Your Account
Is your agency ego in line with your budget? Discuss 11 Comments
Last night, watching TV, I saw 2 new campaigns- by two of the best advertising agencies in the business: Chiat/Day and Crispin Porter Bogusky.
The clients: Apple and Burger King respectively.
Both clients spend more to run a spot than any of our clients spend in a year- but, that’s beside the point- the point is; who gets the most out of their advertising budget; who maximizes the value of every dollar, and how can you get the best advertising for less money?
Apple’s new campaign is a simple production- 2 actors (the button down guy, John Hodgman, is the PC and the young hipster, Justin Long, – is the Mac) talking on camera, white background, – with a logo at the end on an iMac screen. Six different spots- Viruses, Restarting, Better, iLife, Network, WSJ. Each covers a different reason a Mac beats a PC. Entertaining yes- but where is the call to action? Sounds really trite- but, no where in the spot is any indication that if you go to Apple.com you can find out more.
Luckily- most people can figure that out on their own- and if they do- right on the front page of a fast loading site- Apple has the spots running- and links to why you should get a mac.
The cost of production and editing these 6 spots in Dayton OH would be under $30,000, shot in HD (not including talent rate).
On the web- all the spots are downloadable in different sizes, and easy to link to. This is how viral campaigns take off- easy to point to, easy to send.
On the other hand- we have the BK “Manthem”- a very expensively produced spot- with scenes of men marching through streets with their new Burger King Texas Double Whoppers. Yes I am a man- hear me roar- but after CP&B got done with the musical score- the multiple scenes, the huge cast- the dumping of a mini-van over a bridge into a dump truck- to be pulled by a circus strongman- we have a :30 spot with a budget that some independent film makers make a feature film with.
Now, even if the spot was amazing, fantastic, one that I wanted to watch over and over- I can’t- at least not easily.
The Burger site at bk.com is made in Flash [note: the site was built by VML]- with no way to bookmark a page, send a link or even download the spot. If I’d like- I can send the spot to a friend- which I tried to do- so I could send you an easy link- but the link that it generates- fails. So much for a multi-million dollar budget (including creative, production and media). You will just have to go to BK.com, find the cinema link, then click on the Manthem reel (note- all the other spots have download links). NOTE: Feb 2007, I’ve added the Manthem Burger King spot with a link from YouTube at the bottom of this post- since BK still doesn’t understand how to maximize their ad dollars online. This post still generates a lot of search results- all for BK, almost none for Apple.
As more people time shift TV programming- can you afford not to have your spots as easy to get to as possible? Why hide behind menus, locked content, and long downloads? Do you have the script in a searchable format- so someone searching for “I’m am man, hear me roar” or “Texas Double Whopper” or “Eat this meat” etc- so that people looking to see what you spent so much money on- can find it- instead of this post.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky is where Chiat/Day was around 35 years ago- having the pick of clients and talent. But comparing these two campaigns, shows that the steady old hand of Chiat understands it’s about delivering a message instead of showing off. The Apple campaign isn’t going to set the world on fire- but at least it’s accessible and supported online. Instead of spending huge on production- they bought more media- instead of posing- they deliver.
At one point Jay Chiat asked “How big can we get before we get bad?” and many would argue that Chiat/Day on a bad day was better than many agencies on their best- but, if you really want to know how to get the best bang for your ad dollar- make sure your agency checks it’s ego at the door- instead of out of your ad budget.
What do you think?
Here are the complete words (Lyrics) to the Burger King “Manthem” tv spot for the Texas Double Whopper:
The song is a riff on Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman”
I am man, hear me roar,
In numbers too big to ignore,
And I’m way too hungry to settle for chick food!
‘Cause my stomach’s starting to growl,
And I’m going on the prowl,
For a Texas Double Whopper!
“Man that’s good!”
Oh, yes, I’m a guy!
I’ll admit I’ve been fed quiche!
Wave tofu bye-bye!
Now it’s for Whopper beef I reach.
I will eat this meat
Chorus (Eat this meat)
‘Till my innie turns into an outie!
I am starved!
I am incorrigible!
And I need to scarf a burger beef bacon jalapeno good thing down!
(Yeah!)
I am hungry!
(I am hungry)
I am incorrigible!
I AM MAN!
The Texas Double Whopper: Eat like a man. Man.
By the number of hits we’re getting for people searching for this- it’s even more proof that CP&B isn’t managing the BK site properly-
We’re not getting any searches on the Apple spots- meaning people are finding the PC/Mac spots easily on Apple’s site.
Note: This post is generating an incredible number of search hits- all for the BK spot. According to Ad Age- this was a spot that was unveiled at the BK franchisee annual convention. After complaints about the spooky king- and the focus on the 18-24 yr old male customer- and almost everything else Crispin has done for BK- the franchisees looked at their sales figures- and this overblown production- and cheered.
Maybe the difference between BK and Apple has more to do with the client- Steve Jobs is a visionary king- BK is a horde of franchisees who like to think they are all kings. The big question will be if the franchisees will be able to let Crispin let go and keep making new, fresh ads- or will they try to force this into eternity. Ugoff was brilliant- but it would be old and annoying if it had run much longer.
You can see the spot and read comments on YouTube – the quality isn’t as good as the BK site- but they still don’t have it available to share. There may even be a directors cut out there somewhere- CP+B has been known to float some viral versions. It may have been on MySpace for a minute- but it’s gone now.
i agree i looked for that commercial on-line and i could not find it by using google.
it is a waste if it is not easily found
I wanted to write about the “Manthem” commercial, but the Burger King site was so ridiculously Flash-y that I just linked to the spot at YouTube.com instead.
I had Steve Brandon’s experience: I went to the BK site to get an address to write complaining–it’s the first ad ever that forever turned me against a company. I find it horrible and retrograde on several levels. Anyway, the Flash was highly annoying. When one knows what one wants, one just wants to navigate quickly, not have to watch silly special effects. It’s disrespectful of people’s time. Epilogue: I just called to get the name of the Customer Relations VP, got put on hold, and had to listen to . . . Manthem!
[...] Size matters: Ideas or Budgets in advertising 5/20/2006 by David Esrati An anonymous commenter took offense at our posts about the efficiency of Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Chiat/Day’s campaigns- thinking we were comparing our work to the big agencies. I deleted it- and immediately had regrets- I should have instead responded- and this is what that response should have been. When I entered this field in 1985, one of the things that made me different than my peers was a small box with a 9 inch monochrome screen- I had a Macintosh. I made presentations to prospective employers that included their logo (scanned from a business card with a Thunderscan cartridge in an ImageWriter II) and set in 12 point “New York.” I thought I was so cool- and apparently so did a CD at a big design firm. They swore up and down that a computer could never set type- or handle 4/color or give them more control than they had in the days of photo-type, lucy’s and waxers. Needless to say, long after I left they were one of the last shops to buy Mac’s and even ended up buying memory from me (a side business that at one time was quite lucrative- $200 for 1mb chip!). These days, if you can’t use Adobe Creative Suite, you can’t be a designer/art director, and typesetters as a profession have gone the way of the three-martini lunch. There are lots of people in the advertising business that can create an ad, or a campaign, or brand your business- and they can charge prices that range from dirt cheap (Phil Knight paid Carolyn Davidson $35 for the “swoosh”) to the very costly (The Just for Feet superbowl ad that practically killed the company). While there are awards shows to “rank” creativity (many tainted by plagiarism – or portfolio doping with spec ads) and competitions that judge “efficiency” the fact is- advertising isn’t scientific- no matter what Claude Hopkins thought – but more of a black art- based on the ability to touch consumers souls and make them do or think about products and services differently. Yet, most will agree that math is a science- 2+2=4, it’s black and white- but for those who are at the top of the math nerd pile- math stops being a science and becomes art- the elegance of an equation, the methods used to solve problems- and while advertising people think they are cool- and math nerds aren’t- let me point to Google- started by two math nerds who may take over advertising based on the strength of their scientific skills at solving an equation. No ad agency will ever grow it’s revenue like Google has- and no agency ever will- but just as there was a day when people in this business could still do advertising with or without a Macintosh (or PC if one is a masochist) we are in the days where agencies can either manage their clients accounts with or without taking on the online side of the account (which is embarrassing for our profession). Quite simply- the point I’m making in a round-about way, is advertising/marketing is going through a transformational phase that is of epic proportions- and there are still agencies out there making money and selling themselves as solutions when they still don’t have command of this relatively new tool. You can spend millions of your clients money on a TV spot- that can be skipped at the touch of a TiVo button, or not delivered because they chose to watch Desperate Housewives from the Apple iTunes store instead of over broadcast. John Wanamaker famously said that he knew half his ad budget was wasted – he just never knew which half; those days are coming to an end, and it should scare a lot of people in advertising. Soon, every ad will have a direct response component in it- and awards shows won’t matter- sales will- and they will be calibrated to the penny (which will make Proctor and Gamble very happy). In the mean time, we at The Next Wave, will still evaluate advertising not only based on creativity- which we believe in, and value greatly, but by the new science of delivery efficiency as measured by results- one being the ability of an advertiser to build community and connections with their customers over the new fangled Macintosh of our day- the Internet. So while many agencies are still farming out site creation to specialty shops and talking about online viral efforts, without a clue to how these all fit in with the new paradigm in our business- we are here, trying to position ourselves with our understanding of how these pieces fit together in the same way I did 20 years ago with my little Mac built presentations. Do I believe we could do more effective work than Crispin Porter + Bogusky (or help them be more effective) yes, absolutely, do I believe we could do work as creative as CP+B, no- we don’t have the number of people, or the pick of the people like they do, to churn that much work out. BMW made a choice to hire a firm with a very cool, but functionally useless website. Think of it as the Mona Lisa of websites if you like (they proudly display the “Cyber Lion” award on the front of the site)- but the reality of this new medium is that the tool that drives the audiences (search engines) is effectively a blind idiot savant- and can’t appreciate the Flash animations, the cool graphics or the down home music. If this is the model that they plan on delivering to their client- BMW may as well give up selling motorcycles in the rest of the country as they seem to have in SW Ohio. If the advertising business is going to survive this change, both clients and creatives need to fully understand how this new technology works- and how to implement it. That’s The Next Wave for now. What do you think? [...]
[...] Advertising you don’t have to pay for is like warm cookies and cold milk before bed, getting a puppy on your birthday, or winning the lottery on the only ticket you ever bought. Well, maybe you bought a bunch of tickets and won the lottery. It’s been said that the most powerful word in advertising is “Free”- and if you look at the stats for Jud Laipply’s “Evolution of Dance” video on You Tube- you’ll see how powerful even a low quality video can be. In advertising, marketing, public relations (PR) the idea is to get your message out in front of your audience in the most cost effective way possible- and the Internet is certainly making that possible. Here is a six-minute, single camera production with over 22,623,270 views. It’s got 5191 comments and has been favorited 41210 times (as of 11 June 2006) – all at a minimal cost. For an unknown motivational speaker, this bit of brilliant marketing has changed his world- opening doors to appearances on national TV morning shows and speaking engagements as well as his own line of merchandise. Compare the costs of this video to the Burger King Manthem spot- and you quickly see who gets more bang for their buck. However, for all his genius, Jud is getting away with something no ad agency or major corporation can do- he’s using some of the best-known music in the world as his background track- without securing rights or paying royalties. From reading his site, it is clear that Mr. Laipply is acutely aware of the rights issues- and he is not selling his video or providing the mix for people to download and do their own dance. Our only hope is that this mix starts getting played at every sporting event in America- so sports fans only have to suffer through a small section of the Village People’s YMCA, Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex, the Macarena by Los Del Rio instead of the whole thing at every game. What do you think? [...]
[...] MiamiHerald.com | 02/13/2006 | Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s rise to the top Our favorite quote from Chuck Porter: ‘When we were small, we learned to use imagination — not money’’ – well, not that they are big- they sometimes use a lot of money (not always bad) like for the Burger King Manthem spot that we compared to the Apple Campaign in “Is your agency ego in line with your budget” [...]
[...] As many of you know, we run a seminar on using a blog (specifically WordPress) as a content management system for a business website. The news section of The Next Wave site (where you are now) was added in January of 2005 and now accounts for most of the traffic on our site. Although we got an early start on having a website (our first site went up in 1994) and we soon figured (back while everyone was still on dial-up) that Flash wasn’t the way to build an entire site (later we looked really smart- since search engines and Flash don’t go together very well)- we were pretty slow to realize how important webstats are to providing customer feedback and marketing opportunities. The reason: when our content didn’t change often, neither did our web stats. That all changed with the news/blog- and analyzing web stats has become one of the most important parts of our seminar. As you add content- people find your site using different search terms- and link to you for different reasons- these are all opportunities to do business or learn about your customers. It’s how we decided to begin the seminars- and it’s also taught us a lot about how to build websites for our customers- so they can get more customers. Just like there are keywords- or trigger words in print advertising (Free- being the “best” one), search terms can tell you a lot about your customers hot buttons. For us, guerrilla ad campaigns, viral marketing, and non-traditional advertising have been hot topics- as have low-budget ads. In a highly competitive media environment, it’s become obvious that just spending more on traditional media isn’t a cost effective solution. The flip-side is, many of these potential clients aren’t willing to pay for the services to get the “more bang for your marketing buck” to the agency for coming up with the “big idea.” One of the places we find the big idea for a client- or at least get a start on the idea, is by searching through their well crafted website stats- where the search terms can show what’s on customers minds. Think of a website stats package as a way to eavesdrop on your virtual sales floor- as if you had a way to listen to every single customer that had an interest in your products. When we land a retail client, we like to do site studies- where we observe customer interactions with our clients staff, the environment, the product, the sales process- and then make suggestions on improvements. We also visit the competition and do the same analysis. We want to discover what drives your most profitable customers to shop with you – and how to find more like them. We can do the same with visiting your sites backend- analyze, review, and build new strategies to connect and close the sale. To repeat what we’ve said before- it’s imperative for a business to post all marketing materials online, in a place with a unique url link, and in a format that can be shared. Let the customer print your ad, own your TV spot, be able to listen to your radio spot over and over if they so choose. Even better- let them link back to your page, comment on the ad, be able to find out everything they can about it- because it most probably is what brought them to your site in the first place (isn’t that the reason you ran the ad in the first place). One of our most popular posts was where we scanned and posted a BMW motorcycle ad, and placed the copy in a Google friendly format (remember, search engines can’t read flash- or the text in the contents of a jpg file) – another was where we compared an Apple TV campaign to a Burger King TV spot- which brought us mad traffic for information on the BK spot. For all the creativity Crispin Porter Bogusky showed in the BK spot and the strategy, they made it hard for people to find out where “I am man, hear me roar” came from. So instead of driving people to Burger Kings site, where they could have been rewarded with a special offer, or discovered additional information about the product- like the exact ingredients in a Texas Double Whopper- they were on our site. One of the outcomes of the BMW ad- is that when people search for “BMW motorcycles in Dayton” they end up on our site- and are disappointed that we were mentioning that our market has lost it’s closest dealer- partially because BMW hasn’t been successful at driving traffic to the shops- in our opinion, because of lackluster advertising and a poor web strategy. We are now getting a lot of traffic on our site for people searching out answers to marketing questions- so we’re starting a new category: Practical marketing 101. We will be writing about ways to build successful marketing plans- utilizing well built websites as a basis for formulating sales plans that generate high traffic- especially for smaller businesses- independent businesses and our favorite type of client- the underdog. We hope this helps you understand what The Next Wave means when we say we aren’t just an “ad agency”- but a source for marketing and innovation. What do you think? [...]
[...] When we first wrote about the Chiat/Day produced Apple “get a mac” ads- I was comparing them to the Burger King Manthem- and viewing them from an efficency standpoint. [...]
[...] When I first saw the “Get a mac” campaign- with the two guys chatting it up in front of a simple white screen- with “Hello, I’m a Mac” and “I’m a PC” I thought that Chiat/Day had hit a home run for Apple. Not only had they gone to a direct product comparison, they had captured the “user friendliness” of the Mac perfectly. [...]
[...] Advertising is a more like a marriage, not like a date. Think about the long term, and invest in campaigns that will have “legs” – a concept, or idea that lasts. Think like Apples “get a mac” campaign instead of Burger King’s one shot “Manthem” (of which more was written about here). [...]
[...] When Apple launched the “Get a Mac” campaign by TBWA/Chiat Day we compared it to the Crispin Porter + Bogusky “Manthem” spot for Burger King: Is your agency ego in line with your budget? [...]