by Next Wave Team | Feb 12, 2005 | Advertising, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising
It’s always easy to see what someone should have done, when you’re not the one having to do it with a few million people watching.
Advertising is the same way. Come up with the greatest TV spot since Mean Joe Green for Coke or Apple’s 1984 ad. Everyone has an opinion, thinks they have a great idea, and then says “Wow, advertising would be a fun job to have.”
Well, it is fun, except for clients who want everything yesterday, and want to pay you a week from next Tuesday for the work they got 3 months ago. And, oh yeah, the potential client who passed your shop up because you told him the truth about what he should buy with his budget, only to go to some big lame shop who had him spend 3x more for half the creative- and then the guy tells you that your ideas are too “big city” and that you should teach his wife how it’s done.
And then, there’s The Apprentice, the TV show, where the Donald sends teams of amateurs out to create an ad campaign in a couple of days. You know, there’s nothing to advertising anyway. Well, last night, the “street smarts” and the “book smarts” both failed miserably in creating a campaign for the new Dove body wash.
Yeah, millions of eyes on them, real pros to help them, and two absolutely terrible ads were produced. So, what does this prove?
Does it prove that there is something to this business; a craft, an art, a bit of psychology, science, that great ads aren’t done by committee? The easy answer is yes- it proves it.
But, let’s look at the flip side, probably 20 million people watched this train wreck production of two crappy ads, and Dove body wash is probably better known now than it was on Thursday morning. That even bad advertising works. Yeah, that explains why a certain local Honda dealer who has done the ads people love to hate for years keeps doing them. It explains why that potential client is happy with an agency that does crap for him. It explains why everyone and their mother think they can do this (yet I have to admit that every once in a while my Mother comes up with a good idea).
I had a new client this week ask me about their new “logo.” I tried to explain to them that it wasn’t really a logo; that it wasn’t something I could see from 10 feet away that I would recognize instantly for what it was. I told a logo is something you recognize, a brand is something you would be willing to pay extra to wear, or even want to tattoo on your body.
And while there are lots of ads out there that are perfectly adequate, how many do you really want to watch over and over? How many would you pay to see? Me, I buy books of great ads, I have a collection on our server, and I even asked the Nike Store if there was a way to buy the reel that was running on the 4th floor in the theater.
I’m a freak. The rest of you love to skip the ads (except on most Super Bowls).
And then after the Super Bowl, you all think you can come up with something better.
So, would all of you out there who think what we do is easy, go watch this episode of the Apprentice. Lucky for the budding apprentices, Donald only fires one of you. For us, they fire the whole team.
Does it still sound like fun?
Thank you Donald for showing the world that advertising isn’t something for amateurs.
by Next Wave Team | Feb 7, 2005 | Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of TV, VW advertising
Super Bowl. It’s supposed to be the world championship of advertising. Apple set the standard for excellence with its million-dollar ad launching the Macintosh in 1984. This year, we saw the most mundane, weak, el-crapo advertising ever.
Particularly bad were the car ads. Ford, three times the same ad for a car I can’t buy today. I kept waiting for a different ending, nope. Same stupid grin on the frozen idiot who drove his new Mustang convertible with the top down in a blizzard. The other ad, carried on the “scary biker” stereotype (recycled concept from a Mercedes ad- and others) with a pack of bikers being scared off by a row of “Tough trucks.” Excuse me, but, in case no one in Detroit has noticed, the people buying motorcycles today, the Harley’s they drop $8-$30K on, they don’t look like that or dress like that. They also buy trucks, just probably not Fords, anymore.
How about telling us about what makes a Ford truck a good value? Make the product a hero, while describing what differentiates it from a Chevy, or a Dodge.
Or a Honda, another vehicle I can’t buy today. The Ridgeline is a nice truck I’m sure, but, it looks like a Matchbox toy truck- tell me, calling it a 1 ton truck, with a bed that looks like it’s 3.5 feet long, doesn’t instill confidence. How about comparing it to something I might know- especially, since I can’t go out and drive one.
Same thing for Cadillac. Three new fast cars, that I can’t buy yet. Wasn’t “we build excitement” the line for Pontiac? Build excitement about a car I can buy.
Let’s just call this automotive flirtation, not advertising. One of my cardinal rules of marketing is don’t tease when you could deliver. It’s about wasting the consumer’s time. They value it, you should too.
Volvo offered to take me into space, but wasn’t that an ad for Virgin Galactic, not the Volvo- wait, it was Volvo wasn’t it? I don’t remember.
Toyota is still bragging about the Prius, using cool effects, but, do the crunchy granola types watch the Superbowl?
Car advertisers all fail.
But then again, how many good car ads are there?
How many car brands out there really get the connection to their intended market?
Mercedes got it for a while, but then because of mega agency mergers, they had to switch agencies, no matter how good the work was.
Mini, of course has gotten it, all on a budget for less that what Ford spent for their 4 ads- well maybe a little more. An Agency that has ideas, there is a good start.
VW had it too for a while, but that was only because they were the first to tie in trippy indy music with trippy indy cars, at least that’s what all the young yuppies thought when they bought the first German cars that proved that Germans don’t always get the engineering right.
Car brands have to take a look at Harley Davidson. Here’s a company that has a brand that works. Here’s a company that builds motorcycles almost as poorly as the American car companies build cars, yet sells them all. HD makes more money off licensing than from selling bikes these days. There was a day when the Chevy Bowtie had that kind of power, but it’s long gone now.
US car companies tried to trick the consumer offering cars that were the same, only different- Firebird/Camaro etc. It didn’t work.
Another cardinal rule of advertising- don’t fake it, keep it real.
Real differentiation, real reasons to buy one instead of the other. Substance over style.
So, take note. Next year, if you want to sell cars on the Superbowl, remember:
Don’t tease.
Don’t fake it.
Deliver real differentiation, and a way I can relate to owning that car.
The Super Bowl is the wrong place to play with selling cars.
by Next Wave Team | Feb 2, 2005 | Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of TV
Have you ever taken a trip to another city and saw a billboard for a local TV news broadcast and thought you never left home? Newscenter. Eyewitness. Storm Team. The names the same, only the call letters and the station number and network affiliation change. The graphics package, the logo, the taglines and even the way the news is reported is similar. Ho Hum.
Someone bought a franchise.
The McDonalds of news. Billions and Billions served, the same exact thing. Only the locations have changed to protect the innocent minds who tune in – in less and less numbers.
On top of it all, the use of channel numbers, ie. “Newscenter 7” or “2 News” means nothing when the viewer watches on cable- and tunes in on another frequency. With the advent of Digital broadcasts, the VHF numbers (2-13) will disappear, and that bandwidth will be used for other purposes, so why do local stations keep using a number that’s going to go away? Beats me.
There are also call letters. WRGT, WHIO, WOIO, that come from the days of morse code. It’s time to ditch call letters altogether- it’s time for URL’s. Can you imagine finding this site if it was YHLNUYKUS? Television over IP is coming, it’s time the local broadcasters realize that their programming will have be a consumer branded experience, that someone will want to subscribe to, just like you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. If you want information about what’s going on in Osh Kosh, you get it from Osh Kosh Central, or the Osh Kosh TV, via a subscription.
Local broadcasters aren’t going to be needed to deliver national or syndicated programming, just the local content they provide. News, weather, community, locally produced programming are all that’s left that consumers won’t be able to get from a server somewhere. Local advertisers are going to be particularly hard hit. How will they reach local viewers?
The answers there lie in the “set-top box” that is going to call up programming, or store it for viewers (think TiVo). Are you willing to pay more to watch a program without interruption, or watch ads targeted to you to cut the cost of programming? Most would say yes, if the ads are good (imagine being able to rate an advertiser- thumbs up, thumbs down, 3 thumbs down, you never have to watch again- 2 thumbs down and the advertiser has to pay more to reach you- but if they get three thumbs up, they don’t have to pay for reaching you).
Local broadcasters- now called content providers, will work to customize programming to reach certain parts of a community that advertisers are trying to reach. College sports teams and local pro sports teams will become more valuable as they start negotiating rates directly with their fans. This gets more and more complex with funding of pro- sports, but the market will figure it out.
There is more to this local content provider story, especially when you start talking about radio, king of homogenized product, but that’s for another entry.
So, what do you think?
by Next Wave Team | Jan 31, 2005 | Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of TV
Hello out there TV land. You are producing content for television. You do an hour show. You need to leave 12-16 minutes open to pay the freight. Why eat up a whole minute with opening credits? After the third season of ER, I didn’t have to see the blue green snippets of the cast- I knew who they were- and the “theme music” that too got old…
This is what the VCR fast forward was for- and TiVo only made it easier.
So, instead of spending a ton of money with a composer and a “title” house like Digital Kitchen (who did the openings title sequences for shows like Six Feet Under, House and Nip Tuck) or Imaginary Forces (who did The Practice and Homicide) you could actually use that time to put relevant content on the air.
Some shows that don’t waste viewers time with this dated concept are: 24, where the previous shows are recapped to introduce the characters, Lost where the show just begins and sooner or later you get a one word title for all of a few seconds before a break.
Paraphrase what Howard Luck Gossage said about ads to main title sequences- people watch what interests them, and sometimes it’s opening credits- and think, is this content, or fluff?
Time is money, and airtime is valuable as well as the viewer’s time. By moving straight to content you are making better use of resources. Granted extra minutes of shows cost money to produce, but the longer you make your mandated viewing appointment, the better your chance to give advertisers value. Watch the lead in for Fox’s 24. “A new episode of 24 starts now” and there it is- cut to the chase (often literally) and you’re off and running. Compare that with ER, where if you miss the first few minutes, you haven’t missed much. “Must see TV” my rear end.
Television is not a place for small talk. People come to be informed or entertained, not played with. Once you begin to understand what consumers want, you have a better chance of gaining their “friendship.”
Some other things to consider: with people meters recording viewing habits there is less need for recall ID. Also, with interactive program guides and program meta data readily available, I can click on the guide or info button, and get all that info from the opening credits- plus a synopsis. With web links coming, and tv content search engines (see blinkx.tv) I can even find out details in depth about each actor. I don’t need your opening credits.
Take this one more step- local news: if you think your super busy graphics package that opens your show is worth any more than last weeks front page, think again. Same goes for your “teasers” coming up next- just give us the short bullet, real info- we’ll click though if you have a credible record of getting the story right, if not, we’ll click to your competitor, no matter how many times you say “exclusive.”
I guess it comes back to content is king.
Give me something new, fresh, relevant, or the viewer is gone. Skip intro is the future of TV.
What do you think?
by Next Wave Team | Jan 29, 2005 | BMW Advertising, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a opinion writer for the Miami Herald. His column in the Dayton Daily News is one of the bright spots in a generally unbright paper.
Yesterday I wrote about satellite TV killing the last easy way for local business to reach a market efficiently. Today, Pitts writes about how Johnny Carson was a uniting force in our country(he died this week)- and how back in the good old mass media days, with only three TV networks to choose from, a show like “I Love Lucy” would garner a 67.3 rating while today’s “American Idol” is considered a hit with an 18.3.
As I said in a Business Week letter to the editor, there never was really a “Mass Market” just big players in a small sandbox- now that the sandbox has enlarged (more media to choose from) it leveled the playing field. Satellite TV is a step back to a smaller sandbox.
The reason I like Pitts so much, is his commentary on humanity is usually idea driven, instead of personality. His thoughts have a longer life expectancy than just today’s news. This is a mark of a good ad campaign as well, if the idea can keep going and going, it’s generally a good one. Favorites of mine: Got Milk, Absolute __________, The Ultimate Driving Machine- you get the point. Sometimes even great campaigns get ditched due to stupidity- and then the “Hot Agency” (in this case Crispin Porter) “rediscovers” it- like Burger King’s “Have it your way.”
Great ad campaigns from major marketers can have a unifying effect on our country, just like Johnny Carson did- remember “Where’s the Beef” or “Whatzzup.”
I’m placing a link to this Pitt’s piece, “With Johnny gone, a piece of our culture is gone too.” The link I found is from the Detroit Free Press- which may want to charge you to read this tomorrow, but hopefully it will still be there and they won’t have made fun of their name…. (or is a “Free Press” that kind of freedom of the press that existed pre-the current political atmosphere where journalists weren’t getting sued to expose their sources? The latest lawsuit by Apple against thinksecret.com comes to mind).
Enjoy the day.
by Next Wave Team | Jan 28, 2005 | Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of TV
OK, no one has been writing about what may be the most dangerous thing to locally owned business since Wal-Mart: satellite television. That’s right, the little ugly dish pointing to the Southwestern sky that is popping up all over the place.
I own a small but mighty ad agency. Most of our clients are local. We need to reach market segments the same way national advertisers do. Want to hit teens, you buy MTV, housewives in midlife crisis, E!, Oxygen, HGTV, sports nuts, ESPN and FoxSports- you get the picture. Used to be 100% of the market had access to broadcast, 80% had cable which included the local broadcasters and about 10% watched on their dish. They did this because the big cable guys had a state sponsored monopoly and kept raising rates to the point that Satellite became competitive, if not cheaper.
Cable also was slow to deliver HD programming- offering only 1 HBO, 1 Showtime and the broadcast stations, albeit late. So, people started buying dishes. Me, I have a 51” HD Sony that was begging for more HD programming, so I went with VOOM- which offered 35 basic HD channels- plus 2 HD HBO and with an integrated HD tuner for the locals- which came in at about the same price as I was paying for Cable, even when I kept the very basic cable for the locals on my other sets- plus the public access channels that the cable company thinks no one watches (I know that at least in Dayton OH, they have no clue how popular public access is).
Now, cable should be cheaper- they have more homes, so they should be able to distribute their costs over a larger base, but on top of all that- they have the ability to sell and insert commercials locally. This is the lifeblood of local businesses that want to be able to target their markets just like the nationals- but with cable penetration dropping with more satellite households, cables ability to deliver eyeballs is dropping, while their ad rates aren’t.
Cable is responding by bundling Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony and broadband Internet, and even cell phone service as a single provider. But, until they get out of that fat cat mind set, they are going to gouge themselves into obscurity. The simple fact is, we are moving to delivery of all content over the net with direct IP delivery of programming. Think of the special shows that pop up on your TiVo- delivered overnight direct to your hard drive- that’s the future- with programming and commercials custom tailored to you- the viewer.
But, by the time the kinks are worked out of direct deliver by IP- we may not have very many choices on where to buy from. There will be Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon.com, 2 global banks, and one grocery chain.
Consolidation of ownership in radio has actually driven up the rates to the point that broadcast TV is cheaper in this market. Newspapers are losing readership to the Internet, and TV viewing is dropping off for younger viewers.
Finding new customers is going to be harder and harder through “traditional” advertising methods as the markets become more and more fractured, and the people in charge of our best media tools are asleep at the wheel.
There is another whole entry to write about outdoor advertising, big box stores and tax abatements, but I’ll leave that for another day.
So, when you get right down to it, I am a traitor. My switch to Voom is like divorcing myself from my community and local businesses that are our lifeblood. Is it going to kill my small agency, The Next Wave? In the long run- probably not, since we are media agnostic and work hard to innovate our way into the hearts and minds of our client’s customers. But, remember, you read it here first as cable loses it’s place as the primary pipeline for TV audiences.
What do you think- let me know.
