advertising insight into an america without a soul

It seems like every time I am in a briefing where a planner tells the team that we have to be careful not to underestimate the consumer, I go back to my desk and happen upon an article like this. And then I laugh to myself. Because it is impossible to underestimate the consumer.

Let’s break this down:

“It’s true. You can get paid to drive your own car – whether to work, to church, to your kids’ soccer games or any of your other normal destinations.”

All you have to do is send $24.99 and we will send you the brochure and DVD that tell you how! So call now.

“You won’t get rich doing this mind you, but in these recessionary times, taking in an extra $300 to $900 a month can definitely come in handy for a lot of folks.”

All from the comfort of your own car! So call now.

tuesday miscellania

This Is The Change We’ve Been Waiting For
Change Starts With Your Underwear. And Office Nudity. – headline, Adrants, Nov. 10

Learned Lesson From Earlier Porcupine-Embracing Debacle
Japan Embraces Fast-Fashion Shops – headline, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 10

Bottom Stories Of The Day
Discovery Channel Still Loves The World A Lot – headline, Adfreak, Nov. 10
The Case Against Twitter Lists – headline, Agency Spy, Nov. 10
Balloons To Light Up Your Night – headline, Brand Flakes For Breakfast, Nov. 10
Strong Starts For George Lopez, Wanda Sykes Shows – headline, Media Decoder, Nov. 10

laying off the pretty ae

Talk about awkward.

Of all of the complications of an intra-office romance, the last one that I expected was this. I should have known better. This was not just any intra-office romance, this was an ad agency intra-office romance. Layoffs are a way of life at ad agencies, especially when the economy falters as ours has. I should have known better.

The relationship, which was already strained, did not recover. The emotional hardship of being laid off is difficult enough, but to be dating and have to see and talk to a person still employed at the agency that laid you off (and to have your social life centered there, as so many ad people’s is)…well, that can get to be a lot. For anyone.

And it did.

Although the worst part was the senior partner walking up to me to apologize profusely for not telling me first, being more sensitive, etc.

What was I supposed to say?

So I just let it happen and wished that the whole situation would go away. And not just because the relationship was on the rocks, but because the relationship should never have been a concern of the senior partner to begin with.

It was a bad situation. And with that, I learned my lesson: no more intra-office relationships, no matter how pretty the AE.

keep social media human

How To Create Advocates For Your Business

People who use social media to connect to brands need real friends. As in, people friends.

Because only with actual people friends can a person have a conversation, and conversation is truly the most civilizing of inter-personal interactions.

In lieu of being able to change the current social dynamic in this country and connect all of those souls who have friended brands on Facebook, set brand logos as their IM icon or whose Tweets are like a corporate news RSS feed, I will bemoan it. There are people out there like that. But they are weird. And other people know that they are weird. Which makes them less trustworthy.

Think about it for a second (…thinking…). Who do you go to for an opinion when you are thinking about making a purchase in a category you are unfamiliar with? Family likely. A knowledgeable friend. Third-part expert sources.

You’re not checking Facebook to see if a brand you are considering has a lot of friends. Twitter neither.

Frankly, as much as traditional advertising cannot save a bad product, neither can social media or influencer outreach or brand advocate conversion efforts.

Because you can’t hide on the internet, and a bad product will kill you every time.

That is not to say that people who have had a good experience with your company, product, etc can’t help you – obviously they can. But they are reacting to a positive experience with the product, service, company, etc and therefore the primary way to create advocates is not to invest heavily in social media but to invest heavily in developing an effective and user-friendly product, service, company, etc.

That is not to say that outreach in social and other channels aren’t great ways to amplify what people who love you are saying. They are.

It’s just that you don’t have to do anything beyond create the product, service or company that people love. The rest takes care of itself, social media strategy or not.

Social media is just conversation in binary code. And like regular conversation among regular people, people don’t want a brand to help them along or get in the way. They will talk about it if it makes sense. But they will get annoyed if they find that a brand is trying to orchestrate the whole thing.

People don’t want to get sold, and certainly not under the disingenuous guise of ‘conversation.’

So let it happen naturally. The way to create advocates for your brand is to create an fucking awesome product or experience because, since you can’t hide on the internet, if you have nothing to hide that people will find out about it.

thursday miscellania

Great Moments In Marketing Strategy
Boulder Sushi Chain Targets Oft-Hungry Demo – headline, BNet, Nov. 5

Winner Will Be Decided By Rock, Paper, Scissors
“Social Media” vs “I Don’t Know”: It’s A Tie – headline, Ad Contrarian, Nov. 5

Bottom Stories of the Day
Cows Aren’t Just For Tipping Anymore – headline, AdPulp, Nov. 5
You Can Call Me Fred If You Want – headline, Make The Logo Bigger, Nov. 5
Rude Stork Shows Up At Worst Possible Moments – headline, Denver Egoist, Nov. 5

life in an ad agency

I have been having a recurring dream. First, some context. Recently, I moved from a boutique-ish independent agency that still had its founders actively involved in the day-to-day business and setting of the culture to a mid-size agency owned by one of the holding companies whose founder had retired fully within the past few years and doesn’t really know what it is, besides being a mid-sized agency owned by one of the holding companies.

At both agencies, the creative product could be characterized as good to occasionally spectacular, the compensation is roughly comparable, and each has a foosball table.

But my last agency was truly human.

As such, my recurring dream is that I have gone back to my old agency because, dammit, it was a better place to work.

In the end, I wouldn’t go back for a host of location and familial reasons (and the realization, in my dream, that I chose work over those obligations is awfully haunting), but I really wish I could.

Separated from the vision of the founder and creaking under the weight of holding company bean-counting, an agency loses its soul.

wednesday miscellania

Not Exactly Prospecting For Gold
Agency Wants to Get Drunk With Prospects – headline, Adrants, Nov. 3

Weezer and Snuggie Warm Up To Each Other – headline, Adfreak, Nov. 3

And Why Weren’t They Prosecuted?
Did Ad Agency TBWA/Chiat/Day Kill Pets.com? – headline, Tribble Agency, Nov. 4

Bottom Stories of the Day
Silos Suck – headline, AdPulp, Nov. 4
Reader’s Digest Closes Rick Warren Magazine – headline, Media Decoder, Nov. 4
Bob Jeffries Cries Over Losing Kellogg’s – headline, Tribble Agency, Nov. 4

magic advertising words matter

Magic Advertising Words Matter

Advertisers are always caught in a bind: if a product is doing well, the credit goes to the product and not the advertising while if a product is not doing well, the blame gets put on the advertising and not the product.

As an example, take Subaru. It is the only car company to have posted positive sales gains for the last two years, yet even employees at the company have said that the advertising isn’t (splashy enough to be) award worthy. That acts as both a critique on what sort of advertising wins awards and as a reminder that product always gets the credit when sales are up.

The flipside example is provided by McCann and Microsoft. It’s not the tragically pathetic nature of the Vista product that caused issues, but rather it is the advertising. So Microsoft flipped the account to a new agency, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, and they’re doing just about the same work for just about the same product.

Magic advertising words don’t drive large-scale gains.

And in the, I agree with Alan Wolk. Good advertising will not save a bad product. Great advertising will not save a bad product. “[Companies cannot rely] on the power of Magic Advertising Words to save them from doom when the real problem is a less-than-ideal product.”

A bad product, especially with the instant information available on the internet, cannot be saved by anything except for a better product. People know when a product is bad, unreliable, etc. And they know it instantly. Because you can’t hide on the internet.

That is not to say that advertising adds no value. Because it does.

But the value that it adds is at the margins.

For example, there is no real difference between Puma and Nike or Toyota and Lexus or Gap and Banana Republic or Samsonite and Kirkland Signature. The products are the same. In some cases, they are the exact same. But people pay more for one than the other, and they do so across not just the examples listed but across a vast array of examples. And they do so because of advertising.

Advertising matters, and it is at its best when the products are at or are near parity. It makes the marginal difference in consumer perception that matters – to differentiation, to sales, to profitability.

Advertising can’t save a bad product, but those magic advertising words can make a real difference.

Which is why people pay us to come up with them.

monday miscellania

Also Part of a Balanced Breakfast
Free Bagels: A Simple, Long-Term Promotion – headline, BNet, Nov. 2

Someone’s Not Telling the Truth
DirecTV Uses Only Living People in New Spot – headline, Adfreak, Nov. 2

DirecTV Ads Now Feature Heath Ledger, JFK, Jesus – headline, Adrants, Nov. 2

Someone’s Still Not Telling the Truth
Macy’s Says Phillies Won the World Series – feature, Adfreak, Nov. 2

context, content and hill holliday’s new website

Context, Content and Hill Holliday’s New Website

Boston agency Hill Holliday has launched a new agency website that, according to Chief Media Officer Baba Shetty, “gives us enormous flexibility to create scenarios that vary by user situation.”

Already owners of a site that eschewed the typical static brochureware about the company in that it was built around a blog, Hill Holliday has continued innovation with their new platform that “[allows] allowing us to play around with the intersection of web content and user context.”

That is the holy grail, isn’t it?

The digital holy grail at least. The real holy grail, as we all learned from Indiana Jones, is a wooden carpenter’s cup that is buried somewhere in the Crescent Valley along with a whole bunch of Hollywood extras.

An example of what Hill Holliday means by the intersection of content and context is highlighted in AdPulp today, where a custom header greets those who come from the AdPulp site with “We think AdPulpFiction would be an awesome movie. Welcome to Hill Holliday.” And that certainly is an intersection of content and context. But it is also a lot like the greeter at a store in the mall saying something like “that sweater you got over at J. Crew across the way looks great on you. Welcome to the Apple Store.”

Which is pretty creepy.

Content is meaningless without context, a statement that is so true as to be cliché, and a statement that begs the question what context is necessary and correct to give meaning to content.

Knowing what website you are coming from and flagging a note of that is context, sure, but it is doesn’t give the content anymore meaning. It is digital chest-bumping, showing that the technology can do something simply for and getting it noticed simply because of the novelty value. It doesn’t add value to what is on the site. And it is as weird as a store clerk at a mall store having watched you shop the store across the hall.

Which is not to say that one can’t use the knowledge of what site a person is coming from to give context to the content on their site. It is just that it should help determine what content is merchandised.

To use the analogy of the mall, what the store clerk should have done is take the knowledge of what the shopper bought in the other store to arrange his own merchandise or feature a product that is complementary or fills an unmet need. That would subtly make relevant content, making it contextually correct for the state of the consumer.

And that is what will make digital technology more than a party trick.