Category: Advertising

Making a Funny Commercial Work

“Oh… and make it funny.”

For nearly a decade, my biggest Portland radio advertising client was a car dealer who appeared in his own commercials. I wrote the copy — more than 500 separate scripts over that time. And whenever he gave me the copy points, “Make it funny” was one of them.

He wanted the commercials to sell cars. But more important to him, I learned over time, he wanted his employees, customers, and friends to tell him what a funny guy he was.

In the interest of getting the copy approved, and preserving my commission, my first objective became to make him laugh when he read the script. My second objective for the script was to make it sell cars.

I’m not necessarily proud that my objectives were in that order, but there you go.

I’m reminded of that struggle every time I see the Volkswagen “The Force” commercial. This ad debuted on the Super Bowl, and two things happened:

1. Everybody loved it. Loved it. LOVED it.

2. When it was over, nobody could remember what car was featured in the ad.

It entertained, but it forgot to sell.

Pretty much everyone who owns a TV has seen it, but if you haven’t, here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0]

It was Radio Copywriting Guru Dan O’Day, at a seminar in Los Angeles, who taught me how to do both. His rule: the sales message must be part of the comedy.

On Dan’s blog, he’s begun an extended discussion of why humor, used properly, works in advertising. Here’s a short excerpt:

When an advertisement comes on the radio, the listener’s guard is up. Even though my saying this will offend a few radio sales chauvinists, people do not turn on the radio for the commercials….

If the commercial makes you laugh, however, then while you’re laughing your guard is down. Your filter is in the “pause” mode.

The full discussion is well worth reading, and there’s more to come. You’ll find the full post here.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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Penny Arcade, Ocean Marketing, and an Email Lesson

Let’s start with the lesson: email is social media.

Even if it starts out private, it can be made public. Extremely public.

The short version: in November, a guy named Dave orders a pair of PS3 controllers from an outfit called Ocean Marketing. The controllers don’t arrive. In mid-December, Dave writes to the company asking what’s going on.

He hears back from a guy named Paul Christoforo. Paul’s initial reply is not particularly helpful. Dave gets irritated, and Paul gets insulting. My favorite:

…put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else.

At some point, Dave forwards the email chain to Penny Arcade — a website/webcomic devoted to the gaming industry that has, according to Wikipedia, about 3.5 million readers

Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade enters the conversation, and Paul insults Mike. Mike then publishes the whole exchange on Penny Arcade (did I mention that they have 3. 5 million readers?)  and the real fun begins.

I am not a gamer, and was familiar with neither Penny Arcade or Ocean Marketing until reading the story. But a quick look at Ocean Marketing’s website reveals that their primary business is… social media marketing!

So here, in three parts, is the lesson I hope Ocean Marketing has learned today:

1. If you accept money for an order, ship the product on time.

2. If the product gets delayed for reasons beyond your control, be pro-active and notify the customer.

3. Apologize.

4. “Put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else” is not an apology.

5. If you’re going to insult your customers, remember that emails can be forwarded.

For further reading, Google “Penny Arcade Ocean Marketing”. It just keeps getting better.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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Public Relations Pros: How Would You Help Best Buy?

You are a public relations professional, specializing in crisis management. Your client, Best Buy, took a whole bunch of orders online, and now can’t deliver.

What advice would you give them? Comment below.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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Email Marketing That Misses the Mark

I received an email this morning from a woman named Ophelia, who works for an SEO company that offers “professional link building” services.*Excerpts follow:

Hello, my name is Ophelia  and I am an Internet Rankings Engineer. I performed a Google search for the keyword pedicure portland oregon and upon perusing past the first page, i ran across your website philbernstein.com. I see that your website is currently not listed on the first page for this keyword search.

The fact is that your ranking and search engine positioning is easily correctable. There is no reason that your website cannot be ranked in the top three positions for the keyword pedicure portland oregon based on your website’s very quality content and solid structure. You have a very good website that is built to convert when it can be found.

I was baffled as to why an advertising and marketing blog would want to be ranked well in the pedicure category… until I remembered that in 2008, I’d written a facetious  post about the short-lived phenomenon of fish pedicures.

My new friend Ophelia — or more likely, her automated system — had searched for the word “pedicure”, found my post, scraped my email address, and offered me a service I neither wanted nor needed.

Had she bothered to look at my website, she would have realized that I write about advertising and marketing — quite well, I might add.

I don’t mind a well-directed piece of direct mail, whether it’s via the postal service or a digital channel such as email. But online or offline, you need to at least attempt to match the message to the market.

If you don’t, you’re not a savvy online marketer — you’re a spammer.

*I’ve redacted her last name and will not name her firm here, since it would either embarrass her, give her firm a link it doesn’t deserve, or both.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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Writer of the Life Cereal “Hey Mikey!” Ad is Gone

If you grew up in the 70’s and watched any TV at all, there is probably a space reserved in your head for the “Let’s Get Mikey!” ad. If you, like me, never thought about the fact that someone wrote the thing, take 30 seconds to salute Edie Stevenson, who died recently at the age of 81.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYEXzx-TINc]

My favorite part of the obituary is this line:

In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her longtime partner, Gordon H. Price; two sisters, Daphne Stevenson Penttinen and Adelita Stevenson Moore; three sons, Steven, David and Donald Mann; and five grandchildren.

She also leaves a cat, Mikey.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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