ESPN knows their target audience. From the wall-to-wall sports programming before anyone thought it would be successful to the over-produced, quick-cut highlights that fit exactly into the half-second attention span of most young males to the ads for SportsCenter that are classics of the genre, ESPN simply knows how to appeal to their audience. So it’s a no-brainer, if your product has the same demo, to align your brand with theirs.
Domino’s Pizza, which is launching a series of ninety-second ads that are really more like ESPN vignettes that feature Domino’s product, is going to position itself as “the official pizza of sports gatherings.” At least that is what Hayes Tauber, ESPN Brand Director, says, and he seems like the kind of guy you would take at his word.
The spots themselves, by the unfortunately-named Los Angeles agency Ground Zero, don’t quite live up to the wonderfulness of the SportsCenter spots, but they have a similar sense of humor, are a HUGE improvement from the regular Domino’s spots and seamlessly integrate Domino’s into sports parties:
Maybe too seamlessly as I had to re-watch the spot to see where Domino’s was featured. That is only a small complaint as, knowing ESPN, these will be in heavy enough rotation that it won’t be an issue and the second execution (there will be four when it’s all said and done) does a better job of calling out Domino’s:
These spots are a great move by Domino’s because they not only give it an occasion to own, but they result in much better (more creative and more targeted in terms of messaging) advertising than the brand does on its own.
Social networking sites like Facebook make it easy to know (whether you want to or not, which is another post entirely) what kind of music your friends are listening to. In some circles, Facebook has been used in a sort of arms race between people to show off just how forward-thinking and underground they are in the music scene.
Why? Because music, specifically an individual’s taste in it, is a social self-selector. The indie hipsters have their milieu as do the classic rock junkies and hip-hop mavens and all the rest because your musical taste, in many ways, says something about you and, at the most basic level of simple human nature, people of a certain group feel pressure to conform to the group’s taste…be it clothing or music or whatever.
That happens no matter what age you are, as evidences by all of the very hip 20-somethings in my office walking around in $400 jeans and all listening to the same bands on their iTunes.
Those choices, music included, say something about you. They place you into a social category. In many cases a self-selected social category…like the friend of mine who purposely dresses sloppily at work to look “creative” while really being a dandy who looks like Daniel Craig in James Bond on the weekend.
So what better way to enhance the social category-making power of music than to couple it with fashion? Ringo Starr, of all people, has brought the idea to reality by releasing his new album, Liverpool 8, on a USB wristband:
Music as fashion make a lot of sense, though I would have guessed that it would make the most sense with the younger demographic that Ringo, for all his charms, does not attract.
All this will take is a rap star like Jay-Z at some awards show with a wristband of his favorite album to make this become the next big fashion icon. The album wristband says just as much about you as those livestrong wristbands did, but it also has some value in the music on it and, depending on the technology, the ability to share songs and other files. Britney, had she not gone completely off the deep end, would have been well poised, with her demo, to capitalize on something like this.
Ringo, however, just may not attract the right kind of consumer to make this a real success.
So, the last famous ad man in New York’s agency, Kirschenbaum Bond, has picked up the Wendy’s account from Saatchi & Saatchi with the promise that Wendy’s isn’t just better than fast food, it’s waaaay better than fast food.
Apparently, this promise will be communicated through the use of the red-haired girl in the Wendy’s logo who will be involved at the beginning and the end of each spot. Agency Spy is as confused as I am about how this is actually differentiating since both Burger King and McDonald’s use red-haired characters to brand themselves.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em I guess, though that flies in the face of the claim that Wendy’s is waaay better than fast food. In fact, it sort of says that Wendy’s is like any other fast food, right down to the advertising.
That isn’t to say that the Saatchis work was so wonderful that Wendy’s is foolish to walk away…the Saatchis work clearly didn’t deliver the sales results that Wendy’s was looking for and, sad though it may be for an ad campaign that did drive awareness to be judged purely on short-term sales that is how fast food companies work and Saatchis must have know it. So they are out.
But this new “positioning” doesn’t really position Wendy’s at all.
They aren’t waaay better than fast food because, unlike QSR joints like Subway or Quizno’s they aren’t serving mainly sandwiches and salads that are, if nothing else, perceived as healthier. Wendy’s is a burger joint. It’s the home of the Baconator. Wendy’s is fast food.
Wendy’s may have the best fast food because of better ingredients, never frozen meat and side order options like a baked potato, but they still are fast food and need to live with what they are. The old Dave Thomas advertising plainly said that Wendy’s was better fast food.
They aren’t fooling anyone by pretending that they better THAN fast food. They are fast food.
That said, at least they are launching a campaign and not just going with food beauty-shot ads.
I was talking to The Pretty AE last night and she mentioned that her client has asked her for the agency’s POV on licensing, specifically if licensing is an effective tool and, if it is effective, how this particular brand may benefit from it. A fair and fairly interesting request (and a surprising one from this client as they are the type that generally, despite the agency’s best efforts, uses their agency only for creative…which goes some way to explaining why their sales have been less than robust for some time).
An unscientific view of licensing says that it works based only on the vast number of products that use property tie-ins or even the property itself as the brand (think of the kerfuffle over Nickelodeon licensing its characters to Kellogg’s and Kraft).
By works, of course, I mean that it moves product. And moving product is certainly critical…hard to stay in business if you’re not selling anything (though Y&R would get to differ).
But you know that licensing deals get sold in based on more than just “this will sell X number of incremental widgets and therefore we simply must do it.” That just wouldn’t pass muster through the marketing department and certainly not through senior leadership because everyone is wedded to branding.
And rightly so.
Short-term incremental sales are nice and all, but all decisions must really pass the “is this the right way to handle the brand” test of else you’re on the express train to irrelevance and over-extension. Just ask labels like Yves Saint Lauren and others who line-extended themselves to within an inch of their life.
The real question is whether or not companies are diligent in protecting their brand or if they just go through the motions, rationalizing a bad brand decision because it makes business sense. I would imagine it’s the latter. Take Snickers, which, according to Brandweek, is launching a new flavor specifically for the new Indiana Jones movie:
Never mind that the flavor, chocolate chai coconut, sounds more like something that I would find on a trip round the corner to the nearest Starbucks than on an expedition to a remote jungle, I am certain that this movie tie-in was sold to the Snickers organization because it was a movie that appealed to their demo and this new flavor would make Snickers look hip and cool.
Never mind that a sixty-something Harrison Ford is hardly the person that I or any kid would like to see swinging around and whipping bad guys, (it also has Shia Leboef from Transformers just in case Harrison has to retire to a walker), this is a movie that appeals to everybody. And that is the licensing conundrum.
Perhaps brands like Snickers (and Pepsi and Budweiser) have to go after the big properties to make sure that they are casting a broad enough net to reach enough of their consumers while not alienating any core constituency. But does that mean that it builds the brand? With all of the money that Snickers surely had to throw at the studio to tie-in, with how broad the target and how vanilla the opportunity (it’s harder to name a CPG company that hasn’t done a movie tie-in than one that has), the answer is clearly no.
This is clearly a partnership that is designed to move short-term sales, no matter what the brand team may tell you.
It may not kill the brand, in fact, this movie tie-in may have absolutely no brand effect while it does drive up sales. The question though is about the opportunity cost: what could Snickers have done with the money that they spent on the movie partnership? A lot, especially if you believe as I do that it is possible to build the brand while driving sales (be it through licensing or other tactics).
Snickers, it’s time to out-think instead of out-spend.
Possibly the most viewed thread of posts at the Daily (Ad) Biz have been those about Kansas City-based interactive agency VML. It all started with a compliment about the nicely designed Snapple website (which, as an aside, leads me to believe that I ought to be more positive in ad reviews) before things quickly went downhill, resulting in a passionate slanging match in the comments section of this post.
At first, impressed by the vehemence of the anti-VML comments, this impartial observer was swayed. After all, the comments referred solid dollar values and specific projects and there were a lot of them. Something was going on.
But then the counter-comments came in.
The plain fact is that the “anonymity” of the internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it makes it easy for the real story about and agency or a company to bubble to the surface because people are able to say what is really on their mind without worries about repercussions. That is undeniably a good thing. On the other hand, what’s to stop someone who is disgruntled for any number of reasons to post things that are nothing more than mud-slinging?
Though the specificity of the comments about VML do lead the reader to believe that something has gone wrong over there, at least on a project or two, the pro-VML comments did help to balance the verdict.
Agency Spy had two posts close together about two different agencies, Fallon and Zimmerman, and the response in the comments section for each one was very different and very revealing.
The comments about Fallon, while scathing, did come from people who obviously had a lot of heart for the agency. They wanted it to get back to the glory days, they believed in what it was and, though they were calling out some people by name, seemed to think that the glory could be restored.
The comments about Zimmerman were just plain scathing. And that said a lot about the agency as a place to work at and as a place to do business with.
VML seems to be closer to Fallon than to Zimmerman (in terms only of employees or ex-employees willing to speak positively about the agency), though even with that it’s hard to say what’s really going in Kansas City. I would love to know…
I am not going to pretend that I don’t like saying “I told you so” because, frankly, I do. I told you so.
Agency Spy, who was also in the mix early, also enjoys saying and and goes on to note that Initiative is certain to be partying hearty after this win and that of the Hyundai/Kia account. Congratulations, the celebration is well deserved.
New York agency Devito/Verdi has picked up the Chipotle Mexican Grill account for creative duties and national media planning and buying. What a good win for an agency that flies under the radar despite continually producing excellent creative (with their radio writing, based simply on the sheer number of ads that are on my Radio Mercury discs, being the best of the best).
I love Chipotle and wish that there was one immediately downstairs from my apartment. I don’t even care that I would get fat because I would eat there for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The only real issue with Chipotle is their website which, from a design perspective, just isn’t that good (and is clearly inferior to their new agency’s). It’s so Flash-heavy, which was cool a few years ago, but is now just annoying.
Pepsi has dramatically changed gears for at least on of its Super Bowl spots. The brand that has built its advertising on high production values, big time celebrities, music and little else is running a spot that is…silent:
Playing off of an inside joke in the deaf community, the spot is fairly cute on its own merits. It will definitely be breakthrough, simply because the silence will stand out from the rest of the ads that blare out from the TV (why stations let advertisers set the levels of their spots so high is beyond me and a strain for my TV’s speakers). On the Super Bowl, being breakthrough really matters because breakthrough is remembered and talked about the next day.
Further, because of the PR hook that inherent in the commercial that Pepsi has successfully leveraged, the spot is working even harder – because people are talking about it before it has even premiered – than others that will run with it.
It’s a Saturday and I am at work instead of heading up north to go snowboarding, which is annoying. Because I am annoyed, it’s time for the usual post of things that annoy me.
Going beyond buzzwords, which are always awful, it is annoying when people misuse words and don’t know it. The two most common culprits recently are “fulsome” and “singular” which don’t mean, respectively, “full of” or “single” but actually mean something quite different. So when you say “the client had fulsome praise for your layouts” you are not complimenting me but rather saying that the feedback from the client was offensively flattering or insincere (which, on second thought, it may have been). And when you say something like “the client is looking for another agency for a singular creative project” as Agency Spy reported about Berlin Cameron and Boost Mobile, you aren’t really saying that the client is looking for an agency to do a single project but rather that they client is looking for an agency to do a strange or eccentric project. Which I doubt.
Bozo the Clown typically misuses at least one of these words in any meeting that we are in together and it is as grinding to my senses as fingernails on a chalkboard.
He also has continual grammatical mistakes, the most glaring of which is his misuse of “whom.” Most people, thanks to our poor public education system that thinks that kids learn language and grammar organically, do not know how to correctly choose when to use “whom” or “who.” If that is the case, then just stick with “who” because nine times out of ten it is the correct one to go with and even if it is wrong you don’t sound like the kind of pompous ass who misuses “whom” because he thinks it makes him sound educated.
Also annoying, because there are far too many people at an agency who look at and sign off on a layout to let something like this happen, are typos. Like the one in this ad by Fallon for job site TheLadders.com:
The ad itself I really like, if only because it immediately calls out my major frustration of job sites like monster.com and even more targeted ones like talentzoo. I spend most of my time wading through crap before finding either a job I might be interested in or, lately, someone I think that we should interview.
The strategy is sound, the execution is pretty clever and the headline is functional and, I would imagine, effective.
Agency Spy is reporting that the buzz around the water cooler is that Goodby is up to its knees in it on the Hyundai account. I had heard these rumors as well, but not from someone so authoritative, but hoped that they were wrong.
It would have been a superb bit of marketing had Hyundai balked at the Super Bowl spot as a way of building buzz for their ad.
After all, car ads are, by and large, kind of boring. Mainly they are created to show off the sheet metal which makes strategic sense as research shows that a huge percentage (disturbingly huge for that large of a purchase) of car-buying decisions are made on impulse and many of those impulse buys are made by buyers who see a car that they like, go into the dealership and then buy something else of the same brand. There are more and less interesting ways of showing the car, but you have to show the car.
And Hyundai just doesn’t have good looking (or exciting or cool or differentiating) cars to sell. So not only does the category throw up challenges for creative advertising but the product does too. I am sure that Agency of the YearGoodby, Silverstein and Partners is better equipped than most to overcome these challenges, but the very fact that Hyundai wanted to pull the Super Bowl spot because it was poor does underline that it’s just not that easy to live up to the creative expectations of the Super Bowl with a car ad for a ho-hum manufacturer.
The media play that Hyundai started with its prevarication on running the spot could have at least attracted eyeballs of consumers who wanted to see the ad that almost didn’t run. The spot probably still will attract eyeballs, but now that it has emerged that the spot is considered poor it can only be a self-fulfilling prophesy and anyway Hyundai is not going to be happy that is spent $4.5 million on a spot that they don’t like, media buzz or not.
It could have been so different, and would have been fun if it were.
Then Hyundai could have, at the last minute, announced that it believed in the economy, was running the spot and, with the right PR and even promotional pricing, behind the move could have sewn up some significant pre-Super Bowl attention and assured an audience for the ad…a positive audience for the ad.
