Marketing Consulting Blog

One of the worst mistakes an advertiser can make is sending mixed messages. I'm always paying attention to advertising and marketing to see how others attempt to get their message across in 15-30 seconds. After-all, the human attention span isn't getting any greater, and we're overloaded with messages on a day-to-day basis so we weed out almost everything anymore. That's interruptive marketing at its best. What happens when advertisers confuse the message and stray from the core of what the business actually does?

A prime example today of a mixed message campaign is Rally's Hamburgers, a southeastern based burger and fry joint with dual drive through windows (one on each side of their facilities) which used to be headquartered in my backyard of Louisville, KY. They have since merged with Checker's, and I believe they moved their HQ to Florida. Anyway, Rally's true differentiator is their French Fries--great tasting fries with a unique flavorful coating. They attempt to compete with Burger King, McDonald's, DQ, and Wendy's among others.

Their current advertising campaign focuses on a toy-like figure named "Rap Cat." In their ads they have two younger guys who supposedly work one of the drive through lanes at Rally's. Frequently the ads discuss current specials and one of the guys will suggest your visit their drive thru window to get the special. Then the other one will offer the exact same special for their drive thru lane. The punch line usually has something to do with visiting one side of the drive thru instead of the other because that side features "Rap Cat." Then the video snaps to some goofy looking stuffed animal that meows in a rap-like fashion with a bad voice over. Not only is the campaign poorly done, it totally mixes the core message of the chain's business--selling tasty fast food at a very reasonable price. To me, a more effective message would be to capitalize on the popularity of their unique fries versus some stupid toy that likely doesn't propel anyone to want to go to Rally's over McDonald's or Wendy's. If I'm even remotely hungry and an ad comes on television at the proper time, I am much more likely to run out of my house to a particular chain if the food either appeals to my taste buds or something looks good. Rally's fries appeal to most people's taste buds if they've ever had them before, and they look tasty. Rap-Cat does nothing to inspire most people to want to seek out Rally's. Kids may identify with the toy, but I seriously doubt it. I will give the campaign one bit of credit--it's so bad it's memorable, but I wonder if that's what Rally's is after. Do they want an advertising campaign that is so bad it becomes memorable to the point people are talking about it only because the advertising is horrible?

Since I don't have access to hard numbers, I can't project the true impact of this mixed message campaign, but I can dare Rally's to talk to my company and its partners about fixing the message and driving revenue instead of wasting money on some hair-brained attempt at being cute. If Rally's wants to be a toy store, get out of the fast food business and partner up with Toys-R-Us. They aren't McDonald's where they can have five or six messages proliferating the airwaves and still survive.

In the meantime, the takeaway is don't confuse your potential consumer by sending mixed messages and poor attempts at humor or cuteness. Stick to your core and establish recognition first then when you become McDonald's or Burger King, you can tinker with various messages.

If Rally's happens to read this, an admitted long shot, they can find out more about my company by visiting http://smbconsultinginc.com. I'm quite confident we can help them fix their message and possibly their company in the process.

by John Jantsch

Media Post ran an article this morning quoting a Microsoft exec claiming that within three years most of their $1billion ad spending will be in the digital space.

"We're actually pretty confident that by 2010, the majority of our media mix will shift to digital," said Mich Mathews, senior vice president of the company's central marketing group, at the AAAAs media conference."

I guess you either see that as doom or opportunity depending on where you sit at the table. It's as clear a sign as small business should need though to help them understand that they too must get digital, get online, start using the marketing tool that's driving the engine these days.

You don't have to be Microsoft or a major television network to understand the symbolic nature of this story.

From Michael Cage's Site:

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If you honestly evaluate your advertising using the five questions in this message, one of two things will happen:

• You’ll discover that your advertising provides compelling and powerful answers to each and every question. If so, congratulations—you’re in the top 1% of all small business advertisers, and you’re achieving amazing results from your advertising.

or

• You’ll find that your advertising is totally focused on the wrong person—it’s focused on you or your business instead of on the perfect client in your target market. If this is you, don’t feel too badly—99% of all small businesses fall into this category. Their advertising isn’t very effective and earns, at best, a small “fair share” of available business … and it only gets that much because the competition’s advertising is equally horrible.

Let me stress one very important point before you continue: do not make this an intellectual exercise.

Think of your image of the perfect client. Then physically pull out your advertisements, sit down, and answer the following five questions as if your perfect client were asking them.

These questions will make demands upon your advertising that are very different from traditional advertising. Answering may seem strange at first, but stick with it. If your current advertising doesn’t provide compelling answers, start to think about how you could change it so that it does.

Small Business Advertising Question #1: “Why Are You Bothering Me?”

FACT: Advertising is an interruption.

Your ideal clients didn’t wake up this morning, get out of bed, and proclaim, “Wow, I sure hope someone advertises to me today.” The real world simply doesn’t work that way.

Your ideal clients, however, did get out of bed with business problems, goals, and other things that are important to them. If your advertising doesn’t grab their attention with a compelling reason that’s important to them (not you, but them), it will be thrown in the trash or just ignored.

If you don’t know what’s on your ideal client’s mind, you have no business putting together an advertisement … yet.

Go back to market research, and learn more about your target market. The research and understanding are key to generating responses to your advertising.

Small Business Advertising Question #2: “What Does It Have to Do with Me?”

After you capture your clients’ attention, you must get their interest.

Every once in a while, an advertisement will run in the Wall Street Journal with a huge, bold headline that simply says:

SEX!

Does it get people’s attention? Sure. But the next line is, “Now that I have your attention, let me tell you about my worn-out, dusty shoes.” Well, unless you’re interested in worn-out, dusty shoes, your interest in the advertisement stops right there and you move onto the next page.

So you see, once you grab their attention, you must get them interested … immediately! You can do this by telling them what the advertisement’s information has to do with the things they consider to be important. Again, this is about what they consider to be important, not what you consider to be important.

A tried-and-true way to capture interest is to state the biggest possible benefit or promise you’re able to make to your target market. If you know your market well, this is a sure-fire way to keep prospective clients reading.

Small Business Advertising Question #3: “Why Should I Believe You?”

Prove it!

Decision makers default to skepticism, not belief, about your claims. If you don’t give your prospects powerful and compelling reasons to believe what you claim in your advertising, they won’t.

It’s your job to provide the proof they need to believe what you’re communicating. If your advertising doesn’t provide proof, get to work and add it in.

For every promise you make and every benefit you list, ask the question: “Why should I believe you?” Then answer the question using one of the seven methods of adding overwhelming proof to your advertising (my three favorites are testimonials, case studies, and photographs). Or answer the question as if you were sitting in front of a prospect who asked you that very question.

Small Business Advertising Question #4: “What Should I Do About It?”

Just listing a phone number or website URL isn’t enough. I’m consistently amazed by the number of advertisements I critique that lack a compelling offer and clear directions for how to act on it.

Have you given prospects a specific step to take in order to begin the process of becoming your client? The key word here is “specific.” Tell the prospects exactly what to do, how to do it, and what they’ll get as a result.

Small Business Advertising Question #5: “Why Should I Do It Right Now?”

A “cute” theory espoused by many so-called advertising gurus is that decision makers will remember you or your firm when it comes time to take action, even if they don’t take action right away.

But “reality” (you know—studies, statistics, and empirical evidence) shows that notion to be utterly false.

If your prospects don’t take the action you want when your message is in front of them, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll come back to it at a later date.

Sure, they might “mean to” take action later. They might file the ad in the pile of things to do, put it on a corkboard, or stick in the pile of “really important” stuff on their desk. But the end result is usually that your message is put aside and forgotten.

Your advertising must give prospects a compelling reason to act immediately. What will they gain if they do? What will they lose if they don’t?

Wrapping It Up

While advertising salespeople like to talk about image, exposure, and awareness, your focus belongs on making sales and on results you can deposit in your bank account. These questions will help you create advertising to do just that.

By paulmcenany

Is there any question who the biggest loser of the night is?

No, there's not. It's Anheuser-Busch. What a pathetic bunch of ads. Really, all, yes ALL of them sucked ass. Maybe not the worst of the night, but when you're spending 20 million dollars or so within a couple hours of advertising, I'd expect to see at least one memorable thing. They came close with the false Dalmatian spot, as it at least looked promising in the beginning. Unfortunately, it fell pathetically flat.

And, in the loser's lounge, AB is joined by Sales Genie, Revlon, Garmin, FedEx, and cars in general. Also, Doritos proved my theory that advertiser-backed CGC is fucking dead. Thank the lord. Seriously, I've never been so annoyingly bored. The Sales Genie ad below gets worst ad of the night. Did an agency create this, or some in-house hack? On the biggest advertising stage in the world, probably not a good idea to waste our time with this filth.

The big winners for me were Careerbuilder.com and Coke. CB.com for flawlessly replacing the monkey spots with another campaign oozing with legs. From strategy to execution, spot on. And, Coke for probably the best group of ads on the night. Of course, most of us had already seen them on the web, but regardless, they're brilliant. All of them set this smile-inducing tone that's hard as shit to pull off without sounding cheesy. I think it's safe to say that Wieden has overtaken CP&B as the best creative agency in the states.

My top 8.

1) Coke - Give a Little Love

2) Careerbuilder.com - Office Survivor

3) Careerbuilder.com - Promotion Pit

4) Coke - Old Coke Revisited

5) Coke - Fantasy

6) ETrade - Bank Robbery

7) Sierra Mist - Beard Combover

8) Snickers - Kiss

And, the honorary win goes to MySpace.com for putting these all together in one place, and allowing for easy embedding. Seriously, why the fuck would anyone use cbs sportsline if they only offer real player and no embed code? Just fucking stupid.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sure did seem like a ton of CBS promos. Some empty inventory maybe? All in all, a distressing night for traditional ad-men all across the world, and a few hours of content smuggery from new media mavens such as myself and most of you.

I wondered when this would happen. Seems like now is as good a time as any.
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By Barry Schwartz on Google: Acquisitions
Google's Next Ad Frontier May Be Inside Videogames at the Wall Street Journal shows reports that Google is in talks with Adscape Media, an in-game advertising company. This shows that Google is interested in placing ads within video games such as PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and other game console units. Since most of the new game consoles have Internet enabled features, sending related ads to the games via the Internet is feasible. Google said, "We are always considering new ways to extend Google's advertising program to benefit our users, advertisers and publishers. In-game advertising offers one such possible extension among many others." Other coverage at PaidContent.org and TheStreet.

By darmano on Agency 2.0

It's R/GA. Is anyone surprised? I'm not. R/GA has figured out how to build a successful agency model out of blending storytelling + experience. In my mind, that's the "magical" formula—key to success of the future agency model. Sounds simple, but it isn't because if it were—all agencies would be producing the caliber of work that R/GA usually does.

Here's a few excerpts from Adweek which caught my attention:

"But R/GA delivered more than visions in 2006, expanding revenue over 35 percent to an estimated $150 million, the bulk of the growth coming from existing clients like Avaya, Nike and Nokia. On the new-business front, R/GA won the global lead digital agency role for L'Oréal Paris, besting the network firepower of Euro RSCG 4D and McCann WorldGroup's MRM Worldwide. For its enviable financial performance, envelope-pushing creative and knack for building compelling brand experiences, R/GA is Adweek's Interactive Agency of the Year for 2006."

"The line between technology and creativity is more of a gradation," says Nick Law, R/GA's North American chief creative officer. "That's a hard thing for a lot of traditional agencies to accept."

:R/GA is complementing its applications by moving more directly onto the turf of general ad agencies. Law points out the agency produced more than 100 videos last year that, while not 30-second spots, are representative of a new type of broadband storytelling. R/GA is building out its digital studio, equipped to shoot in-house at a less expensive cost. It shot 11 digital video vignettes for Avaya, using tongue-in-cheek humor to show the benefits of complex products like remote data hosting, IP phone systems and IT monitoring. The videos are being used on the Avaya Web site, in online ads and at trade show presentations. They were done on a shoestring budget thanks to R/GA's all-digital production infrastructure. "When you look at a traditional agency, they can't do anything inexpensively," Greenberg says.:"

I don't think that everything R/GA does is the golden egg. For example, while I'm a huge fan of the Nike ID work, some of their other work such as the commerce portion of NIkewomen.com puts sizzle in front of substance. However, they do try to push the envelope and in my opinion get it right more often than getting it wrong. Agencies, pay attention—Experiece People + Storytellers are uniting—and brands will demand this, if they aren't already.