Advertising Thingys

I’ll take the airlines. But please hold the advertising.

Nader Ashway3 Comments

Face it, big airlines.  You suck.  You suck because you can’t keep your promises. You suck because you’re delivering the same or less service than you were a year ago, and charging way more for it. You suck because you can’t even throw in the lousy meals anymore. You suck because your advertising is a big fat lie.

Please American, Continental/United, Delta, and yes, even you JetBlue.  Please do us all a favor.  Stop spending tens of, no make that hundreds of millions of dollars on all that advertising only to fail us at the ticket counter, and at the gate, and in the sky and when we get our credit card statements.

Truth is, you don’t have exceptional service.  You don’t have the lowest fares.  You don’t have the best routes.  You don’t have the most flights.  You’re not really that convenient after all.

Come to think of it, it’s really funny how just about ALL your advertising focuses on those key benefits, when almost none of you can deliver on these basic promises.

Instead, let’s focus on the basic truths:  across the board, your service is on the scale somewhere between below-grade and adequate.  I don’t discount that there may be an exceptional and caring employee flying the skies on any given A320, but by and large, your staff is just going through the motions.

Your fares are out of whack, and on no discernible pattern. I recently researched a flight from New York/Newark to San Diego on Continental.  (I looked up to THREE months out.)  $1,064.  REALLY?  A thousand bucks?  I could practically get chauffered out there on that dime.  And, hey, JetBlue, those “discount” fares of yours are all but a distant memory now, huh?  When I compared, you were only about $200 cheaper.  Honestly?

And can I ever get on a flight that isn’t “oversold?”

What’s astonishing to me is that the basic laws of marketing, branding and social media all state that airlines should essentially wither on the vine and die, and lose share to the competitor that meets customer needs, and to a market that demands choice.  And yet, these behemoths survive.  Promises are being broken, word of mouth is almost entirely negative, (when was the last time you heard about an “exceptional” flying experience from a co-worker?) prices are going up, and now you’re getting charged for checked baggage and crazy needs like “legroom,” and big airlines seem to almost universally be having banner years.  Where is the competitor who “gets it?” Where is the market demanding choice?

So again, I state my initial request.  Please re-allocate your budgets.  Hold the advertising.  Take the 8- and 9-figure advertising budgets, and instead, just lower rates.  Just STOP with the checked bag fees.  And please stop making me sit in the middle of row 26 when I book a flight a month in advance.

WTF, Financial Advertising? [What’s the Focus?]

Nader Ashway1 Comment

I’ve been watching a lot of financial advertising lately, and I can’t help but wonder where all the typical metaphors have gone. If you’ve ever seen a commercial about a middle-aged man getting ready for his daughter’s wedding, (cue the flashback vignette of her birth, first tooth, college graduation, etc.,) well, you’ve seen them all.

But much of that seems to be changing.  In fact, financial advertising is undergoing an interesting transformation in that the commercials today are, as a group, much less about the money/ security/ wealth promise and more about the technology with which you can access it. Financial advertising has shifted the vector. And in a sense, it’s emblematic of our cultural catch-up with technology – new devices, broadband, more access – and how we choose to interact with our institutions.

John Hancock insurance is running a campaign now where a single person is seen sitting in a relatively quiet environment (on a train, at a diner, in an office) sending a text message to someone (likely a spouse) talking about retirement and/or some other financial benchmark.  “Remember we used to say ‘when’ we retire” the off-screen counterpart texts, and the exchange ensues.  It’s pithy, to be sure.  But it’s wildly interesting in that the technology part of the engagement takes center stage in the advertising.  The texting IS the creative.

Similarly, Bank of America is running a campaign to promote its app for smartphones.  A few friendly talking heads extol the virtues of checking balances, transferring funds, finding ATMs “all right from my phone.”  Here, the technology is the hero and it easily outshines the services it enables. And of course, how can Citi resist the urge to bring a Facebook reference to their ads with a spot where a guy buys a laptop for his mom with a Citi card and she turns into a social networking monster: “then one day…she friend-ed me.”

And recently, there have been several new commercials that have foregone actors altogether (for Northwestern Mutual, JP Morgan Chase) and instead feature tech-inspired motion graphics to communicate brand points like trying to “recapture that feeling of financial invincibility” (Northwestern) and “being a leader means moving fast,” (JP Morgan Chase.)  All tech, no touch.

While there’s nothing wrong with this collective approach – advertising has always borrowed pop culturally relevant isms – it just seems off the mark.  Combined, these companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to air these commercials and they seem to want to focus on the pathways rather than the destinations.  It’s like developing advertising for a new shopping mall and creating spots touting how shiny and new the highways are that lead to it.

Advertising should be singular.  But the single focus you choose should be the highest benefit you can claim for your product or service.  In best-case scenarios, it should be the benefit that no one else can claim, or claim nearly as well.  I’m just not sure that “we offer technology” offers enough juice to convince an already fragmented, already distracted, already engaged audience to bank/invest/insure here.

Relax. With marketing, price is NOT the issue.

Nader Ashway1 Comment

If you’re looking for an advertising agency or a marketing communications firm or a web developer or a direct marketing partner, there’s good news.  You won’t be shopping on price.

This is kind of weird for most market consumers – virtually everything we buy has a price attached to it, and generally, the choice we make on any given purchase tends to include price as a determining factor.

But with marketing, it’s different.  With marketing services, YOU set the price.  You say “I want this and this and that and that, and I’m willing to spend $X.”  Pretty cool position to be in, eh?  Imagine if you could walk into your favorite restaurant, and say “I want the Sea Scallops appetizer and the John Dory Entrée and I think I’ll have the Green Tea Ice Cream dessert… and I want to only pay $42 for everything.  Oh, and throw in a glass of Riesling with the entrée!”

That’s pretty much how it goes with marketing.  Let’s say you’re about to embark on an advertising campaign.  You would never solicit five proposals and then select the most inexpensive agency.  [For one thing, you couldn’t really solicit a proposal without stipulating a budget.]  And secondly, these kinds of services aren’t shopped on price.  You’re searching for ingenuity.  Or practicality.  Or intense creativity.  Or humor.  Or whatever you think might move the needle.

Buying marketing services is NOT like buying tires, where you go from shop to shop, looking for the best deal.

Unfortunately, many would-be marketers like to play the “I’m not telling you my budget” game.  They think that by withholding that parameter, they’ll get more affordable services.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.  Every ad agency, every web development company, every marketing consultant thinks they have a feasible answer to your quandary.  But we all think you should be spending a minimum of $10 million.

Here’s another rub.  The supplier (agency, developer, or restaurant owner) can simply say “no.”  [Sadly, not many of them do.  But it’s really necessary sometimes.]  Some suppliers can’t do what you’re asking for $42.  Or WON’T do what you’re asking for $42.  And those answers will help you make important decisions later on.

So, next time you’re shopping for marketing/advertising/web services, do yourself and the professional on the other side of the table a favor:  set a budget.  It’s the best way to get a straight answer, the only way to compare apples to apples when you’re reviewing your proposals, and probably one of the very few times in your professional life when YOU get to determine what something will cost.

100 Years of Advertising Agency Deliverables – In Three C’s.

Nader Ashway5 Comments

The history of advertising and marketing communications – about the last 100 years or so – has constantly demanded agencies to evolve.  And the evolutionary pace is moving faster than ever, thanks to the advent of the Internet.  New media, new technology, new formats – all of these play critical roles.  But looking backward – and then forward again – this history can be described in three primary phases, each beginning with the letter C.  And if you care to read through, there’s a bonus!

The first C:  Copywriting

In the early days of advertising, say, from its provenances through the late 1950’s, businesses engaged the services of advertising agencies mostly for their superior writing skills.  Copywriters weaved dazzling tales of adventure and promise around products and services.  The primary media were radio (you had to “paint” the scene with words) and print, mostly expressed in newspapers and the burgeoning magazine business.  Consider the scheister-ism of PT Barnum’s “Greatest Show on Earth,” long-copy (and long-promise) miracle cure-all ads and the culmination in the late 1950’s to “E-Day” for the Edsel.  Copy carried us through two world wars.

The Second C:  Commercials

By the 1960’s, art started to capture our imagination. Helmut Krone’s 2:1 layout ratio reduced copy to a shrinking afterthought:  Think Small.  Flowery language and superspun tales gave way to big, beautiful product shots, and – gasp! – moving images on the new-fangled television thingy.  For the next 50 years or so, American advertising would become a bubbling volcanic eruption of 30- and 60-second commercinematic lava.  Rain-slicked roads for car commercials, the beckoning bubbling overflow of the beer money shot, all those great talking heads and one very large, very iconic Mean Joe Green having a Coke and a Smile.    What could possibly top that?

For the better part of five decades, commercials flourished, and made advertising a sexy career choice. And even got big-time movie directors stoked about a supershort form. But in the late 1990’s there was trouble afoot. A new and powerful medium had sprung up, and there were – gulp – NO RULES.  Heck, for a long time, with no IAB, there were no STANDARDS!  But there sure were lots of eyeballs. The Internet did change everything, especially advertising.  And you could almost see the second “C” getting desperate…trying to articulate the new medium with, of all things, ANIMALS:  sock puppets, energized bunnies, and when will cavemen and chimpanzees ever get old?  It was clearly time for a new generation.

The Third C:  Content

Like its predecessors, content will change everything about how advertising agencies go about their business, about the kinds of people they will hire and about the kind of work that will be produced.  In some ways, content is already surpassing commercials – expensive to create, produce and air – as the chief and ultra-scalable deliverable.  Today, in the social media morning of marketing history, content development is as valuable to our clients as the storyboard once was and the concept outline before it.  Programs, movements, essay-writing contests, blogs, handheld video diaries, flash mobs, tweets and check-ins:  all content, and all fueled (okay mostly fueled) by our beloved industry.  Next time you’re having lunch with your client, start talking about content.  You might see a real relationship start to bloom.

The fourth C:  I told you there was more.

Although Content has become the unobtanium of the marketing world, there is a good chance that its reign will not last nearly as long as its forebears.  In the next 10 years (yep, you heard it here first,) if agencies cannot deliver COMMUNITY to their clients, they will be as valuable as shiny, mint-condition Edsels. And we all know where they ended up.

Five reasons David Ogilvy would like – and approve of – social media

Nader Ashway5 Comments

I’m a big fan of David Ogilvy. The principles he laid down in his books and in his work are still being expressed to great effect – decades later and in more languages he might have ever imagined – by the Ogilvy network worldwide.  When Ogilvy passed away just after his 88th birthday in 1999, he would have had no idea (as the rest of us didn’t) what incredible changes were about to re-shape the marketing and advertising landscape.   Changes like website functionality and enhancements to HTML and search and later paid search and mobile.

But David was all about was the BIG IDEA.  And while all those channels would have made sense in an expanding media world, and maybe would have made great strides under his stewardship, none would likely have tickled him or inspired him more than the proliferation of social media.  Based on some of the more important principles he articulated in “Ogilvy on Advertising,” his veritable how-to for all marketing practitioners, here are five key reasons “Uncle Dave” would have been agog over social media.

  1. The ability to articulate a unified brand image: Ogilvy wrote “products, like people, have personalities…an amalgam of many things – its name, its packaging, its price, the style of its advertising, and above all, the nature of the product itself.”  The many forms of social media allow a brand to articulate that personality across the vast expanses of the online landscape, and give its stewards (brand managers, CMOs and agency contacts) the opportunity to capitalize on that privilege or to puke it away.  As Ogilvy said, “it isn’t the {product} they choose, it’s the image.”
  2. Word of mouth: David was talking about this in the early 1980’s, while the rest of the industry came around about 20 years later.  Ogilvy was fascinated by this aspect of the business and even commented on how elements of advertising, like jingles and fashion styles, were crossing over into mainstream consumption.Of course, the bedrock of social media is word of mouth.  It starts with influencing and even starting conversations about your company or your brand, and then monitoring them.  Today’s social media tools and third-party-developed platforms allow you to develop, manage and monitor your social “voice” with increasing levels of accuracy.
  3. How to become a good copywriter: In the memorial full page ad in Adweek in August 1999, a picture of David Ogilvy was accompanied with his quote:  “I’d like to be remembered as a copywriter who had some big ideas.”  He knew the business was perched on good ideas, articulated well in copy.And what is social media but a bunch of copy?  Web copy, blog posts, comments, LinkedIn profiles, FB posts and statuses…all copy.  And the mothership of copywriting?  Twitter:  just 140 characters to say it right.  Although Uncle Dave was a fan of the long-form ad, he may have enjoyed this simple but effective restriction.  My guess is he would have summed it up thus: “It’s brilliant.  It keeps the rubbish to a minimum, and makes everyone else create new destinations from the same footpath.”
  4. Analysis, especially by medium: One important aspect of the business that intrigued Ogilvy was direct response.  He called it his “first love and secret weapon.”  He loved the  connection to visible, measurable sales.  He hailed the headline as the most important element in communicating benefits.  And he wrote that relating inquiries to the medium that produced them can help you fine tune your media selection.Ogilvy, a huge fan of direct marketing metrics and a fierce proponent of research, would have been tickled silly with modern tools like Google Analytics, or BackType (an engine that allows you to search conversation topics on blogs, mashups and other social networks.) He also would have been a master of leveraging combinations – a Twitter feed on his blog; latest posts on his Facebook fan page (jeez, how many fans would he have had?) and a LinkedIn profile that pointed to his video content on YouTube and Vimeo.  All of this of course, streamed to his fans and friends via RSS and managed simply via his Ping.fm dashboard.
  5. The #1 Miracle of Research: Ogilvy was a staunch supporter of research, writing “advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.”  In the book, he outlines 18 miracles of research.  This is #1:  “It can measure the reputation of your company among consumers…”How convenient that social media would allow Mr. Ogilvy to do virtually the same thing, in real time!  By monitoring conversations about the brands his agency advertises, or reading through recent entries of a help forum for a product his agency markets, or by measuring daily analytics on a website his agency built, David the Great would have had a moment-to-moment readout on how his brands were doing.  Probably while sipping a perfect gin on the veranda overlooking the garden at Touffou.Cheers, David.  How we miss you so.

Article also published by Nader Ashway as Five Reasons David Ogilvy Would Like – and Aprove of  – Social Media on Technorati.