Ads have become an expected part of our lives. We just expect them to yell ‘buy me!’ at us, so we’ve learned to ignore them unless they’re really interesting or something we’re looking for. (Or bored.)
So ad agencies crank it up all the time; it’s got to be more inventive, more sparkly, more entertaining, and of course artsy enough to win some awards.
But it’s interesting to see when they decide to go the other way. Like this bus stop ad:
Part of me wants to say, “You spent heaps of money buying all that space, and you’re not even using it??”
But I think in this case, ‘less is more’ rings true. Seeing these ads had me curious for weeks. In what I think of as the Apple syndrome, simplicity and sans serif is now a differentiator. It’s more effective for the ad-wearied because it’s less like a pushy salesman in paper form.
Only I would have to repeat that classic client line: make the logo bigger!
I didn’t know what the ad was for until I found I’d been invited to the event on Facebook. Fail.
Hope for their sake that it works, our casino is the only one in the nation to be losing money. I do like their current TVC, though I can’t see it appealing to anyone I know who currently hangs out at the casino (which I guess would be the point).
Filed under: 1 | Tags: advertising, co-branding, Coles, Continental, Masterchef, supermarkets, Unilever, Woolworths
The Australian supermarket playground is notoriously small. Woolies and Coles are the big bullies, currently at a stalemate for who can build the biggest sandcastle.
So if you can’t win on your own…get a partner.
I don’t mean another shopping chain – the ACCC is already turning some of its attention to some of the tactics used to keep smaller players like Aldi out.
No, I’m referring to the recent ads which seem to be co-financed by Woolworths and Continental (Unilever).
Aww.
The ads themselves are largely unremarkable; I couldn’t find them online. Essentially, there’s a product demo for Continental, followed by a message that you can find the products at Woolworths.
++ In a recession, particularly when you’ve just undergone high capital investment, partnering up might help stretch that ad budget further.
-+ Sharing ad time might confuse viewers, or lose the message completely. On the other hand, it’s more subtle and modest.
– As a retailer, promoting a household brand could encourage consumers to buy it…elsewhere.
Neither *seem* to be short on ad spend, with Continental’s ‘three-thirtyitis’ campaign** (DDB work I believe) and the re-done Woolworths ‘fresh food people’.
Perhaps Woolies feels that it needs to raise its publicity, since rival Coles backed winning horse ‘Masterchef’. This campaign certainly takes a similarly indirect approach, though whether it has helped flailing Coles remains to be seen.
How's that for co-branding...I didn't even have to edit the colours
++ Coles should benefit from the greater opportunities that arise from TV shows, such as recruiting judge George for product development.
– Two’s company, three’s a crowd. Just from viewing the show, you can tell that Coles isn’t the only organisation that put money behind Masterchef.
[I realise that I always seem to be commenting on Woolworths and what they're doing, not Coles. Perhaps that tells you something...]
**I suspect that some of the ad budget has come from lowering production costs, if the Pasta Flakes Pasta & Sauce is anything to go by.
…and I wish this ad wasn’t.
“Be confident! But not too confident because your online friends don’t really like you.”
Clearasil seems to be struggling with mixed messages. On their ‘be yourself for real’ website they’re challenging image distortion on online networks by teenagers.
The premise is that you should ‘keep it real’ because making yourself look better online doesn’t improve you as a person. To correspond with keeping it real, three teenagers are used as role models to talk about how they deal with image problems and online friendship.
Interestingly, none of Clearasil’s ‘real voices’ have any acne problems at all.
The point about your Facebook friends not necessarily being your ‘real’ friends seems moot. Most of Clearasil’s respondents seem to acknowledge that online friendship is a different level anyway – according to ‘The Pulse’.
But there’s a whole other can of worms. They seem to be talking about looking cooler in terms of touching up your profile pictures on Facebook. (Makes sense – don’t use Photoshop, buy Clearasil.) This is only a small part of the image control that goes on; try quizzes, friend hoarding, camerawhoring, status updates, detagging, events, groups… Risky pool to dip your toes into.
Still so far the dialogue has managed to stay in safer territory, through control of the ’shout box’ – questions asked by the ‘real voices’ and then answered by users.
To give you an idea of how much ‘dialogue’ is actually going on, as it currently stands their Alexa ranking is around the 2,000,000 mark and average time spent on the pages is 2.3 min per day.
They’ve tried to compromise between open dialogue and directed conversation. But you just can’t compromise on authenticity.
Though it might be an interesting resource for understanding how teenagers really feel about online networks.
Clearasil, if someone liked me just because I had clear skin, would they really be my friend? I’m worried about it. Like, srsly omg. Txt me bk.
Filed under: 1 | Tags: advertising, Australian Marketing Institute, Emerging Marketers, television
“Why is television advertising important in a recession?”
If Channel Nine doesn’t know, they should start getting worried.
They’re running a competition through Emerging Marketers (the youth branch of the Australian Marketing Institute), getting students to come up with creative ideas answering that question.
I haven’t got an answer yet, but it prompted some thoughts on how difficult an industry television is…
Maybe I’m wrong but TV seems to be one product where branding is purely on evaluation of the product. You watch a channel because they’ve got your favourite program, not because they have an animated television jumping around the screen.
Sure, you might end up watching one channel more because you can’t be bothered changing or you see more of the ads for new programs and end up watching them, but there’s no conscious brand loyalty.
Reasons for watching a program:
- you wanted to watch TV and it was the best thing on
- you saw it in the paper and it looked interesting
- someone else recommended it
Given that so many of our programs are imported, station choice it doesn’t even come down to production company.
I’d like to see more branding in TV, but it would be incredibly hard to pull off.
So, why is TV advertising important in a recession? Because otherwise a lot of people are going to be out of a job…
In true Gen Y apathy**, two campaigns confusing me at the moment:
Hungry Jack’s – that’s Burger King for the rest of the world
…has recently launched a campaign taking advantage of the new demand-based pricing strategy by their competitor who will remain anonymous. HJ/BK’s proudly says they will offer you the same price for the same product in all stores.
Really? That’s lovely. Know anybody who actually cares?
It’s not the Cola wars, and this is no Pepsi taste test. The media caused a bit of a ruckus about the new pricing but McDonalds regulars haven’t really raised their voices in complaint.
Same as when McDonalds went healthy and HJ/BK’s said ‘we don’t care, our burgers taste better’. Nobody ever picked on them for health – it’s all Micky D’s. So…same price is nice, but you’ll need more to get them in the door.
Twix, by the lovely people from Mars
If you happen to be bored and preferably not hungry, head over to the Twix website. They’ve designed a game where you have to ‘help the guy get the girl’.
It’s pretty simple…average American college guy goes to party, really wants to pick up girl. He is beset on by several obstacles in his quest, but lucky for him he gets time to ‘chew it over’ and decide what to do (while you hear glorified munching and wish this guy had never been born).
Perhaps I set my standards too high for hypothetical women in advertising, but by the end of the game the only thing that impressed me about the main character was his complete lack of charisma. Didn’t want to help him. Also very sick of munching noises.
What I’m trying to say is: make me care. I – your hypothetical consumer – am not sitting here hanging out for your next move, hoping you’ll succeed. I don’t make it my business to know everything going on in your industry. If you bore me, I go away.
[**NB: also strongly versed in Gen Y irony.]
Did you know about the dangers of herpes? Did you know that there are now new treatments available?
Well, we can’t tell you what they are, but we CAN make you extremely worried that you might have a horrible life-debilitating STI and then throw you a lifeline: a small non-embarrassing consultation with a nicely authoritative website called thefacts.com.au
Ah, but wait. Did you blink? You might have missed this:
Yes, that’s right – big pharma’s got you.
They’re smart people. And since they can’t directly advertise prescription drugs to the mass market, they’ve had to implement a two-step process to get you…
- Advertising about medical problems to make you concerned about them, and giving you all the keywords to direct you to their product (either in the ad or on the website).
- This will coincide with a round of all the GPs telling them about their latest products and showering them with stationery. Then when you come in for an appointment, spouting off all the right keywords and symptoms, there’s a high chance you’ll end up with the ‘right’ drug.
I think this is great for the government…to an extent. I mean, why spend millions of dollars of taxpayers money to educate the public about diseases when you already have a sector of society that’s filthy rich and has an interest in doing so (and doing it well)?
Not the most reliable method for pharmas – it would be incredibly easy to work off a competitor’s campaign if you had similar products.
Also not great for the public interest if the drug isn’t supported by PBS, or doesn’t have a general application.
The point of the legislation is that the choice of treatment should be made by the patient on recommendation by their GP – not the other way around. So on the one hand, it IS an insidious way of tilting that balance. On the other hand, if it makes people better informed about their conditions, is it altogether a bad thing?
Reflecting on the recent IceTV decision, I put out the question: what does this mean for the ad industry?
I don’t know, and apparently…they don’t know either.
DVRs (direct video recorders) have been available for nearly a decade now, and have really started to move from the ‘trendsetter phase’ to affordability and potentially the mass market. Like the humble VCR, it allows you to record your favourite TV shows without actually being there, but with the advantage of digital. The big squish for ad execs is that some services, like IceTV, will allow viewers to skip the ads altogether.
Enter, the DVR Research Institute.
They’ve undertaken to survey advertisers (both client and agency sides) to find out their opinions on what this means for ad spend and whether they’ll shift to new strategies.
Most expect changes over the next three years, with estimates of a 10% spending cut, but generally they’re unsure how they will change their strategies…or loathe to reveal what those changes will be.
The funniest part of the study? That most agencies think they’re not fully informed but their clients are…and their clients think the opposite.
Funnily enough, the study is available for purchase now, and the institute runs consultations and strategic advice sessions.
The institute will continue releasing research results over the next few months, but here’s a few things to think about:
- how much attention do viewers pay to TVCs at the moment? Isn’t it the unspoken toilet/snack break?
- haven’t we already been able to record programs and fast-foward over ads? How did behaviour change then, and how are things different this time?
- if there is a shift to in-program advertising (pop-ups, endorsements) is it going to be more effective? Ethical?
- will it be better to advertise in less popular programs, where viewers are less likely to record?
Filed under: 1 | Tags: advertising, branding, brands, Braun, Duracell, FMCG, Gillette, marketing, P&G, Pringles, social media, Tide, Vicks
P&G has made big waves in the social media community with their first foray – after letting everybody else test the water they’ve waded into the fray by inviting the best and brightest to their offices with the task of selling as many Tide tshirts as they can.
Plenty of buzz, rounded off nicely by donating proceeds of the exercise to charity.
My question is…why did they choose Tide?
…it can’t be just so they could use the phrase ‘Loads of Hope’. Or I hope not.
(You will find quite a few books about Tide and the way it changed P&G history, most of which have exploited the wealth of phrases included the word ‘tide’. You’ve been warned.)
Now I’m not saying it was a bad choice but for a company with such a wide array of brands and evidently a strategic outlook you have to wonder…why did they choose this one?
After all, P&G isn’t exactly short of brands to work with. I’ve even heard P&G speakers claim that the company invented branding as we know it. There’s big – and highly marketable – names like these:
A couple of thoughts on why they might have chosen Tide…
- Laundry powder has a wide appeal, is suitable to all markets and unoffensive - it’s not like it’s Tampax.
- The product doesn’t generate its own hype – so it’s neutral ground to test the effectiveness of social media.
- Youth, the demographic most associated with social media, is less picky about their laundry powder. (If they buy it at all.)
- Tide has been a key brand in P&G’s history – they might want to use it to open a new chapter.
- Let’s face it…a Tide pun lifts up even the worst news.
- It’s not a bad logo for the face of a charity campaign. Not unlike Obama’s campaign logo.
- The tees are apparently ‘cool/hip/retro‘ – is this the next ‘make poverty history’ band?
But surely they considered using other brands? I mean…
- For the same reasons as above, Tide is a key brand in the portfolio and there’s a lot to lose.
- Buzz around laundry powder? Laundry powder? It’s a tough sell. Are you going to get a good feel for what social media can do by limiting yourself?
- When your proceeds go to disaster relief, ‘Tide’ might not be what they want to hear…
- There have been other Tide tshirts already on sale (for much cheaper) and the style it evokes has a niche appeal.
- Surely another brand like Pringles would be just as effective – if not more.
All of these could affect the effectiveness of the exercise, given the aims of investigating social media and figuring out who’s best at it.
So why did they pick Tide?
[I guess, more simply...the Tide brand manager could have been the one to come up with the project.]
Filed under: 1 | Tags: advertising, Chuck, chupa chups, facebook, Facebook ads
There’s been general lamentation on the lack of effectiveness of Facebook ads. But I have to admit this one caught my eye…
The ‘friend request’ has been built in just like a ‘people you may know’ request. Of course, it only makes sense as part of a larger campaign involving Chuck as the new Chupa Chups mascot…
Beats ‘Make $500 Daily Online’ any day.
Hooray for cultural awareness.
Target’s current ads are for ‘Kid’s week’ – which is just another name for their kids clothing sales.
“Mums get Mother’s Day. Dads get Father’s Day. But we’re making it everyone’s day…”
The irony is that the one-week sale started the day after Japanese ‘Boy’s Day’, which is March 3.
It ain’t everyone’s day, after all…
–
On the topic of kids, love this new John West ad…
