We know what works, let’s stick with it.
WRONG.
I do believe what Monocle said in their last edition; to be effective in the days of Web 2.0 journalists should combine some of the ‘old world’ skills with ‘new world’ sensibilities.
Time for PR to get up with it.
I don’t even receive *that* many PR kits, but the moment I feel like I’m being sold (and usually in a mass spam way) I get on the defensive. Sure, I want to deliver good content to my blog readers – I am a web journalist of sorts. But the old ‘send a press release to everyone you know’ doesn’t work anymore.
Especially when your ‘exciting news’ isn’t related to my blog content at all.
Some rules remain:
- you need to get in contact with a lot of the media
- you need to make us feel good about writing your story
A pitch along the lines of ‘don’t know what to post today? Here’s something’ translates more to ‘you wouldn’t usually blog this but if you’re absolutely desperate…’ – if I’m hunting for a story at the last minute what kind of write-up are you going to get?
I can’t speak for all bloggers, but I would prefer to stumble upon stories myself. Even if it’s by someone Tweeting it, then I’ll know that they found it interesting and if I find it interesting too I might spread the word.
Finding that story gives me a sense of achievement…not of spam.
Filed under: 1 | Tags: advertising, brand image, branding, Design, logo, Mastercard, PR, rebrand, Safeway, Woolworths
As of a couple of days ago, Australian supermarket giant Woolworths announced the relaunch of their brand. What’s the deal? Well, here’s the new logo…
Let’s compare with the original logo::
It definitely has that so-very-swish uber-modern feel, doesn’t it? Clean fonts, very green and fresh, and gradients. It’s easy to see the rationale; the new logo screams fresh, young, modern and enviro-friendly.
However, I’m not sure it’s all good news. Yes, it’s clean and simple, but then so was the old logo. This is the logo which so clearly tied together the old Safeway and Woolworths brands when crossing state borders. There’s no longer any red (a traditional colour for food retail logos) and far less emphasis on the key selling point; ‘The Fresh Food People’. The font is less distinctive and it feels like they’re not as proud to state this anymore, which given their latest ad campaign doesn’t seem to be true.
There’s also a lot of debate as to what the huge swirly thing at the top is. It will probably make a very good logo for the Woolworths brand products which seem to be gaining ground, but what IS it? A missing ribbon from the rhythmic gymnastics team? A ‘W’ for Woolies? An oddly styled apple? (Could Apple sue, perhaps?) Why is it so…well, green? And why does it remind me slightly of the new Mastercard logo, which also made interesting use of gradients and caused some confusion::
The idea was good, but the gradients rendered some design bloggers confused, if you'll excuse the pun. And just what was wrong with the old logo?
This aside, there’s the money question; does a logo really change where you buy your food when there’s so many other factors?
Of course, there’s far more to a rebrand than a new logo, and there’s a wide and detailed bank of research on what consumers want in a supermarket. Rumours abound of new store layouts and a revived shopping experience. But we’ll have to wait and see what eventuates from the new stores and whether it will affect performance.
What has prompted this rebranding? Perhaps it was the resurgence of competition from Coles, another Australian supermarket giant which was forced to contract a top management consulting firm after performance issues over the last couple of years. Or maybe it’s just time for a change to ‘keep up with the times’ after 21 years.
A new ad campaign has also been launched. Airing in prime Olympics spots, they emphasise the FreshFoodPeople message, with claims that when people who love fresh food can’t make it themselves, they go to Woolworths. (Again, Mastercard comparison, anyone?) This has been at the expense of the ‘Woolworths, the Fresh Food People’ jingle with lots of happy Woolies workers talking about the food they have in store. I think it could work; a shift from tell to show is probably a better approach for food. It will also differentiate effectively from competitor Coles’ ‘proudly supporting Mums’ angle. But is the campaign going to be backed up with more emphasis on fresh goods and organic food?
The latest PR for the company might support this, with the Woolworths market update being aired in prime time news slots. Reporting on what’s ‘fresh’ in the markets and giving some preparation tips in a short segment definitely reinforces the freshness image and gives some context to consumers. But it could work either way… It wouldn’t be difficult for some consumers to confuse the brands or just use the information provided to shop elsewhere. It also runs the danger, in close comparison to the news, of being dismissed as ‘just an infomercial’ (which it is, if we’re going to be honest).
Anyway, thank you Woolworths, FINALLY, for standardising your name across Australia. For years there has been a Woolworths/Safeway divide…and even though everyone knows it’s exactly the same thing, it really does not do you any favours to be operating under different names in different states! Sorry Victoria, but it’s time to join the family.
[For more info on the rebrand, head over to the Woolworths release.]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advertising, Death of Advertising, PR, promotions
Sound the alarm bells and clutch your Cannes Lions close! Prepare to see the advertising world as you know it disappear!
…or so they’ve been saying. Years later, the advertising world is still waiting for the apocalypse and it’s just not coming.
There’s plenty of arguments as to why advertising as we know it is dead, or dying. The usual suspect to be cited is that the average consumer (American, I assume) sees about 300 advertising messages a day. Filtering out the facts from the junk is becoming too hard, and (being lazy) consumers just stop listening altogether. Same same, but different? Nope, just the same.
With everyone now using advertising as a standard method of promotions, standing out from the crowd has become a matter of using different methods of communication. As the (not to be named) creative director of a major ad agency said (about a week before leaving for a PR consultancy), you can be as creative as you like but people will just ignore you.
I don’t think it will die and if it does it will be back soon enough…here’s why.
As accustomed to advertising as we may be, it’s not wholly a bad thing. Advertising is something that pretty much everyone understands. It’s a tried and true way of getting a message across, and from the client side that counts for a lot. And the more that advertisers move their communications into other methods, the less clutter there will be and the more incentive to go back to previous methods to differentiate. Direct marketing, once the establishment, is now a more novel way to communicate and can be a deadly marketing weapon.
PR even now is starting to lose its credibility, which was its drawcard in the first place. In fact, every commercial communication method which starts to gain any traction is going to suffer the same issue as more and more communicators use it. At least advertising, on the most part, isn’t pretending to be something it isn’t.
So advertising as the one-and-all solution may be dying out (and I’m sorry to anybody who just got on the bandwagon after watching the Gruen Transfer) but it certainly isn’t dead. Mostly we need to realise that you need to take a strategic perspective on communications and that if advertising is going to be a major tool for you, it’s going to be tough.
[On a side note, the inspiration from this came from catching part of a conversation on a pedestrian crossing, where two people were discussing an advertising course that I took while on exchange in Singapore. Maybe viral really is the way of the future.]
the grass is greener on the internet 