tendency as a convenience that makes the marketing job easier. Look at it as a compromise, even if it is a necessary compromise, that limits your ability to communicate.
Remember The Rule of the Few and the Many. It’s a simple rule: When possible, few is always better than many.
They bounce right off of you (and your customer)
Thursday, March 13th, 2008 |If you are a typical American, you will be exposed to something like 5000 marketing messages today. These will cover the spectrum from logos on shirts and ketchup bottles to impassioned pleas for your business.
Throughout the day today, notice how many of these messages actually have an impact on you. Even if they don’t encourage you to buy something, do they at least stick with you after the exposure?
You will probably notice that very few of these messages make a difference for you, let alone even get noticed by you.
Now, think about your customer, who will also be bombarded with 5000 messages today, in addition to an avalanche of emails, text messages, memos and voicemails. What happens if you send message number 5001? Will she be happy to see it? Will she notice it? Will it move her?
You can not shout your way into your customer’s life. A bigger marketing budget and more brute force is rarely the answer. Focus on creating an experience of brand harmony for your customer, where all interactions with you blend to tell one, cumulative story. And focus on relationship-building encounters, instead of impersonal transactions.
What can you do - today - to rise above the noise of your customer’s life? (Hint: It’s not a direct mail campaign)
Snidevertising
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 |Have a look at my recent post on tompeters.com, discussing an adage.com article about the trend of snideness and sarcasm in advertising. Great comments from the tompeters.com community!
Fox Business Network - interview
Friday, February 8th, 2008 |Here’s my interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business Network, talking about the waste of Super Bowl advertising.
A couple of days after The Super Bowl, but a timeless message!
