Advertising – Page 22 – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

How Much Disclaimer is Too Much?

I’m not a smoker — never have been. So when I saw this ad for Chantix, my reaction was purely academic. This is the longest, scariest disclaimer — after 17 seconds of “testimonial”, the warning language starts, and runs for more than a minute –I’ve ever seen, and my initial thought was that Pfizer was wasting its money.

I’m not disputing the need for the language — the law is the law, and if Pfizer wants to run an ad for the drug, every single word has to be there. My question was whether television is the right medium if the warning is longer than the pitch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clrkl1mixJw]

Two days after I saw the ad (it’s originally from 2009), I ran into a guy who had quit smoking a month before, and used Chantix to do it. He acknowledged the disclaimer, shook his head, and said, “I knew all about the side effects. But I had to quit smoking, so I was willing to take the risk.”

My sample size on this survey is currently one — one vote for “I know about the side effects, and I’m doing it anyway.” Pfizer may know what it’s doing. Feel free to check in. My only question for this exercise is its effectiveness as advertising — is the need so great, and the testimonial so powerful, that it can outweigh more than sixty seconds of warnings?

Check in below.

An Unusual Auto Dealer Offer

Tom Gill Chevrolet, a dealership in Florence, Kentucky (near Cincinnati), is offering an interesting gift-with-purchase: dinner with Pete Rose.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS1DuM88Prs&feature=player_embedded]

Be offended, or saddened, if you wish. Pete has to make a living, and he’s not allowed to do it in baseball. The only thing I want to know is whether it works.If this promotion sells cars, I’m in favor of it.

Hat tip to Sports Illustrated for directing me to Ted Williams Head.

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A Dirty Yellow Pages Trick

Let’s say you own a pizza shop, and want to accomplish two things:

1. Attract more people to your establishment

2. Inflict some damage on the competition

What can you do? According to brand guru Martin Lindstrom, here’s what an Australian shop did:

Instead of spreading money between off- and online ads, it spent the entire budget on radio. The spots were simple but extremely effective. So effective, the restaurant’s increased business caused most of the local competition to shut down…

The pizza place’s radio ads asked listeners to tear out all the pizza-restaurant pages from their yellow pages and bring them in. In return for the pages, customers received a free pizza of their choice and a sticker with the restaurant’s URL.

Because the contact information for all the other pizza joints in town disappeared from customers’ primary reference source, only one set of contact details was left in households that complied… the restaurant that dreamed up the promotion.

This particular shop used radio — the same approach would have worked just as well on television. More important than the medium of choice was the fact that the shop chose to concentrate the attack in one place.

And before I go, here’s a legal note, insisted upon by the Bernstein Worldwide Legal Department: I am not suggesting that you do something like this. But if you do, let me know how it goes.

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McDonald’s vs. Quiznos: Singing Fish Beats Singing Cat

The other day my ex-radio colleague and fellow blogger Jennifer Schurter brought the a recent Quiznos commercial to my attention. Quiznos has decided to use singing cats to promote their new value menu:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD3y6DAeK_A&feature=player_embedded]

In this endeavor, Quiznos is emulating Mcdonald’s’ iconic singing fish campaign. Like McDonald’s, they’re using a deliberately-obnoxious singing “animal” to cut through the clutter and grab the viewer’s attention. And they’re making an offer, which is a good thing.

Problem is, it makes THREE offers, and the offers (in spite of the attempt to tie them together with “5-4-3”) don’t have anything to do with each other. Too much detail equals confusion, and that’s the state the viewer will be in when the ad’s over.

By comparison, the McDonald’s ad makes one very simple offer: buy two filet-o-fish sandwiches for $3.00.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIq92yp_a0c]

And unlike Quiznos’ wimpy “for a limited time”, McDonald’s gave consumers a hard deadline — in this version, you had to buy your sandwich no later than April 4. Viewers of the filet-o-fish commercial will have no doubt what McDonald’s wants them to do, why they should do it, and how long they have to get it done.

In this particular battle, the fish beats the cat.

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Another Unsung Hero of Marketing is Gone

In the past decade, we’ve lost some important behind-the-scenes giants in the world of brands.

Adolph Levis, who developed the Slim Jim meat snack, died in 2001.
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Arthur Schiff, the advertising copywriter who coined the phrases “But wait, there’s more!”, “Isn’t that amazing?” and “Now How Much Would You Pay?” passed away in 2006. His most famous and enduring work was the Ginsu Knife campaign.
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Fredric Bauer, who invented the Pringles Potato Chip can, reached his sell-by date in 2008. According to the several media reports, his family honored his final wish:

Baur’s children said they honoured his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave in suburban Springfield Township.

Now comes word that Morie Yohai has died. You might not recognize his name, but you’ll recognize the product he invented: Cheez Doodles.

“Is this Mr. Cheez Doodles?” a cashier once asked Mr. Yohai’s wife, Phyllis, when he accompanied her to a local supermarket. Mrs. Yohai liked to let everyone know of her husband’s contribution to between-meal crunchies, according to a 2005 Newsday profile. Their sumptuous home overlooking Long Island Sound was “the house that Cheez Doodles bought,” she liked to say…

In 2004, he, his wife and children visited a museum in Napa Valley, Calif., where an artist, Sandy Skoglund, had mounted a life-size installation showing several people at a cocktail party — all covered in Cheez Doodles.

Rest in peace, Mr. Doodles.

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