Let\u2019s face it, sometimes the marketing business can be a Royal Pain. You offered them Plan A, B and C. Plan A was too expensive, Plan B didn\u2019t move them, and Plan C doesn\u2019t move you. You only included it to give them another choice, and that\u2019s the one they\u2019re looking at, unless you can come up with Plan D.<\/p>\n
But you\u2019re out of ideas. Where to turn? How about the telly? Yes, there\u2019s a supermarket of thousands of marketing ideas, some clever, some so jaw droppingly dumb that you laugh out loud. But you have a leg up on the poor defenseless consumer. You see this stuff all the time.<\/p>\n
The best ad ever was a National Lampoon parody featuring a big eyed dog with a gun pointed at its head. The cover read \u201cBuy this magazine or we\u2019ll shoot this dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s the essence of advertising, isn\u2019t it? Create an arresting image and provide a provocative call to action.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the current advertising craze, kids. Yes, the little ones are babbling away in every ad from discount brokerages to cell phone service. At first, it\u2019s cute and then it\u2019s annoying. The kid craze tells me a few things about the current marketing scene.<\/p>\n
The TV people are looking to make a connection and they can\u2019t do it with the product, pricing, or tekkiness, so they\u2019re taking us hostage with kids…and families. Looking for that common denominator–everyone has a family, right?<\/p>\n
Generally, I\u2019d have no problem with it, especially if the product was a kid product like a bicycle, or chicken noodle soup. But cell phone service? Their product is faster, which is good, because Grandma is slow. Tell me, Pugsly, what would you do to make Grandma faster?<\/p>\n
\u201cTape a cheetah to her back.\u201d Oh, good, now we\u2019re laughing at poor old Granny.<\/p>\n
But, it might be effective, and that\u2019s what matters. After all, parents are always taking orders from their kids, just like cats are said to manipulate their owners.<\/p>\n
Anyway, this is what marketing scientists call \u201ccontent analysis.\u201d You watch it, but not as a consumer, but as a marketer. How does it relate to the product you\u2019re trying to sell?<\/p>\n
Would a talking cat move the needle? And, if so, would that distract from trying to sell the product\u2019s benefits and features?<\/p>\n
You can tape these ads and imagine your product being advertised instead of the one in the advert. Does it work? Does it suggest other approaches?<\/p>\n
Has it reached the annoyance level yet? Maybe, but if you\u2019re trolling for ideas, it certainly beats staring into space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let\u2019s face it, sometimes the marketing business can be a Royal Pain. You offered them Plan A, B and C. Plan A was too expensive, Plan B didn\u2019t move them, and Plan C doesn\u2019t move you. You only included it to give them another choice, and that\u2019s the one they\u2019re looking at, unless you can come up with Plan D. But you\u2019re out of ideas. Where to turn? How about the telly? Yes, there\u2019s a supermarket of thousands of marketing ideas, some clever, some so jaw droppingly dumb that you laugh out loud. But you have a leg up on the poor defenseless consumer. You see this stuff all the time. The best ad ever was a National Lampoon parody featuring a big eyed dog …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[198,7],"class_list":["post-673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-promotional-items","tag-ad-agency","tag-marketing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}