Category: Advertising

Give the People What They Want?

All us traditional-media types recognize that all roads head to the web. My radio group knows it, the TV stations know it, and the local newspaper knows it. What we’re all trying to figure out (along with everyone else in the country) is how to get our erstwhile listeners, viewers and readers to move to our web sites when they make the move.

In today’s print version of the Oregonian, they go for the lowest common denominator: a promise of hot teenagers engaging in sexually-suggestive dancing.

“Teen’s freak dancing revs up controversy”, screams the headline. “No matter what you call it, the sexually-charged movement is changing the high-school dance.” There’ll be a story in Sunday’s paper, but if you just can’t wait, you can “watch a video on freak dancing at www.oregonlive.com/news/multimedia.”

While I respect the O’s desire to get people onto their web site by any means necessary, they’ve made a couple of big mistakes:

1. The video itself is difficult to find. A trip to OregonLive’s Multimedia Page presents you with one featured story (at this writing, it’s about a church fire). If you want the freak dancing video, you’ve got to hunt for it.

2. Once you finally get there, the video itself is virtually substance-free. The scenes of actual dancing are very poorly lit, so concerned parents won’t learn anything about the dancing itself. Nor is there an in-depth study of the issues involved — if you’re wondering about the evolution of teenage dancing, and how this version of teen dance differs from what’s come before (weren’t they complaining about this stuff in the 50’s?), and what it all means, you won’t find it in the video. A couple of high-school kids get some face and mic time, but they have nothing interesting to say.

If you’re going to lure your readers to the web site, you need to reward them somehow when they get there.

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Wrigley Field Ivy, Brought to You By Under Armour

Arriving just days after Walter Kirn’s rant in the New York Times about the ubiquity of advertising comes the news that Wrigley Field’s ivy will have ads this year.

Since I would have cheerfully sold that sponsorship if I were still working in baseball (“Come on,” I’d have insisted, “the stadium’s named after gum!”) I’m not sure why this bothers me. But it does.

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SalesGenie’s Revenge

A funny thing happened to SalesGenie’s Super Bowl commercial on its way to being named the worst ad of all time: apparently, it worked. For better or worse, they figured out what their target — lazy male salespeople — really wanted, presented their product as a way for those salespeople to get what they want, and then asked them to take action.

According to King Kaufman’s column on Salon, they needed 700 new subscribers to make their investment a break-even proposition. They got 10,000.

I Hate an Incompetent Lie

Got a piece of direct mail the other day from an outfit called Listingcorp.com. It looked like a bill — $65.00 for “Annual Website Search Engine Listing”. My blog address was listed at the top. For a moment, I figured I must have signed up for it and forgot. Maybe some kind of free trial?

Then I looked at the bottom, where it said, “THIS IS NOT A BILL. THIS IS A SOLICITATION. YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO PAY THE AMOUNT STATED ABOVE UNLESS YOU ACCEPT THE OFFER.”

At which point I got pissed. The “Invoice” approach got me to open the envelope, it’s true. But as soon as I saw the disclaimer, I realized that they’d put one over on me. And I had no interest in considering their offer. In fact, I’m shredding it as soon as I’m done with this post.

If you have to admit the deception on the same document as the deception itself, maybe you shouldn’t try to deceive. I’m just saying.

Beware the Dancing Bear

In a recent interview, marketing guru Dan Kennedy was asked about various techniques — online and offline — that marketers use to get people to pay attention. Here’s his take:

“You’ve got to put people on a track with borders on it, that keeps them from wandering off in any direction, and moves them from beginning to end to a sale. If you show ’em a dancing bear, and the dancing bear causes them to keep moving forward along the path to a sale, then the dancing bear is a good thing… If they’re so fascinated with the dancing bear that they stop moving forward in the sales presentation just to enjoy the bear, then the bear is a bad thing.”

The interview took place several months ago, but Kennedy’s sentiments are especially timely coming on the heels of the national dancing bear festival that played out in Super Bowl TV commercials. From Suburban’s Trunk Monkey to Career Builders’ job-jungle schtick to whatever the heck was happening in the Go Daddy spot, the commercials sought to entertain first, and sell later.

For an event like the Super Bowl, the case can be made that the normal rules should be suspended — it’s the one time that everyone drops their filters and pays close attention. Perhaps the water-cooler talk that a funny Super Bowl ad generates is more valuable than a coherent sales message. And Budweiser and Coke have earned a free pass with decades of relentless marketing: everyone already knows exactly what their products are and how to buy them.

Your advertising, on the other hand, needs to sell first and entertain later. Humor, sound effects, snazzy graphics and promotions are only appropriate if they help compel your customers to do business with you. Be careful with the dancing bear.