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Thursday February 25, 2010 what do you think reader?Do you have a friend who you think would like to read this newsletter? Then forward it to a friend! Want to update your details? Then click here! Love it, hate it or think it could be improved? Then please email us your comments! the art of advertising is simple.
Find something that makes your product seem more appealing than the other company's and find an interesting way to communicate it. Put a straightforward idea like this into the hands of today's advertising professional, however, and he will quickly turn it into a dog's breakfast. You'll wind up with planners and analysts and strategists and managers and global chief something-or-others of all types. The process will consist of meetings and briefings and presentations and downloads and uploads. No one will actually do any sitting and thinking. Something that should take a day and a half will take two months. Every now and then, as a byproduct of all this activity, an ad will appear somewhere. When the ad appears, it won't actually be about the product. It will be about the "lifestyle" of the user. Or about what the product means in the emotional make-up of the user. Or, maybe, it won't be an ad at all. Maybe it will be a "conversation" pretending not to be about the product. What it will be is a mile away from an ad that would help you sell more stuff! So next time you have an ad in front of you, ask yourself this: Does this make my product seem more appealing than the other company's and does it do it in an interesting way? Taken from the brilliant Ad Contrarian social media, it takes two.
Whether we like it or not the hysteria around social media continues to grow. We think it's massively over-hyped because evidence of the efficacy of social media is pretty thin on the ground. You'd think that with every company in the universe diving headfirst into this new world, there'd be more concrete evidence of its success. But we've yet to see any. For most it isn’t going to be the holy grail of marketing that every social media ‘expert’ thinks it is, but it can have a part to play in communicating your message to the few that are prepared to listen. Traditional media is a one-way message – brands talk and if the message is interesting, funny or worthwhile the consumer might listen. As the Tweeters and Facebookers among among you are aware, social media allows you to instantly 'engage' with an audience who are interested in your product. But this also means your audience can respond to you instantly. This is where a brand develops ‘conversation’ with their consumer through social media. As with any channel, if you want to play the game you’ve got to know and understand the rules, unless that is, you are one leading train company we recently spotted on Twitter. When asked a question, our unsuspecting operator tweeted ‘We are unable to respond to messages direct on Twitter. Please contact our Customer Services team with any enquiries. Thank you’. Well, I’m sorry, but social media doesn’t work like that. If you are unable to respond to messages via Twitter, then don’t put messages on Twitter in the first place. It'll only annoy the people you are trying to 'engage' with. top 10 marketing blunders no. 7
Every month we look at the most brilliant marketing screw-ups. This month Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth". |
the mhd partnership limited, 37 bath road, swindon, sn1 4as |