Category: Marketing

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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Customer Service Done Right: Soluna Grill Makes The Save

I wrote the other day about how companies handle a situation when something goes wrong — my newsletter company’s shrug still rankles. So it’s only fair to commend a local eatery who got it right.

Last night my wife and had dinner at Portland’s Soluna Grill. We were seated quickly, and a waitress came by with menus. But she didn’t come back to take our orders. We saw her moving back and forth from the kitchen, delivering food and checking in on other tables. But as the clock continued to tick and our hunger grew, she never made a move in our direction.

Finally I caught her attention, motioned her over, and told her we were ready to order. At this point, she was Soluna Grill’s marketing department — a small slice of neighborhood word-of-mouth (and although she didn’t know it, the immense power of Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog) was her responsibility.

This is where things got good. She immediately apologized, told us that she’d gotten mixed up on table assignments, and said, “I’m on the case now. What can I get you?” Minutes later, she was back with our wine, and informed us that drinks would be on the house.

From that moment on, the service was flawless, the food was superb (stay for dessert — Soluna’s Chocolate Bourbon Croissant Bread Pudding is a mind-blower). And, true to her word, there was a discount on the final bill that more than covered our drinks.

Here’s what she got right after something went wrong:

1. She immediately took responsibility for the problem, and for fixing it: “I’m sorry, it was my fault. I’m on the case now.”

2. She volunteered compensation. I don’t know whether she had to get management approval, or whether she was empowered to comp the drinks on her own. The ten minutes we’d lost seemed pretty minor to us, and we weren’t going to ask for anything — but it felt awfully good when she offered.

3. Once she made the offer, she followed through and made sure it was reflected on the bill.

4. Once she said she was on the case, she was on the case.


Her actions meant that instead of being focused on a snafu early in the experience, we could rave to our friends about the rest of the experience — the excellent seafood stew, the perfectly-cooked halibut… and that Chocolate Bourbon Croissant Bread Pudding.

Whatever it says on the organizational chart, your front-line employees are your Marketing Department. Mistakes happen. People are human. And customers will forgive an occasional stumble if you empower your employees to take responsibility and make amends quickly.

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Got a question? Wanna argue? Email Phil Bernstein here.

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Social Media as Time Suck: Godin and Pastis Nail It

Pearls Before Swine

For about a year — from mid-2008 through about mid-2009 — I made a concerted effort to use social media to boost my online presence. I tended to my profile on LinkedIn, and participated in its “Answers” forum. I added a Facebook Fan Page. Put up a profile on Biznik. Tweeted regularly. And, of course, blogged several times a week.

My hope was that with a more robust online presence, potential clients would find me, learn about me, enter into a dialog with me, and spend money with me.

What I didn’t count on was all the easy time-wasting that went along with it — checking my blog stats, following links on Twitter, answering tweets. It was fun, but it was also a great way to feel like I was working when I was doing anything but.

Also, as near as I could tell, I didn’t make a dime on any of it.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve encountered a couple of interesting takes on the phenomenon. Stephan Pastis’ “Pearls Before Swine” (above) and the passage below from Seth Godin‘s new book, Linchpin.

If you sat at work watching Hawaii 5-o reruns, you’d probably lose your job. But it’s apparently fine to tweak and update your Facebook status account for an hour. That’s “connecting to your social graph.”

Don’t even get me started on Twitter. There are certainly people who are using it effectively and productively. Some people (a few) are finding that it helps them do the work. But the rest? It’s perfect resistance, because it’s never done. There’s always another tweet to be read and responded to. Which, of course, keeps you from doing the work.

At the beginning of the year, I dropped just about all of it.

I’m now slowly dipping my toe back in the water, for one simple reason:  on some gut level, I believe Bill Gates would write me a large check if only he knew who Phil Bernstein was, and I need to give him an opportunity to find me.

I’m still going to ignore Twitter (this blog goes there automatically), but the blog is now back two or three times a week, I’ll answer the occasional question on LinkedIn, post an occasional link on my Facebook Fan Page, and declare victory.

What say you? Is social media really generating a measurable return for you? Or is it just a giant time suck?

Post your comments below.

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Got a question? Wanna argue? Email Phil Bernstein here.

Sign up for Phil Bernstein’s free advertising and marketing e-newsletter here.

Become a Phil Bernstein Portland’s Advertising Expert Facebook Fan here