Category: Branding

When You’ve Got a Kitten Wearing a Tiny Hat…

… it may be appropriate to suspend the normal rules of effective advertising. But ultimately, some heartless, cruel advertising blogger will risk the anger of an entire nation to point out that this Lake Street Creamery ad would have been a better selling tool with an offer at the end.

There, I said it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMnpWYaCKB0]

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Does Relentless Advertising Work?

One answer to this question comes from a study conducted a few years ago by the Stanford University School of Medicine and Packard Children’s Hospital. According to AdAge.com, kids 3 to 5 years old were fed two sets of identical foods — some in McDonald’s wrappers and some wrapped in plain paper.

They overwhelmingly preferred the stuff when it came with a Mickey-D’s logo.

“Each child was given chicken nuggets, a hamburger and french fries from McDonald’s, and baby carrots and milk from the grocery store… With one exception, significantly more children said the McDonald’s-labeled product tasted better.”

McDonald’s spends an enormous amount of money to advertise to children, and apparently they have purchased brand loyalty beginning at a very early age. If you’ve ever driven past a McDonald’s at lunchtime with a car full of kids, you’ve seen brand loyalty translate into sales.

McDonald’s has enough money to be seen and heard just about everywhere; the rest of us have to be more selective in choosing market segments and media opportunities we can afford to dominate. But even without a huge marketing budget, you can still follow the basic principles that have kept McDonald’s at the top of their category:

1. Have a consistent theme and spokesperson — the Golden Arches logo has been there forever, and Ronald McDonald has been a significant part of the marketing effort for decades.

2. Establish a long-term plan, and stick with it. The most successful markets map out a year at a time, and they don’t cancel their ads after a bad weekend.

3. Make an offer. A small portion of McDonald’s advertising is for image, but most of it gives the target consumer a specific benefit — a coupon, a new product, a movie tie-in — for doing business with them today.

It takes careful planning, patience, and money to establish a dominant position in your market. And attention spans are shorter than they’ve ever been. But the basic techniques for gaining the consumer’s attention, interest, desire, and action haven’t changed.

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Google Adwords as Job-Hunting Tool

With a son about to graduate from college, I find myself reading articles on job-hunting that I might have otherwise skipped. CNN.com reports on  copywriter Alec Brownstein, who tapped into the power of Google Adwords:

While Googling some of his favorite creative directors, he came up with a brilliant self-marketing campaign.After noticing there were no sponsored links attached to their names, he purchased ads from Google AdWords. Then he designed a personalized ad for each executive with a link back to Brownstein’s own site.

Whenever anyone Googled one of the five names, his ad would pop up as the top result. He was counting on them doing what we all do from time to time: Googling ourselves. And guess what? That’s exactly what happened.

Advertising, Claude Hopkins once wrote, is selling in print. Brownstein, who had copywriting talents to sell, identified his target and figured out a way to cut through the clutter of resumes and human resources departments — delivering  his sales message directly to his prospects. Did it work?

Within a couple of months, Brownstein was interviewed by all but one. Two of the four offered him a job. The total cost of the entire campaign at 15 cents a click –a mere $6 to make a dream come true.

The full CNN article also profiles a woman who used Twitter to land a PR gig, and a guy who found a job at Amazon via Second Life.

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Microsoft Takes a Page From the Singer Playbook

Knit blogger Pdxknitterati writes today about an old Singer miniature toy sewing machine that she encountered recently at her mother’s house. From about 1926 into the 50’s, Singer marketed these to little girls. They likely made a little money on each toy sewing machine. More important, Singer established the Singer brand early with these girls, and made a lot of money when they grew up and bought full-size Singers for themselves.

Microsoft is likely to get similar results from a new program they’ve established with the  Employment Department in my home state of Oregon. Under the Elevate America program — which is also operating in other states — Microsoft will give out 16,000 vouchers good for free online training in the programs of the Microsoft Office Suite. To be eligible, recipients must have been unemployed for 45 days or longer.

Here’s the beauty of this program: not only is it genuinely helpful, but it also gives Microsoft the opportunity to use three of Robert Cialdini’s six “Weapons of Influence”:

  • Authority: Microsoft’s products get an implicit endorsement from the Employment Department, and the Governor
  • Social Proof: people will be more inclined to do something — like buying Microsoft software instead of using, say, Google Docs — if they see other people doing it
  • Reciprocity: when these people re-enter the work force, they will feel a debt of gratitude to Microsoft. If any of them wind up having responsibility over purchasing, Microsoft has the inside track.

Like the girls who learned to sew on Singer machines, there are 16,000 Oregonians who will be most comfortable with Microsoft Office when they get jobs again. So Microsoft isn’t just doing good — they’re going to do well.

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“P” is for “Pantene”. And for “Pointless”.

An absolute trainwreck of a live commercial on “The Biggest Loser”.

I honestly don’t have any idea what they were hoping to accomplish with this. If the object was to sell product, or create interest in said product, they have failed miserably.

Thank you (I guess) to Kailee Kinney of 1190 KEX Radio for bringing this to my attention.

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