by Next Wave Team | Oct 21, 2005 | Advertising, Design, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, How To Select An Ad Agency
My father bought one of the first Saturns. Four doors, A/C, 5 speed manual, FM radio- no haggle cheap transportation. He still has his plastic car and it runs like a champ. When Hal Riney and Partners started with that “A different kind of car, a different kind of car company” people just thought it was another tagline.
Well all these years later, I read a story my dad sent me from Business Week and get this- they really are a different kind of car company:
Recently, a man called Saturn’s customer-service number with a big problem: His daughter’s car had broken down in Arizona, and she was stranded. He reported her location, her license plate number — and the fact that her car was a Honda (HMC).
DIRECT ACTION. When the Saturn representative pointed this out to the upset father, he said “You’re the company that cares about people, and that’s why I called you.” What would your company do? Saturn sent out a truck to pick her up, towed her Honda, and let her father know that she was safe.
Think about it: competitive brand, no warranty card, absolutely no reason to help. Except that there’s no substitute for this kind of concrete action when it comes to creating a brand with real meaning.
How many times do you not go back to a restaurant because of one bad experience? Or not shop at a store again because someone was rude to you? It’s always been said that do something wrong and someone tells 10 people, do it right, and they may tell 1, or possibly none.
Sure, Saturn may take this story and turn it into one of those warm and fuzzy commercials (or they may not- since they can’t afford to tow every car that breaks down) but it comes back to no matter what your ads say- your company has to over deliver.
Bad ads may kill a company slowly, but great ones will kill a bad company faster. All business is one-to-one, even in the days of the Internet- your user experience governs how likely you are to do business with that company again.
The BW story continues:
It’s the sum total of all your actions. Yes, positioning messages and advertising imagery play a supporting role in developing your brand identity, but what really matters is what you do and how that makes people feel.
And everything matters. If you want to make a great brand, you need to pay attention to all the ways it gets expressed in the world. How is the user manual written? How does the off/on switch sound? How do you hire people? How does the receptionist answer the phone? All of these things are as important as expressions of your brand as an ad campaign.
So when building your brand story, don’t forget to teach your employees how to live it as well.
What do you think?
by Next Wave Team | Oct 13, 2005 | Advertising, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of TV
I wrote about this back on 4/3/2005, Cable system DVR’s are not the future, and yesterday Apple released new iPods that can play video. Immediate reaction of people- who wants to watch TV on a little iPod screen- that’s right up there with the IBM chairman Thomas Watson Sr. estimating the global market for computers at ‘about five or six’ in 1946.
The big deal isn’t seeing video on the iPod- it’s that you can now buy last night’s episode of Lost for $1.99. I’m not sure if that’s with or without commercials, but, soon, imagine it’s $1.99 without commercials- or free (or cheaper) if you download and ACTUALLY watch commercials that are targeted to you.
That is the future- and it just came to you via Apple computer.
Currently the video is not high resolution to play on your TV- but, that will change as codec’s improve. TiVo may just be seeing the end of their business model, or it may be the beginning, if they figure out a way to sell programs direct too.
A message to the “Broadcast” industry- your days are numbered. To the producers of quality content, you may be seeing a bigger piece of the pie coming your way. How many people will skip paying HBO and buy the Soprano’s direct? A season subscription for $50- I’d buy it.
What do you think?
by Next Wave Team | Oct 8, 2005 | Advertising, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Guerrilla Campaigns, Marketing & the Web, Web strategy
Every week The Dayton Business Journal publishes a “list” of the top 12 or 24″ players” in a field from Hospitals to Title firms, and once a year they publish their “List of Advertising Agencies” which is always good for a few laughs by those of us in the business.
As I am fond of saying, “Good research is expensive, bad research is more expensive” (in case this is instantly apparent- the cost of doing the wrong thing because you did your research poorly is always more expensive than doing the right research to begin with). The Business Journal’s methodology is suspect at best. They fax a questionnaire out to the agencies they have identified- never telling us how many it is sent to then they take the responses, without verifying the answers, and compile a “ranking” based on number of employees, or gross billings as reported, and this creates their “List.” I don’t claim that my list of agencies that aren’t The Next Wave is complete, but I update it every time I run across another firm, and it has links to other resources.
I was going to buy the 10″ x 1″ ad at the bottom of this Years Agency list to promote my list- but they only are going to have 12 agencies this year- a half page, because they didn’t get enough responses. How lame is that. I admit, after not being included last year (when I had my largest employee count and billings) and seeing smaller firms on the list, I wrote “why bother” on my questionnaire and sent it back.
The wonderful ad rep that I deal with at the Business Journal suggested I talk to the publisher. She transferred me, I left a message and got a call back from the Editor, who was about as flexible in her thinking as a brick wall. So, according to the Dayton Business Journal there are only 12 Ad Agencies in Dayton. End of story (except here).
Not only that, I tried to explain to them how a list could be complete and useful like my list, but they aren’t interested. They have to be able to rank agencies by size or employee count, I feel that alphabetical works just fine. I offered other ways to rank- number of awards won per employee was one 🙂 No matter, they will republish their list in an annual publication called “The Book of Lists” which is just as worthless. They hawk it for $29 and describe it as:
“PERFECT for: Sales Prospecting, Job Search, Fundraising, and Business Research”.
I call it a poorly researched advertising vehicle.
If you are looking for a list of advertising and design firms in Dayton OH, and surrounding areas, Agencies that aren’t The Next Wave is your best resource. You can contact their publisher to let her know that incomplete lists are a waste of your time and that a complete list would improve their publication. Or you can just use our List of Advertising Agencies in Dayton.
What do you think?
