My mother always used to say to me when I was growing up that: a job work doing, is worth doing well.Although somewhat homespun and corny, I try and use this when it comes to assessing and developing marketing plans and even more importantly communication.
The reason for the latter is that I see the worst examples, of not doing the job well, when it comes to advertising. This is where marketers are obsessive about shorter and shorter spot lengths, and are trying to communicate and build brands using 10 and 15 or 20 second TV spots. This is madness.
In such a short time you can probably get across some product news or feature at best. So you can say "look we now have a dry skin variant for you". But you cannot connect with a consumer, you cannot move a consumer, and you are very unlikely to build a brand. As a brand needs not only awareness (the main reason I hear for using short spots is for frequency) but also needs to build strong relevance and an emotional bond.
If you insist on using short spots, that only really communicate features, you will not build a brand. You will be more vulnerable to the next better mousetrap that comes along with their short spot length spouting on about a slightly better feature.
Then there is another aspect of doing a job right. Sometimes it takes TIME to tell the story the right way.
Some examples:
(1) I have observed a discussion between agency and the marketing team where ad is great. It tells a powerful story based on a consumer insight that is solved with a strong differentiated product. But as the marketers are thinking with a media schedule mindset they want a shorter spot length than the story can properly be told in. It needs time to establish the insight, tell how the product solves it and then enjoy the result. The trimming removes the flow and linkage. In this case something should change. And butchering the ad is not the right answer. Running a less powerful ad makes no sense.
(2) There is a stress relief shower gel ad I have used in trainings that is 20 seconds long, and makes you feel exhausted watching it as it is so complex and fast. The product is about stress relief. It should take TIME to bring the benefit alive - as time and unwinding is the concept. You need to show it.
(3) Olay and now brands like Aveeno, Proactive etc are running longer and longer ads when they launch new technologies and lines - they create small news item style ads that create a sense of newsworthiness, importance and also take the time to explain the new technology and how it works.
It is always better to be seen and remembered once than ignored and forgotten a thousand times.
2 comments:
Good piece Gary. The Cliff Notes version of what you're saying is that marketers would like to adhere to the motto, "I'd have made a shorter ad if I'd had more time." This is very hard to do given that today's graduating classes of advertising creatives, client service professionals and strategists have lost the art and science of identifying a product's reason for being. What made Campbell's Chunky Soup is that it was positioned as "the soup you eat with a fork." Hence a meal. There, done and said in much less than a :10. Don't like being drilled upon to identify a reason-for-being? Then identify the product's Special User Effect. Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion was the first lotion clinically proven "to heal the skin." There, said in done in much less than a :10. No need for a story and it sold like hotcakes. Don't like this? Then go back to Unique Selling propositions. "M&M's melt in your mouth, not in your hands." There, done and said in much less than a :10. Gary, the problem here is that today's enlisted advertising private, corporal, sargent, lieutenant, captain, etc. would rather take the easier route, getting wrapped up in stories, rather than the harder route of identifying the hardest hitting selling proposition. I call it homework, but no one ever likes that. We can't wait to grow up so we can live, and make ads, the way we want to. And so often we get it wrong. The only difference is that there is no teacher to put that big red X on your ad and hand it to you so you can correct it. You have to loose the account and argue with clients instead. Postscript: No ads were harmed in the production of this comment - and even if they were that's OK - I'm the one who made them.
I also like the way you end this post:
It is always better to be seen and remembered once than ignored and forgotten a thousand times.
My way of saying this, and I've said it thousands of times, is that 'more ads are forgotten than ever remembered."
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