Posts Tagged ‘Copywriting’
The Discipline of Targeting
This topic has been rolling around in my noggin for quite some time, and after watching last night’s episode of Mad Men (3:2), I decided it was time to go ahead and put pencil to paper. Or keyboard to blog. Whichever suits your fancy. So here’s the crux of it: good consumer targeting takes remarkable discipline from both the agency and the client. Allow me to explain.
As marketing professionals we should always be able to watch a spot on TV and immediately decipher the target audience. Beer spots: men. Lifetime promos: women. It should be that easy, but it’s not. Why? Ineffective and inefficient targeting. I was watching TV the other night and a spot for a certain brand of yogurt comes on. The main character is an attractive young woman shopping at a grocery store. Shes very flirty with the camera, the setup is way over the top and the ending is downright odd. To my maleness, there was sexuality in play from the character. My wife, who is a retired account director herself, totally missed it. She just thought it was weird to end a spot like that. But to the trained male eye, there was far too much “naughtiness” in the spot for it to be accidental. From my point of view, the spot came off as if it was the result of dude-think: a bunch of guys sitting around concepting and ending up on something that appealed more to them than it does the target audience. OR, it could be that the client was a dude and chose something that skewed more to his liking than the target audience.
In recent years, I’ve noticed too many brands suffer from something very similar that I like to call “Cocktail Party Syndrome.” This popular condition is when marketers try to make a brand more palatable for their cocktail party friends than to be true to the brand’s actual and potential target audience. It’s hard for an egotistical creative director, account director or even CMO to look their swanky friends in the eye and proudly say, “We just cut new price/items shells for Brand X, and I think it’s really going to shake things up in the lower-income rural markets of the Great Plains.” That’s not cool. What’s cool is to say, “We’re totally reinventing our target audience. We want the brand to be the Target of our industry. We’re shifting from a lower-income based consumer to a middle and upper income individual. They have more disposable income anyway, right?” That sounds awesome to your peers because you sound like a trailblazer. But it takes a disciplined, strategic mind to have the gumption to know your target audience and stay focused on the business at hand. Despite how much fun it would potentially be to take it there, not every brand will be Target or Apple or VW or Chipotle or even Burger King. The solutions that have transformed good brands into great brands arent prescriptive because brand maintenance is not as simple as one solution fits all.
I look at Wal-Mart and Olive Garden as excellent examples of knowing your audience and speaking to them. Wal-Mart had a few missteps over the last few years, but they totally have it down now. Olive Garden, while not appealing to me, appeals to their audience and has the consistent growth to prove it.
I re-reference Mad Men again. The model of “Men want her and women want to be her” is completely false, and we have absolutely grown past this as an industry. However, it takes incredible discipline for individuals in advertising to not fall into this mindset when your target audience is not yourself. Its ok to create work that doesnt appeal to you. Its all about being objective versus subjective. And thats an entirely different post altogether.
The client relationship
I often ponder the ad industry. Where it’s going, who’s going to be the next big player and what’s wrong with it.
Many times nothing comes of it, but today my ponderings drifted into a far more philosophical territory. What truly makes a good client relationship? What is a client’s ultimate loyalty to? Is it the cost of doing business with you, whether high or low; is it the location of their ad agency, whether local or NYC; is it the quality of the service or the quality of the creative; or is a combination of all of these things. But beyond the why, the real point of ponderance I had was, “why does a client choose to stay with you?”
See. The boys from Sterling Cooper now how it's done. A good looking CD.
There’s one type of client that I like to refer to as a “Golf Course Account” or the type of account that simply picks their agency on the golf course. That’s the kind of account that agency principle’s love and creatives despise. When the client relationship is based on nothing more than an inferior handicap, a few Michelob’s and a wager on a missed putt, there’s nothing that awesome creative and strategy can do to save a business when a better schmoozer in a foursome comes along next time that dude is at the country club. It’s a dangerous way to construct an agency and an even harder way to keep talented people around. They want to win business on the merits of their work, not on the ability of their boss to shank a drive.
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Never abandon your post
Somebody recently tweeted a great list of Twitter applications that everybody should check out. There are a few of the obvious ones (Twistori, Twitterverse, etc) that are completely designed to destroy productivity in the work place, and then there are others that you can search people by their interest or description. So, after playing with Twellow for a while, I realized just how dangerous social media can be if you don’t stay engaged in the conversation.
There are lots of C-Level executives on Twitter from companies of all sizes, and there are a lot of them who have done nothing but show there ignorance toward social media. Type in CEO, and you get over 5300 people who list that in part of their description. Type in Chief Executive Officer, and the list is quite small. So what’s embarrassing for their companies is when they have no followers and no updates in 6 months. And it gets worse when that update is a mundane fact about their life at home or how then need to better engage with people online. That kind of malfeasance is dangerous on the web. It lets everybody know that you’re not serious about it.
Which really brings me to my point: the only thing that’s as important as transparency in social media is diligence. For people who get into Twitter and proudly display their title and company name in their profile, there is a real need for them to consistently get online and contribute to the conversation. Not talk about their dog’s shedding problem. Not talk about waiting at the doctor’s office. But adding value to the online conversation. A lot of people have been preaching that CEOs must be on Twitter. Your CMO must be on Twitter. Nonsense. That’s like saying every kid needs to play football at 6. No no. They need to engage when they are ready and can dedicate the necessary time to actively contribute and have a smart point of view on things that affect their industry. It’s way better for executives to wait until they understand what to say and how to say it, that it is for them to get on and not say anything of value for months.
Take my hero, Alex Bogusky, for example. He was on Twitter for only a few months, and while he was active, the dude dropped bombs. He had a great mix of Retweets, insight and personal stuff. He did a bang up job. Then, his final statement was a sign off. He said it wasn’t for him. Awesome. Let everybody know you’re not a Tweeter. And, it’s not like he doesn’t contribute content all over the web all the time, too. He engages everywhere, so for him, Twitter was just something else he didn’t have to take up.
For executives, you can’t take the plunge without dedicating serious time to keeping your profile intact. It hurts your credibility and your company’s when you simply abandon your post.
Why does transparent journalism have to come from youtube?
It was absolutely no mystery that George W. Bush was not the best communicator on the planet. That guy could mince words and put his foot in his mouth better than Bill Clinton could bite his lip and seem empathetic. However, our current president has had numerous vocal missteps of his own that nobody knows about. See below as an example:
So what? The guy mistakenly said Austrian instead of German. And his response was about 31% ‘uh’, and 24% ‘um.’ Still, so what? Alls I’m saying is were this W, the headline “President thinks Austrian is a language” would be tatooed on every major daily in the country. But because it’s PBO on the podium saying something that on the surface could seem unintelligent, he’s absolutely given the benefit of the doubt.
Why, on an advertising blog, would I post about this? Well, to me this is an extension of what I wrote yesterday. The crumbling of traditional media is not because of advertising, it’s because they failed to be transparent, neutral journalists. That was why people bought newspapers and watched the news to begin with: to get unfiltered news and not opinions. Every paper and ever newscast in America leans one way or another. THAT is why news is dying.
We killed the media?
It’s often nice to see one broken business model throwing stones at another broken business model. That’s kind of like the Unions blaming the auto industry for making their cars too expensive because they pay their workers too much. But for anybody to insinuate that the Rock Mountain News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, et al, are declaring bankruptcy and floundering in their own ink because advertising sucks, you’re more stupider than I thought.
In today’s New York Times, their Idea of the Day references an article from TechCrunch and another from The Economist to bolster their case that the shuttering of newspapers across America is all the fault of advertisers. This notion suggests that our work is bad and people don’t want advertising, therefore we’ve been the crutch that fed their fetid business model for years. We’re already the most hated profession in America, so why not pile on a bit more, eh? It’s way easier to blame somebody else. In Disney’s animated film, Meet the Robinsons, the antagonist, Mike “Goob” Yagoobian, makes this great comment: “Hmmm, let’s see: take responsibility for my own life or blame you. Ding, ding, ding, ding! Blame you wins hands down!” So for anybody associated with newspapers, this is so much easier to do. They could look at their archaic business model or the fact that they’ve all become opinion papers instead of journalists, but I think they would much rather find somebody else to blame. And under the current “blame somebody else” zeitgeist, it’s perfect.
CamelBak update
So, if you’ve read anything I’ve written in the past few weeks, you probably have seen the interesting exchange I’ve had with CamelBak over my water bottles. If not, click here and then click here.
But this Friday, before departing for Memphis (and getting the absolute privilege to eat at Deli Mexicana and the Rendezvous), I got my package from CamelBak in the mail. They went way over and way beyond what they had to do to reinforce my belief in their brand. They not only sent me new tops and new bite valves, but some top varieties and two new bottles, as well.
So, officially, my loyalty can be won. That level of customer service goes so far above and beyond that I will be a huge supporter of theirs from now on. Not because they gave me free stuff, but because I always try to reward business that do things right. They transcended a lot of potential “Can’t Police” and “lost revenue” memos to serve their customers, and they do a phenomenal job of monitoring social media. For those reasons, they get huge gold stars. So the next time you’re considering outdoor hydration solutions, consider using CamelBak and rewarding their awesome approach to serving their customers. And despite the way that last line sounds, this is absolutely not a paid endorsement. I just kinda can’t help but write ad copy sometimes.