by mark January 31st, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
Yeesh. I go skiing for a couple of days and return to find that one of advertising’s most venerable names has become a monogram. Yes, in the infinite wisdom of its management, wishing to convince clients it is “reinventing itself”, J. Walter Thompson has become JWT. Well, okay, so now it’s a whole new ballgame, eh?
Interestingly, I’ve had to make reference to this joint as one of my many alma maters and whenever I used the descriptor JWT it did nothing for people, but the full name–J. Walter Thompson–never failed to generate a powerful response.
Of course, I have to assume, J. Walter, oops, JWT did a considerable amount of research before making this decision and, perhaps, therein lies the whole problem.
Continue reading ‘Initial Reaction’
by mark January 29th, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
I know, I know, I’ve really been lavishing the praise on this Starbucks effort, but it’s just such a good example of how transportable an extraordinary advertising approach can be. I started with a print ad, next it was a bus shelter poster and a couple of hours ago, it was a big, 24-sheet outdoor board.
An outdoor board that I was not looking for, I was driving my daughter back from an indoor soccer game along a route we take many times a week and over the course of which, I manage to ignore completely dozens of examples of ordinary advertising writ large.
So what was different with this board?
Continue reading ‘Chantico’s Hat Trick’
by mark January 24th, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
I ran into (and almost went flying past) a Nuveen ad today that nicely illustrates how easy it is to mess up an extraordinary ad.
In this case, the headline was fairly straightforward: “If you’re looking for additional monthly income, it helps to increase your choices.” Okay, that makes sense. And it’s fine, even recommended, that an ad have a straight line if the twist is going to be in the visual.
So I looked at the visual and was surprised to see no twist. Huh? And it was at this point I almost turned the page, but something made me pause.
Continue reading ‘Details, Details’
by mark January 24th, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
I’m usually skeptical of all the various approaches we are told will eventually supplant tradional media advertising as the means to build a brand. Primarily, this is because very few of these “under-the-radar” tactics stand any chance of building a brand period.
However, used properly, they can create a very interesting brand experience, which is part of the equation. So my hat is off to the marketing people at Motorola for the “event-marketing” they’re planning for Super Bowl XXXIX.
Continue reading ‘Extraordinary Events’
by mark January 22nd, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
It seems like the advertising business likes nothing better than to take an old concept, rename it and then proclaim it the newly discovered answer to every marketer’s prayers. In this case, what I’m talking about is all the blather I keep reading about the sudden emergence of “advertainment” or “brandvertising” as some of the industry commentators have dubbed it. Which they talk about as if it was invented yesterday.
Yesterday, in fact, the main subject of The New York Times ad column was the appearance of a new sandwich at Burger King that just the night before was the winning team’s solution on “The Apprentice.” Not a bad idea. Not a bad outcome. But believe me, this is nothing new. This is called a “tie-in” and the advertising industry has been doing them for years.
Continue reading ‘It’s Still A “Tie-In”’
by mark January 21st, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
A reader might be excused for thinking that the only advertising I ever pay attention to is print. But that’s not true. For example, remember that Starbucks Chantico ad I was raving about a few days ago? Well, just now I was walking down the street and saw a bus shelter ad for the same brand. Very well done. Same style of art direction and type with the headline: A museum of chololate on the campus of the Uniiverity of Chocolate.
So see, I don’t just look at magazine and newspaper ads. On the other hand, in the school of advertising I was brought up in, print played a very fundamental role and I still thinks there’s something to be said for that.
Continue reading ‘Sweeter Still’
by mark January 20th, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
A few days ago I wrote about all the ordinary ads I read–in that instance, it was a Cisco ad–searching to see if somewhere in an otherwise unremarkable effort there might have been fodder for an extraordinary ad.
Well, here we go again. Another full-page, 4-color ad, this time on the back page of The New York Times. A big, rather eyecatching illustration of a guy putting at some sort of golf tournament. And discretely tucked away in the upper right hand corner is the headline” >With Sprint, The PGA is beautiful.”
Ugh. They couldn’t have missed that putt if they’d hit it with nine iron.
Continue reading ‘Sprint Bogies This One’
by mark January 19th, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
According to my 13-year old son, that means something is very, very good. Which I would say perfectly describes the advertising Starbucks is doing for its Chantico offering.
There are quite a few print and outdoor executions, but the one I’m looking at is fairly representative bearing a headline that reads:
“If you ate a piece of chocolate sitting in a chocolate chair in a house made of chocolate on a chocolate street in a chocolate city you would be surrounded by less chocolateness than awaits you in this tiny six-ounce cup.”
Continue reading ‘Sweet’
by mark January 18th, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
It’s always gratifying to see my point of view on an issue appear in another book written by someone I really respect. Especially when that someone is Malcolm Gladwell and the book, Blink, is likely to get a readership about 1,000 times greater than my own.
The specific chapter that caught my eye is entitled: “Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right–And Wrong–Way To Ask People What They Want. And what you have here is a writer with no vested interest in the creation of extraordinary advertising whastsoever calling into question the exact same market research approaches that I (and many others) have such big problems with.
Continue reading ‘The Trouble With Testing’
by mark January 17th, 2005
in Daily Thoughts.
The trouble with most advertising isn’t that it’s bad, the trouble is it’s ordinary. Which may be even worse. A bad ad will probably get stopped somewhere along the way. But an ordinary ad stands a very good chance of getting past all the approval hurdles only to appear in the real world where it will go utterly unnoticed and unread.
The reason I pay attention to ordinary ads is to acquire new examples to drive my point home, and because I often find that buried in the body copy of many ordinary ads is something very interesting that might have produced an extraordinary ad. Like the full-page ad for Cisco I saw today in The Wall Street Journal.
Continue reading ‘Why I Read So Many Ordinary Ads’
