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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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.
Things sometimes go wrong in business, in spite of our best efforts. And as Seth Godin points out, there are all sorts of ways to apologize, some better than others.
Here’s one that really got it done. I walked into the Lloyd Center Men’s Wearhouse here in Portland on the last day of the winter sale. They didn’t have the shirts I wanted in my size, so Tammy, the store manager, ordered them for me at the sale price. They were to be delivered from another store, but when I came back in on the appointed day, they hadn’t yet arrived.
How did Tammy handle it? She asked for my phone number, and promised to deliver them to me if I couldn’t make it back. Tonight, after the mall closed, she came by my house and dropped them off. The right shirts, hand-delivered to my house by the manager. No extra charge.
Next time you need clothes in Portland, make time to visit Men’s Wearhouse in Portland. Ask for Tammy.
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.
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.