Irrelevant use of sultry women will beguile your prospe...
Monday, September 29, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Button Fly?
As an habituee of achingly hip Shoreditch, I am clearly meant to notice and understand this consciously clever piece of marketing.But is it really worth it? Isn't this just pandering to the theory of influentials on a postcode bas...
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Change Happens.
You get a letter from your health club announcing they've changed their membership rules and enclosing a new multi-paged rule booklet. You immediately wonder what that means, but you'd have to investigate to find out. You probably don't bother, but a residual doubt remains.If they had simply sent a list of the changes they had made (in the form of the relevant before and after paragraphs), there would be no suspicion that they were trying to sneak...
Monday, September 22, 2008
12 Reasons Why Products Outweigh Promotion.
NeedsProducts address what customers wants - if they don't, they die.Promotion tries, too often, to dictate what customers need.DiscoveryProducts are discovered by customers and that builds "ownership".Promotion, in targetting customers, too often removes that potential.ExperienceProducts are as much the experience of using them as what they do.Promotion can only suggest or hype what that experience is like.PassionProducts engender passion via tangible results and intangible satisfaction.Promotion simply cannot do that.SalesProducts generate repeat...
Friday, September 19, 2008
Cheerful Bottom?
Now that's what I call advertising. But does anybody look at banners - other than people in the business (like Kaylen who sent me this).Bonus link: the website is very welcoming. Or do I mean unnervi...
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Yell.com - The Illiterate Directory.
I know I'm being pedantic, but it should be Marcus's not Marcus' and for a directory to repeat this error throughout their ad is shocking. As is the ad by the way. But given that they're presumably selling themselves as purveyors of accurate information, why didn't they choose a posh name that didn't end in S and avoid the issue complete...
Monday, September 15, 2008
What Price Authenticity?
Authenticity is one of the great marketing buzzwords of the day, but walking around the preview of the Damien Hirst show made me wonder what we actually mean by that word.This photograph (taken from the preview catalogue) shows a number of the works being created. On closer inspection, you may notice that the artist himself is not involved in the process. He makes no secret of this and I'm not here to debate whether that makes him an artist or a...
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Recombinant Culture?
The mela is a multicultural celebration that is "all about bringing communities together and understanding different cultures." I have attended some which featured the food of many lands as well as their music and dance. Today's fitted that bill too, but its unique apogee was an attempt to bring communities together via that renowned multicultural phenomenon - the Abba tribute band. Frida's developed a Scottish accent and Agnetha has, well, just...
Friday, September 12, 2008
Don't Make The Straight Man Funny.
So here's the second Microsoft ad in very long form and it's funnier. It has more characters and a better script, though I'm not sure what it has to do with Microsoft per se. Yet they still screw it up at the end by trying to get Bill Gates to be wacky (and I'm sure that will feature in the thirty second version). When he's the straight man here, he's funny. But, as with all marketing, when you try to suggest that something or someone is different from how we know them to be, it just gets embarrassi...
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Damien Hirst Marketing.
Today at Sotheby's preview of the big Damien Hirst sale, I noticed that many of the encased pieces such as "Here Today, Gone Tomorow" (pictured above) were bigger than ever. It was interesting then to read Hirst's words in the catalogue.The horror is them getting thrown away, for any artist I think. You want your work on the wall for people to see. I think that's one of the reasons I put boxes around things, so that you can't fit it in the loft/attic.Does...
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Perceptions Are Illogical.
Changing well-established perceptions is a difficult marketing task and there's been lots of online discussion about the merit of Microsoft's new advertising campaign. But I want to focus on one aspect of the process, the underlying logic of change. It seems to me that at least one reason why Bill Gates is featured is that someone made the following deduction. Bill Gates is Microsoft. But Bill Gates is perceived to be a hard-nosed business nerd. If we soften the perception of Bill, we'll soften the perception of Microsoft.At first, that might...
Friday, September 5, 2008
A Closed Shave.
You assumed I couldn't write another post about assumptions? This is the beautiful new hybrid razor or azor from King of Shaves that I recently picked up from their promotional bus. It's a company seeking to shake up a category and, as I am already a great fan of their shaving oil, I was intrigued to see if their promise that one could Shave Close, Longer, For Less would stand up. It did, but sadly it would force me to have a goatee, because I found...
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Never Assume.
As I wrote in my post about magic, assumptions can easily lead you astray. Take restaurants. It's pretty easy to guess one of the most important aspects of a restaurant as far as customers are concerned and according to this article, you'd be right.Cleanliness was rated as the most highly valued aspect of restaurant selection among almost all respondents.But what is cleanliness? In Barcelona you might be surprised to see the floor of a tapas bar strewn with discarded paper napkins and assume that it was a sloppy institution. You'd be completly...
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Padded Bra. Padded Justification.
Talking of giving marketing a bad name. Wonderbra has created an interactive website and poster comprising hundreds of photos of real women and a few celebrities united by larger chest size. Nothing wrong with that. It will garner a lot of publicity. Nothing that original either. It's just an extension of Dove's real beauty theme. But what annoyed me was the creative director's justification."Smart brands now know that it is increasingly pointless...
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Magical Marketing.
There's a magician/illusionist involved here, so we know it's a trick and it's pretty easy to work out how it's done. Like most magic, it's based on false assumptions. The trick works and impresses because the illusionist knows the assumptions we'll make and ensures that we make them.Efective marketing should also be based on knowing the assumptions your customers will make. Advertising agencies call these insights. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. But, I'm not sure the analogy should be taken all the way. Here, the patsy knows he's been...
Monday, September 1, 2008
Inside Out Or Outside In?
Interesting that the cover asks "Can America withstand the world's thirst for oil?" rather than consider the unsustainable reality of one country consuming 25% of the world's oil as the source of the problem.Marketing is not just about looking outwards. Even if something changes in your external environment/market/category, you should never forget to look with...
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