I found a great site you have to check out, thanks to Jill Konrath at Selling to Big Companies.
It’s a slightly humorous look (read: would be more funny if it wasn’t so accurate) at the typical PR/Design agency. I love their tagline, “We do stuff.”
As we at Cre8tive Group look into a website refresh, this is be one example that I will hold up as what to stay away from because it’s easier to talk about ourselves than it is to talk about what prospective customers want to hear.
Lessons:
- Keep your language simple, accurate and real-world.
- Talk about the benefits you provide, not about you or your products.
- People don’t do business with companies; people do business with people. Be likable.
“The consumer isn’t a moron. She is your wife.”
- David Ogilvy
This is an oldie but a goodie. It still rings true today. I’ve seen a lot of marketing managers frustrated by how little their target audience knows or understands about their product. This is in no way the fault of the consumer. You cannot flood customers with feature after feature and expect them to walk away understanding how those features will make their lives easier or save them money or make them money.
Today’s consumers are so savvy that even benefit-focused headlines are not getting through. Clayton Makepeace recommends that your focus on reader skepticism instead of benefit statements.
Consumers have never been morons. Each and every buyer has a need; they wouldn’t be shopping if they didn’t. Marketing staff need to do a better job of addressing the need, satisfying skeptics, and differentiating themselves in order to succeed in today’s tough & evolving economy.
I learned that Six Flags spent $72,000,000 on Mr. Six, the dancing man. The ads score very well with the audience. Unfortunately, Six Flags reports that they saw NO increase in attendance or additional revenue. Doner Advertising created a huge stir with these ads (including a lot of rumors on who the actor was – a little birdie told me that it’s a young woman in makeup), but after zero ROI, Six Flags has decided to drop the campaign. This is another example of mass market advertising not showing a return. Even though ad recollection and satisfaction were high, they did not entice anyone to actually go to the themeparks.
I cannot imagine being the CMO or VP of Marketing at Six Flags with my Board of Directors and CFO staring at the $72M hole in the P&L. He/she has to be running scared. I wonder who was driving the media mix choices. Did Six Flags run the show or did they rely too heavily on Doner? I wonder what they nixed in order to launch the massive TV campaign. They spread the media across a lot of different mediums (tv, outdoor, online, print, etc…), but I wonder if Six Flags knows which mediums worked best for the brand. I wonder what they will do differently next time. They are a brand in trouble. They haven’t been profitable in eight years. The new CEO seems to have things on the right track, but sooner or later you have to get the word out that you’ve made improvement. You have to convince people to spend their hard earned cash with you. Rebuilding a struggling brand is tough. And I’m anxious to what they do differently this time.
Interesting post from the Small Agency Diary on AdAge…
As a former corporate America marketing manager, I too run for the hills when I meet traditional ad agency folks- even though I work for a company in a similar space. I believe that times have changed. Traditional advertising methods are not as effective as they were a decade ago. Consumers are too savvy. They are too innundated with marketing messages. They demand more control over their experiences because they know they have choices. Choice is the very reason that network TV ads are only truly effective for the very few mega-corps that have hundreds of millions of dollars for brand advertising. Unless you can match McDonalds, Pepsi, Coke, Bud Light, you will be overshadowed and likely not get the biggest bang for your buck.
Consumers are flooded with roughly 3,000 marketing impressions per day. TV, radio, outdoor, email, website, newspaper, voicemail, vehicle, vending machine, storefront, etc…. The majority of these impressions are not targeted enough to make a consumer react.
Moral of the story, no one wants to be part (read spend valuable budget dollars) of a non-effective industry. Change the game. Solve the executive’s true problems. Make them more profitable, increase employee productivity, decrease their cash cycle. These are things that traditional ad agencies have a hard time addressing. I believe there will always be a place for brand advertising, but that place in business is radically smaller than what it was a decade ago. Smaller, point-of-pain solution providers are increasing their strategic value and getting the dollars that were not spent effectively with the big ad guys.
