Category: Portland

The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes

I recently completed a 13-page white paper called “The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them.” It’s a study of some of the most common ways that companies waste their advertising dollars — along with suggestions to make those dollars work harder and smarter.

Among the subjects I cover are:

Why trying to reach the largest possible audience can actually hurt your results.

What your prospects are really interested in (hint: it’s not you),

How many topics you should cover in each ad

The one item that must be in your advertising if you want to generate results

Why you should stop agonizing about reaching “The Right People” — and what you should concentrate on instead.

Why you may be leaving money on the table even if your marketing generates new customers.

You can download a copy of this report at no charge by signing up here.

Does Relentless Advertising Work?

One answer to this question comes from a study conducted by the Stanford University School of Medicine and Packard Children’s Hospital. According to AdAge.com (thanks to Rick Lewis for alerting me to this), 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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Salesmanship Vs. English Grammar

In the space of a couple of hours, I read a couple of articles that contradict each other on the subject of language.

First (in order of when I read ’em) was a capsule review of the book Branded Nation by James B. Twitchell. “Twitchell,” wrote reviewer Steve Cone,

“is unusual among college professors in that he teaches both English and advertising, two disciplines that make perfect sense together.”

Offering a different point of view is direct-response copywriter Bob Bly. In his blog, Bly tackles the occasional conflict between good grammar and effective selling. A subscriber to his newsletter had complained that the expression “free gift” was redundant. “Is there any other kind?” wrote the reader.

Replied Bly:

…your argument is that ‘free gift’ is redundant — like ‘armed gunmen.’ But, tests prove that in direct marketing, omitting the word ‘free’ and just saying ‘gift’ actually depresses response. I teach in business writing classes to avoid redundancy … but I am not sure that’s always good advice. The reason for redundancy is that some people need to read a thing several times before it sinks in.

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New Ways to Look at Old Products

One of the tough things about being around for a while is that you become generic. In the consumer’s mind, Kleenex means tissue, but tissue is tissue. So the challenge is to somehow create a new use for, or way of looking at, an old product.

In the past few weeks, media attention has shined on three interesting innovations:

1. Kleenex recently recently released Kleenex Anti-Viral , which, the manufacturer claims, will kill germs in the tissue.

2. Wizmark has taken the trusty old urinal cake and turned it into an advertising medium. The State of New Mexico is placing them in bars in an effort to reduce drunk driving. But the folks at the company want to sell advertising. If the radio/internet thing doesn’t work out for me, this could be my next sales job. Thanks to John Carlton for tipping me off to this.

3. Auto insurance is auto insurance, right? You pay your premium, and when you wreck the car they write you a check. So the companies have to fight it out in a marketplace that too often views them as generic. American Family has come up with a new service for their policy-holders: they have partnered with Drivecam to offer video cameras mounted in the car. The product is aimed at teenage drivers — or more accurately, at their parents. The logic is that behavior changes when the subjects know they’re being observed. So if a teenager knows that sudden accelleration or braking will trigger the camera, he or she will be less likely to drive unsafely. It’s only offered in a few states right now.

I’ve been a Farmers customer for years. Their service has been good, and I’m too lazy to shop premiums. But my older son totalled his car, and my younger son will be driving in a couple of years. If Drivecam comes to Oregon, and American Family is the only company that offers it, would I drag myself off the couch to switch?

You betcha.

It’s not generic anymore.

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Who Are “The Right People”?

When you work on a marketing campaign, it’s natural to want to make sure you’re targeting “the right people” with your message – the people who are most likely to do business with you.

Media people have access to a variety of research tools to make some educated decisions about the kind of people who are listening to, reading, watching, or logging onto our media. And a lot of time, effort and money are spent in trying to pick the vehicle that reaches The Right People.

If you promise not to tell, I’ll pass along a dirty little secret of this business:

The Right People are listening to my radio stations… and my competitor’s stations. They watch TV (a whole bunch of channels, too). Some of them get their information from the newspaper, and some from the internet.

Further complicating the picture is the fact that very few people make decisions by themselves. People talk to each other and influence each other’s choices. The end user may or may not be the person who decides what to buy.

Examples?

In large companies, office equipment may be used primarily by administrative personnel. But the sales order may be issued by someone in the purchasing department. And orders over a certain size may need the blessing of the controller or even the CEO. All of those people may even seek advice from colleagues at other companies.

Here’s how the Phi Beta Kappa college honor society solicits members, according to the Wall Street Journal: “You get a letter during junior or senior year, with congratulations and a request to pay an initiation fee (generally $50 to $90). If you don’t respond, some chapters send a follow-up letter to your parents.”

Who makes the decision to enroll in Phi Beta Kappa – the student or the parents? And when you’re marketing office equipment, what target do you choose?

You can spend a lot of time agonizing over the question. The beauty and the curse of marketing is that there’s no one right answer. The odds are pretty good that whatever media choice you make (“Cheney for President” on a Progressive Talk station being a possible exception), you’ll reach a significant number of The Right People, and you’ll miss some others.

Make sure that the people you do reach hear your message often – the more often you talk to someone, the better the chance he’ll give you a call when he has a need.

Then, using the time you saved by not agonizing over your media choice, agonize over your message. Make sure that your story matters to your prospects, and that you tell it well.

I can help you with that.

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