advergirl

Dear Lays, Pushup bra jokes...

Are so Funny Bone circa 2005.

Ask any marketer: Talking to women in an authentic way isn't easy.

First up: there are a lot of us. More than half the population. That's a whopper of a demo to pigeon into a clever campaign.

But, many have tried. Making everything pink. Nodding at how much men suck. Empathizing over the approaching horror of bikini season.

Most of the time, it just misses. More noise in a crowded landscape. But sometimes, it's just off putting. Especially when it comes from brands that should know better.

Think: the Motrin Moms debacle earlier this year.

And, now, think Lays.

Their new Baked line packaging is being supported with a huge ad and online investment in connecting with women. They've bought full pods on cable; produced a series of webisodes; bought into the most expensive magazines.

All for a chance to make menopause-makes-me-hot jokes and pushup-bras-are-my-favorite technology references:

It's mostly just disappointing. The thought that the agency that developed this - and the client that approved it - believes that women are really united over our shared love of yoga and disgust for our younger, hotter counterparts is ... gross.

The next time you get a brief targeting women, I suggest:

• Asking which women? Do you really need to resonate with half the population?
• Searching for a unique, and near universal insight. They're called cliches for a reason.
• Looking for connection around our "best selves"; not our guilty pleasures
• Excising pink from the pallet

Commercials that entertain

These days, it's all about content, right? Not just pitching people on good old attributes and benefits, but engaging them. Getting them to spend some time with you. Getting them to talk about you.

Yeah, you've heard it before, all about the death of the :30 second spot, the rise of relationships, the era in which peers - and, as it turns out, dogs - rule.

But, how the heck do you make that all happen when your deliverable is, in fact, a :30 second spot? A couple of my favorite examples below. Ones that not only entertain, but also take on the core challenge of branding: showing who you're for and what you're about.

Pedigree "dogs rule": Connecting with dog owners over the simple joy of fetch. (TV version/Internet version):

Esurance "lucky today": Making connections over music. Does it get more "friendly" than that? (TV version/Internet version):

Commercials that are opening minds

Remember when this blog used to be about advertising? Like all the time?

Today, a break from all the social media preaching for a quick look at two of the best commercial campaigns of the new year: Kaplan and Carnival.

First, let's acknowledge: These are tough products to introduce to new audiences. We all have pretty firm (and final) opinions on online degrees and cruises. They're either for people like us - or a weird choice "other people" make.

In these two decidedly-emotional campaigns, Kaplan and Carnival get us to reconsider what we think we know. They connect with us in ways that inspire camaraderie and delight.

"The basic difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions." ::Donald Calne

Carnival did it with JOY. A sense of absolute playful fun - shown in moments you wish you were a part of:

Kaplan did it with that uniquely-collegiate sensation of DISCOVERY. A sense of reaching new conclusions, staking new ground, discovering new ways to think about old problems - shown in moments of heady philosophy: 

Practical advice on social media and your marketing mix

It happened again. I heard someone talking about the death of the :30 second spot, the irrelevancy of advertising as we know it, the overwhelming consumer revolution, and, and...

Frankly, I've been moved to PowerPoint.

The truth is: Things are changing. But they haven't completely changed just yet. Social media is exciting and full of opportunity, but TV? It's still a hell of a place to advertise.

More of my thoughts via Slideshare:

Whatnow

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

Laughing at ourselves: Tourism humor that works

Since writing a few posts on the “Not in Columbus” convention and tourism campaign, I’ve found myself in an ongoing offline debate about what works and what doesn’t in tourism advertising. Since I have little or no experience in the category, I’ve been educating myself the blogger way: search, click and play.

No question, it’s a tough business. Glamming up the decapitated mountains of West Virginia, differentiating one artsy desert community from another, making even a big-ass mall seem like a destination.

It’s no wonder we want to laugh at ourselves.

But doing humor well…. That’s tough. The campaigns that do it well deliver three key things consistently:

1. Communicate a vibe, a personality of the place
2. Quickly transition from a self-effacing laugh to the good stuff
3. Make it easy for you to see yourself in them (either in the story or in the place)

My two favorite examples of campaigns doing it well couldn’t be more different:

Minneapolis' Unconvention Campaign.
Sponsored by the city's groundswell - a group of independent organizations, businesses and people - and centered on the playing host to the Republican convention, this integrated print and Web campaign is laugh-out-loud funny and still delivers on all the criteria above.

 

See the full campaign

Maine's "It's Got to Be Maine" Campaign

Sure, it's one thing to do independent well. But, what about official advertising? The kind that has to go through channels and committees and compromises?

I like Maine's campaign because it survived the gauntlet relatively intact. It pokes a little fun at the state, but in a personal, inside-joke kind of way. And, once its campy humor stops you, the fast-paced montage communicates a wholly unexpected vibe. WKB Spier produced this campaign. You can see more examples in "the work" section of their Web site.

Breaking through: The drama of the every day

About a month ago, GirlEffect.org (sponsored by Nike) made speedy work of our pass-along circuit.  Its near-universal acclaim was credited to the simplicity of the design and the pace of the engaging story.

But I think it was something bigger. Or, I guess I should say it was about being bigger.

The easiest objection to make to advertising in any form is - what does it matter? What does the brand of chips I buy, the sports team I cheer for, or the brand of shampoo in my shower* really matter in the big scope of things?

The challenge was even greater for this nonprofit. Can a small contribution really make a difference in a village thousands of miles away? Can someone on a couch in Ohio change the lives of a nation?

The Girl Effect pulls that thread.

Makes it personal.

Blows that little donation up into something that will change the lives of first a girl, then a village, then generations.

Makes it bigger than you. Bigger than itself.

It even lays the gauntlet that husbands and children are bad for girls. That's drama. Hell, yes. I'm in.

The hallmark of creating drama in the everyday is the lump in the throat. The experience so big that you see yourself as having real responsibility to it. You feel like it matters.

And, it doesn't exist just in the work of philanthropy.

Take these two niche favorites:

Cesar's (the dog food cum canine cuisine) I Promise campaign brings the Love Them Back tagline to life. It sets up your pet aisle picks as nothing less than an expression of how much your value your fuzzy friends. It lays down a gauntlet of love.

Or Monster.com's Stork spot. The beautifully shot story that hints at how valuable each life is and asks - are you reaching your potential? Stork replaces the transactional choice of work with nothing short of the meaning of life.  It either lays down a gauntlet of guilt or hope. You pick.

*Baked Sour Cream and Cheddar Lays, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Aveda Sap Moss ... you know, if it matters.

Breaking through: "Crack the code" advertising

That was a term coined by fellow strategist Carey S in a last minute could-have-been-manic-were-we-not-so-intentionally-mellow brainstorm this winter. We were talking about what it is that makes sports ads like Jordan's Clock Tower break through? What takes them from being watched in prime time to being chatted about around the water cooler?

Our theory: It's the respect they pay their audience. They way they bring us in and make us feel clever. The way they reward us for the silly trivia we collect, the seasons of television we watch, the unique perspective we each have on the world

CTC advertising generally falls into two categories:

#1 You're like us.
These campaigns connect with us on a passionate level. They unpack the big things we believe in and serve them up in dramatic ways. They are the corollary to an inside joke - the secret handshake that only people like us would know.

• Example: The Become Legendary Campaign that W + K created for Nike/Jordan. The fourth in the series was this Clock Tower spot ("No Cinderallas") that played in the runup to the tournament and left big proud fans welling up on couches around the country:
  
  

• Example: The Economist. Although BBDO's long-standing well-written in red campaign is probably the clearest example, even the newer campaigns target the pride in target readers. The idea that their sense of savvy and their curiosity make them part of an elite group of global citizens. The sense that they are truly banded together by difference.
  
  

#2 You remember.
It's rewarding to be the first one to figure out the puzzle. To trump your sister by guessing the identity of the murderer halfway through the new episode of Law & Order. To run the board at the annual holiday Trivial Pursuit match.

These "you remember" ads engender similar competition. They tease and hide just enough to make us want to guess it first.

• Example: HP's delightful Personal campaign developed by Goodby, Silverstein and Partners that features a celebrity's hands revealing their online life. Only at the very end - after glimpses and clues - do we find out who's online life it really is.
  

• Example: Discovery Channel's I Love the World brand ad created by 72andSunny. Yeah, it's wildly addictive music, but behind that is the montage to rule all montages. Places, shows, animals. Any number of things to competitively guess at from across the living room. Hey, wasn't that the whale from season 4....?

How it's social: A fellow traveler at Bridge Worldwide has been writing a lot about "marketing with meaning" these past weeks. A concept that may sound philanthropic, but is really just social. It's about creating engagement and content & experiences that people actually want, rather than forcing our messages into aggravated ears.

If you should go looking around online for people's comments about the Jordan spot, you'll find mentions of shivers, of welling up, of wanting to get out and practice. For the Discovery Channel spot, texted sing-alongs. For HP, personal takeoffs. The list goes on. The engagement in these "crack the code" campaigns is truly emotional. Pride, joy, curiosity. Uniquely human. Perfectly translated.

Why we do this: Sony foam city

Making a movie seems hard. But, you still want to shutter a downtown and create a cinematic mess. Sound familiar? Then advertising is definitely the career for you.

Check out these early shots from the "set" of the upcoming Sony spot dubbed foam city. Apparently millions of gallons of foam were dumped on the city to create the base scenes.

Now, come on, that looks like fun. And a much better way to spend the day than, say, pitching hot dogs.

The social media spinners are already buzzing about the coming spots - so, here's hoping they'll be as delightful as the original Bravia bouncing balls.

 

Online early adopters programming for the masses

Are we moving too fast?

Last week, over on Compete’s blog, Cynthia Stephens wrote about the incredible impact Oprah’s live, online book club event has had on site traffic.

Quick catch-up for those of us not in the Oprah know: The show’s book club read for February was A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. To promote the author and the book, Oprah is hosting a 10-week online class on Awakening Your Life’s Purpose with the author.

Participants can watch the classes live or archived and each registered fan gets a workbook to track their own learnings and observations.

Technologically speaking, this isn’t a big break through. Most of us have been enduring Web conferences since the late 90s. But, the content was so compelling and so well-fit for the audience that the response nearly crashed the live programming and quickly catapulted Oprah’s site ahead of traditional American favorites:

"The number of visitors to Oprah.com topped five million in February, making her site one of the top 225 ranked sites in the United States. To put this in perspective, more people went to check out Oprah.com in February than the popular NASCAR, eHarmony, Fidelity, Barnes and Noble or Walgreens sites." __Compete blog (Lots more stats here.)

Meanwhile, locally, I was following David Armano and others on Twitter as they covered Ad Age's Digital Marketing Summit. As thrilling as it was for me, when I tried to share the content about what was going on with friends and colleagues, I pretty much got the blank stare of … what?

Or, more broadly, I’ve been watching StrawberryFrog's news mini-cooper-ization of Scion at scionspeaks.com:

"Scion owners design their own personal “coat of arms” online, a piece of owner-generated art that is meant to reflect their job, hobbies and — um, O.K. — karma.

In making their personalized crests, Scion owners can choose from among hundreds of symbols, all designed by a professional graffiti artist. The symbols range from an eagle, a jester, a king’s crown and a worker’s fist to Japanese anime-style flowers, a three-person family and a yin-yang circle. Customers can download their designs and have them made into window decals or take them to an auto airbrushing shop to have them professionally painted onto their cars." _NYTimes

Incredibly cool, right? But what will the adoption really be like?

And don't even get me started about last year's speculation Second Life.

The Oprah story is a great reminder to pause and think about what we should do as much as what we could do.

In the end, the rules of great online experience marketing are simple:

• Understand the objective: Why are we doing this?
• Know your audience: Care about what they care about
• Know your audience (again): Grow with or just barely ahead of their technology adoption
• Invest in content: If it’s not valuable to your audience, they won’t come back or pass it on

AAA. Authentic storytelling makes a comeback.

Remember those long distance commercials from the 90s that left us with a lump in our throats?  The long-lost daughters calling home to dad. The couples reunited across seemingly uncrossable distances. The embarrassed TV watchers swiping tears from their cheeks?

Yeah, those ones.

What made them compelling was the story. The archetypes welling with happy emotion. The everyday hero stories that we all want to be a part of.

Jump ahead to 2008.

In an advertising environment of dropped calls, sweaty athletes and gloriously glossy hair follicles. AAA responds with their own everyday heroes; with compelling, authentic stories that we can all see ourselves in.

The campaign - from AAA Ohio and SBC Advertising - launched this month. It's told from the perspective of real tow truck drivers. But delivers something much larger: the story of their brand – literally, the true essence of service and membership – found in neighborhood driveways, in busy parking lots and in the cabs of tow trucks, with real people just talking about their jobs.

The result is great TV. Watch the spots here. But, don't blame me if you get a little teary on the Ant ones...

Why I love this approach:

AAA is up against two of the toughest challenges aging brands face: commoditization and sinking relevance.

People think: Oh, I already have this with my insurance or new car.

People think: My car won’t break down. I don’t need it.

Keeping ahead of the market, AAA aimed its operations and marketing strategies at refreshing the market perception of AAA.

Operations: Upgrade the ‘product’ we’re selling. People don’t have time to be towed. They want to be fixed and ‘stay on the go.’

Marketing: Anyone in any car can need AAA. The most common calls aren’t for breakdowns, they’re for keys locked in cars, dead batteries, flat tires, etc.

You can see the results in this campaign.

It shows that members are as likely to call for everyday goofs as real emergencies and demonstrates that most problems are fixed on the spot - no need to tow.

But, more than that, it brings to life a level of service and community that I hope will define the brand going forward.