If you search for “BMW Motorcycle Advertising” in Google- we’re the first hit- out of a lot (1,400,000) of search results. It’s not something that we write a lot about, but it showcases how we can get our subject matter to the top of Google- something that can be critical in being part of the evoked set for a buyer shopping for your product category.
If your company wants to get to the front page of Google- even when people are searching for your competitors- and, are interested in great marketing/advertising- instead of just search engine optimization, you would do better hiring The Next Wave than one of those big NYC agencies that BMW’s motorcycle division chief Laurence Kuykendall hired.
These days- brand relevancy is often accompanied by a lot of chatter on the web- and having people find your site, before finding someone who is not so kind to your products or service is one key to staying competitive.
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?
The guy who gave the greenlight to an ad that didn’t get the brand voice, has now chosen a new agency- to “boost its online presence.” Unfortunately, this is another case of the blind leading the blind – Marketing Communication Director Laurence Kuykendall (who used to work at former agency Merkley + Partners- before jumping to the client side) picked “The Concept Farm” as the new agency- because of their “capabilities in guerilla, interactive and Web work” – yet their site still has a retarded Flash intro and only indexes three pages in Google.
Kurkendall claims that Merkley lost key players on the account who were “motorcycle aficionados” – yet, the people at Merkley seemed to have a contempt for the people who choose to ride BMW- as can be witnessed by the exchange on this site late last year.
Quite frankly, with a two-million dollar ad budget and requiring motorcycle riding creatives, one must wonder if NYC is the right place to have the account? Not only are costs lower in other parts of the country- but the likelihood of having people who ride their motorcycles more than the subway is statistically higher.
The good news for the Concept Farm is that they can’t do much worse than the “Hibachi” ad- the bad news for BMW riders is that the guy who approved that ad- still is in charge.
Please note- the closest BMW motorcycle dealer to Dayton OH closed Dec. 31 (Cincinnati), Indianapolis closed last year- and I’ve heard rumor that the dealer in Athens OH no longer stocks new bikes. Hint to BMW Motorrad- if we can’t get to a dealer- no amount of advertising, guerilla or online- will help you sell more bikes.
The 2006 Superbowl wasn’t a very exciting game- and from an advertising standpoint- well, the game did make a bunch of mediocre spots more interesting.
I’m not going to review the spots- you can read someone like Ad Age’s Bob Garfield for his commentary (may require subscription) http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=47764
I’ll stick to maximizing your ad budget effectiveness- if you’re going to spend 2.5 million dollars to run a spot- shouldn’t you do your best to turn it into a viral marketing effort?
Viral marketing is what gave us www.subservientchicken.com for Burger King. A low budget effort to launch BK’s tendercrisp chicken sandwich- that you can have your way. So, to have your way with the chicken on the site- you tell it what to do- ala web porn (the chicken is wearing stockings and a garter belt). For less than $30 thousand dollars, BK was reeling in millions of viewers, all telling the chicken to do the macerena.
Back to the Superbowl spots- we’ve said over and over- post all your ads on your site, be they print, radio, outdoor or especially TV. If you give the ads to your customers, they may distribute them for you. Nike and Apple get this- as apparently does Budweiser this year- with a complete page of ads for you to view- and even download into your iPod. (more…)
Of late there has been a lot of major account changes noted in the advertising press. Every move by Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami is documented in the same style as paparazzi chasing movie stars. What was once a relatively small agency, with small clients, who got bought by a small “network” is now becoming a BIG AGENCY with BIG CLIENTS still owned by a small network. How well agencies scale should not be measured by CP+B because it is an anomaly: it’s reputation is so huge, they are able to get the pick of talent, steam roll over clients (since they have been crowned by the media as having the Midas touch) and have adopted a “media agnostic” throw as many ideas on the wall and see what sticks approach.
In case you aren’t aware of their storied life in the fast lane, they made their first appearance on the hot shop radar with their “Truth” campaign for Florida’s anti-smoking campaign. They won a Cannes Gold Lion for their spot for IKEA where a desk lamp gets kicked to the curb- but IKEA seems to be unable to stick with an agency having parted ways with the successor agency as well (IKEA should call us), then came the dream account (only because the car is so damn cute and already branded) the new BMW Mini account. Here CP+P showed off how to get the maximum muscle out of the minimal moola to an exponential effect. Putting Mini’s on top of Ford Expeditions, putting the whole car on a billboard in a Slingshot, even the tagline “Let’s Motor” was so fitting, you couldn’t help but be enchanted with the idea of “driving satisfaction” without having it screamed at you. It was the ultimate in talking with the customer- not at the customer- and it worked. BMW sold cars, CP+B made their client manager look so good, she got hired away from BMW to fix VW- that’s making your client more money than they pay you if I ever saw it. Her reward to her friends who got her there- the VW account, a prize beyond their wildest dreams when they were working on bike helmet campaigns and local business.
So impressive was the mini campaign that success breeds success and on comes Burger King- a traditionally “difficult” client who had been through agencies and “campaigns” faster than they sell whoppers. Along came CP+B throwing new stuff at the masses faster than they could say “Yes” to the “would you like fries with that” question. The first execution was a takeoff on the British TV show “The Office” and the return of the “have it your way tag line.”
For such creative geniuses to settle on someone else’s tagline is typically unheard of- typically agencies want to make their own mark- but that takes time. CP+B was smart enough to realize that a brand in trouble needs help now, not when their creativity kicks in. The campaign was outside the norm for the industry- with double-entendre’s and un-pretty people. But, it was easier to fly the old tagline back through the barriers of corporate CYA and it bought them time- time for an agency to find a brand voice. Great campaigns don’t happen overnight. “Think Small” wasn’t the first thing Bernbach did for VW, nor was “Just do it” the first shot by Wieden + Kennedy for Nike.
Next came Dr. Angus and his big burger diet, and my personal favorite- Ugoff- the fashion designer creating a “pouch” for hot chicken and shrimp” for BK’s new salads. All of these had Internet components- something many “big” agencies still do as an afterthought. Then came the viral “Subservient Chicken” which every fast feeder now wants to copy and then the King mask- of which I won’t comment. But, this huge out burst of creative work has all been in a span of less than 2 years- totally unheard of in the ad world- and…
This is NOT how most clients get the most out of their marketing budget.
Most clients don’t have 300 million to spend. They depend on consistency of message on target. This is why an Apple ad today for the most part looks like an Apple ad of yesterday (please don’t remind me that they only have 2% of the PC market- and that if it wasn’t for the iPod the stock would still be hurting) or that Wal-Mart ads look like Wal-Mart ads. The idea is that if you can’t get enough frequency at least get repetition working for you. With small budgets like BMW motorcycles, the idea of staying on brand message is considered key. If you only have so much money, keep it consistent. This is why brands are so careful about staying in voice, on target with the right trade dress (look and feel). It is also why when you have a great tagline like “have it your way” or “the ultimate driving machine” or “just do it” it never goes out of style.
So- the question we posed at the beginning is do you have the right agency? No matter what you spend, your agency will tell you it’s not enough (except our agency) because their compensation is probably tied back to media billings – the stupidest way to pay an agency ever devised. The second question is, does your brand voice do what it’s supposed to (differentiate you from your competition and connect you like no other to your market)? Lastly, is your agency looking at every avenue they can to make you highly visible to your target market through every channel possible- including the Internet, guerrilla advertising, PR and your trade dress down to the way your stores look, your salespeople communicate and your company ethics? If not, you aren’t using the right agency- or getting the right return on your dollar. There is more to this- but it could be a whole book. You can call us to discuss how you can build your business using these ideas. One of the first things we’ll do is ask to look at your website statistics- and analyze where your customers are coming from. When was the last time your agency did that?
“Pardon me, please check your cell phone at the door” might be the future greeting at Wal-Mart- or any other retailer. Today many health clubs don’t allow cell phones in locker rooms because picture cams could be used to take pictures of people without their permission- your local retailer may not want you to be scanning barcodes into your web-enabled cell phone.
Picture this: you walk into Best Buy intent on buying a 60” Plasma High Definition TV. You’re ready to spend $5000 and then some- but, before you say yes to the kid in the blue shirt who’s thinking about the neon he’s going to be putting under his new Honda with his bonus for selling that big TV to you- you whip out your cell phone, scan the product barcode- and send it off to Google’s price comparison site- Froogle and back comes the information that if you drive 1.2 miles over to Circuit City (and here’s the link to the Google map) you can buy that same TV for $4200, and if you order it from Amazon.com you can get it for $3995.
Whoa. Did I just say going out of business sale for every brick and mortar store?
Quite possibly. There is a rule to retail, you can’t be cheapest on everything all the time- and still be profitable- even if you can accomplish huge economies of scale like Wal-Mart has, because there will always be someone else out there ready to beat your price on something.
A client of mine in the very competitive pizza business calls it the race to the bottom- and refuses to take part. He focuses on quality, value and being distinctive- making pizza that no one else does.
So in the retail wars- what has Wal-Mart really brought to the table that isn’t available somewhere else? Nothing. Just as GM flooded the market with different versions of the same vehicle- with so many dealers all competing to sell the exact same thing, Wal-Mart, even with the low price, can be beat by someone else- and if you have the power of the Internet in your palm- you may realize that you can get your milk, bananas and eggs at the Kroger on the way home for 20% less- so you skip Wal-Marts profitable items and just stick to the stuff that they make no margin on.
What retailers are going to be immune from this Internet assisted buyers- those that have unique products – like Target has done with its designer lines. Or where the branded buying environment is a lifestyle statement- like the new Harley Davidson showcase stores. Although I would have sworn that Apple was making a huge mistake by investing in retail stores- they’ve done two things very right- true customer service with hands on experts to guide the uninitiated in the way of Mac- and extended their brand into a branded environment that reinforces their high style franchise that differentiates them from all the other processor in a box manufacturers.
So, before you worry so much about the utilitarian low price behemoth that is Wal-Mart, or the froogle enhanced cell phone price shopper, start identifying how to evolve your shopping experience into a one-of-a-kind branded lifestyle. If you need further reinforcement of this branded experience- here are some of my favorites: IKEA, BMW Mini Cooper, Apple, Chipotle, Trader Joes, or W hotels.
What do you think?
If you search for “BMW Motorcycle Advertising” in Google- we’re the first hit- out of a lot (1,400,000) of search results. It’s not something that we write a lot about, but it showcases how we can get our subject matter to the top of Google- something that can be critical in being part of the evoked set for a buyer shopping for your product category.