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Maybe it’s Time for a Name Change
A long time ago in a political race I became convinced it was not how much money you spent, but how effectively you spent it. That was after helping spend $13 million, mostly for television, in a U.S. Senate campaign in a state with about 750,000 voters.
That was back 25 years ago when $13 million was real money. Today it will not be unusual for Ukraine’s presidential candidates to toss out five times more, and some are spending tons of money merely for positioning for the future.
But all this is changing, at least in the commercial sphere, and probably even more so in the political arena where U. S. President Barack Obama used multiple platforms during his bid for election last year, particularly the so-called new media.
They came to the conclusion that “earned” media was just as good and carried more credibility than “paid” media.
We are seeing this same phenomenon in the movie industry in the United States. Paramount’s hit Paranormal Activity cost very little to make, but the real savings was of tens of millions of dollars on the national television that was not bought.
Instead, Paramount ramped up its publicity arm to generate fan interest on blogs as well as traditional media. The film has sold $104 million in tickets without any investment in paid media. The secret of success: The earned media had more credibility than paid media.
There is the perception—which is real—that if a story passed through the filter of a reporter to make it to the pages of a major magazine, then it must be the real deal and not microwavable hype with no real substance.
The noted speaker and writer Al Ries wrote several years ago that advertising was dying and being replaced by public relations. In theory, I am beginning to think he was right, but not in practice.
In my view, as both advertising and public relations goes digital these days, the differences between them are narrowing; and it is to the clients benefit that they reside under one tent and work in concert in serving the client.
The term advertising has been around for several hundred years and the term public relations less than 100. However, both are about the communication of messages, regardless of how it is done.
I wouldn’t hesitate to call the whole kit and caboodle Marketing Communications Strategy.
Coca-Cola in Digital Lead
I'm a Coca-Cola-holic.
The only war I ever fought was the Cola war, and, when the smoke cleared, Pepsi Cola was so far behind it couldn't have been found with the Hubble telescope. It was a rout.
I think of this now as we set out sights on a second target, the effete and smug tea drinkers such as my colleague Lewis who has his black brew each morning as we mull over the day's work.
Once he experiences "the pause the refreshes"-what I call the breakfast drink of champions-I am sure I can coax him over to the effervescence of Coca-Cola.
Pepsi, on the other hand, isn't giving up without a fight. They are shying away from their traditional agencies flying under the Omnicom banner to flirt with those stronger in the guerilla tactics of new media.
But, they have a long, long way to go.
Listen to these facts I picked up from Rodney Mason, CMO of a group out of St. Louis, Mo., calling itself Moosylvania:
- Coca-Cola Facebook page has 3.8 million fans. Diet Pepsi has about 2,000 and Pepsi is non existent on the page
- On Twitter, none of the colas have a big presence. Starbucks has 482,000 followers.
- On You Tube, both sides have a respectable number of what Mason calls "overproduced television spots."
In movies, Coke dominates in on-site distribution and overall association.
In other words, in digital Coca-Cola leads the cola pack once again.
In Mason's words: "Pepsi has a history of focusing on the leading edge of all that is hip with the youth audience. That legacy has not yet found its way to the digital realm."
Good. Otherwise I might have to put back on my battle gear.
The Corpse in Waiting?
I think it is time we put the terms public relations and advertising in a time capsule. We all went to sleep one day and woke up in a new and different world.
It is a time that calls to mind a line from Kevin Costner's character in the movie, Tin Cup: "You either define the moment, or the moment defines you."
We live in a world where newspapers are drying up and blowing away like tumbleweeds in the desert. A world where the 30-second spot, once king of the ad chessboard, now has trouble holding the title pawn.
Suddenly, the marketing communications tactics in traditional textbooks no longer are relevant. They've been replaced by something called alternative, new or digital media.
Twitter has become an action verb: tweet. While one can be on Facebook, it seems also proper to ask: "Do you Facebook?" Webcasts and podcasts have been around for a few years, but the major difference now they are amplified by YouTube and sites like CNN's iReport.
In Ukraine, a marketer who I respect said this to me recently: "Agencies talk about how 'into' digital media they are. But when you ask for a second sentence, they stammer. They don't know."
I think this is because there is so much happening so fast. One can get a handle on some techniques but the digital communications arsenal is loaded and growing faster than Bermuda grass.
This leads to my great fear. In the rush to tinker with the new, we forget what our jobs - regardless of what one calls them - are all about. They are about the effective communication of messages.
But more than that, one needs a marketing strategy. No matter how you package digital media, it is still merely a tactic or series of tactics. Without a strategic master plan, they are relegated to gimmicks.
Show me an agency frozen in traditional media, and I will show you a corpse in waiting.
Drunkards Holding to the Lamp Post
My colleague, the distinguished wordsmith to the right of my name, will tell you I am singing a tired old song when it comes to pontificating about the lack of value of focus groups.
But I have been doing it for nearly 25 years and I am not going to stop until I or someone else drives a dagger into the heart of research's most vulnerable non-discipline.
I'll put it this way: Focus groups are about as relevant to advertising as square wheels on a car or Nike track shoes on Lassie. Still, marketers continue to use this faux research and call the results gospel.
How many times have you heard (or have you said), "Let's do a focus group or two and test this commercial."
Back up a moment. Do you really want to blow a half million (hyrnva, dollars, Euros, you name it) for production and media after listening to eight people at a table gab away for an hour or two?
If you conducted 15 focus groups with appropriate demographics and in different sections of the country you might - and I am going out on a limb here - you might come close to research.
Focus groups represent a pseudo-science. I will trust black magic and the swamp witch Marie Laveau's ravings over a focus group any old day.
Focus groups work as a backstop and to refine questions for quantitative research, which actually is scientific if done correctly. Focus groups were never meant to stand alone. Focus groups need crutches.
The basic problem I have with a focus group cabal is that it tends to dumb down both creativity and the marketer's gut instinct and common sense as to what works best for a brand.
Having sat in on dozens of focus groups, looking through that one-way glass, I have found the most prevalent question being "Do you like?" such-and-such. As a marketer, the question is interesting, but not as relevant as "Will this commercial move you to action?"
In fact, the "move to action" question really doesn't work in a focus group, primarily because it introduces a psychology that often will result in a negative answer. If someone doesn't like something, it stands to reason that they won't buy it. Right?
Wrong. Quite often, they will buy if the right arguments have been made.
Once, a long time ago, I introduced the "advocacy focus group". I didn't have the nerve to call it research, but it was helpful in learning which messages best convinced consumers to change their minds. I used it as an internal strategy check, and felt it helpful.
But when it comes to focus groups, I often recall the words of the ad man David Ogilvy, someone who was strong on research.
He said: "I notice an increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post - for support, rather than for illumination."
Was it Theft, Sloth, or a Case of Great Minds Thinking Alike?
"Give like Santa, save like Scrooge." That’s been the holiday slogan for Canadian Tire for years, and every Canadian (and any American living within TV broadcast range of the border) knows it well.
This year, the venerable American department store chain J. C. Penney began using the slogan to promote a new store in New York City.
With all the creative firepower in New York City, a venue that is arguably the center of the advertising universe, why copy a slogan still in use by another company? Forget for a moment that a tire retailer in Canada and a department store in Manhattan are not competitors and serve different markets: Is it fair? Moreover, is it necessary?
A spokeswoman for the department store chain told the New York Times that the marketing team was "aware that Canadian Tire uses this slogan," but that they were "not concerned with the overlap."
"We feel it's a fun and witty phrase to use to describe the great value in shopping with J. C. Penney this holiday season," she added, "This was just an instance of great creative minds thinking alike."
I differ. Great creative minds think alike when two companies come up with the same slogan or approach independently of each other. Knowing another company uses a phrase and saying, in effect, “the best that we can do is to recycle this phrase” is a sure sign that the agency’s creative well is dry. It’s not creative at all. It’s lazy.
I have had ideas that I thought quite good. Then I Googled them and found that 3,490,247 other people seemed to like the phrase as well. Do I check to see that it isn’t being used in the region, then pitch it as my “fun and witty phrase”? No – it goes, often with great regret – into the trash can.
It’s tough to be original, but the Internet has made it easy to check and determine whether that hot new slogan that came to you in a flash of inspiration is a work of genius or an idea that’s been used and re-used many times before. Like a pair of second-hand trousers, just because they’re new to you doesn’t make then factory fresh.
The J.C. Penney creative team needs to head up north to Canada and buy some tires as penitence.
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