The Next Level Marketing Blog » Advertising

A darn good “Gotcha!”

Don — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:47:04 +0000

When I brought in the LA Times this morning I was stunned when I read about the destruction in the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park. My grandson was coming to California for the first time next week and that was at the top of his list of must-sees. I was already late for an early morning meeting and didn’t have time to read the whole story.

When I got to the office later and discovered the truth I was really irritated. What I had seen was a wraparound advertising section promoting the new King Kong attraction at the park. It duplicated an ordinary Times front page except for the small red “advertisement” at the top that, in my hurry, I had missed.

As annoyed as I was by this initially, as an advertising person, when I sat back and thought about it I actually liked the piece for a very important reason—it proved that print advertising is still alive and working. To paraphrase Mark Twain’s remark about rumors of his demise, the reports of print advertising’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
While there certainly is a marketing shift toward the Internet and social networking, print media still offer space where original and creative advertising can command attention and take the time to tell a more complete selling story.

The Times Universal wraparound was definitely a “Gotcha” but, to me, the point it proved was more important—I’ll bet a lot more people will be eager to see their new King Kong attraction because of it. My grandson Aaron included.

Did the LA Times sell out to Disney?

Deborah — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:48:21 +0000

I picked up my LA Times from the driveway this morning and was faked out by seeing a full page photo of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in the Disney/Tim Burton movie “Alice in Wonderland” on the front page. It only took me a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t really the front page at all, but a full page ad (actually a 4-page wraparound) for the movie that obscured the real front page of the Times. With my background as an ad agency creative director, my first thought was “wow…what a creative use of media!”.

The media buy must have cost a small fortune, but the LA Times is in desperate need of money with Tribune Co. in bankruptcy and the movie is forecast to be a blockbuster, so it was probably a deal made in heaven where both parties were winners. The buzz and PR value from the ad placement itself has to be priceless for both the Times and the film.

I decided to do a search on Twitter just to see how the ad industry, the newspaper industry and the world at large was responding, and there’s definitely a lot of comments out there, both positive and negative. Jamie Court of The Huffington Post says “Advertising used to sustain the news, now it’s obscured it. Shame on the Los Angeles Time (sic).” His stance was re-tweeted by a lot of people and a quick online survey showed that more people seemingly share his view than my kudos to the advertiser and the newspaper. In “The Wrap” blog Sharon Waxman reported that the editors defended the paper’s decision to place the ad, saying it was one of several “innovative approaches” the Times was trying. In fact, the editors said the LA Times would seek to repeat this kind of project in the future, and is always looking for interesting ways for advertisers to distincitively market.

What’s your take on the situation? Did the LA Times sell out? …or was it a smart and savvy business decision on their part?

What was your favorite Olympics commercial?

Don — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:39:21 +0000

I loved watching the Olympics. The competitions were great. As a skier I loved the slalom and downhill events. And the snowboard half-pipe and the skiing freestyle aerobatics were stunning. I even grew to enjoy the finesse of curling despite the fact that I went into watching it with a cynically curled lip. (No pun intended.)

But because so much of the Olympic coverage was good, I grew to dread those two awful words “…after this” as in “More coverage of the competition after this,” “this” being an endless slew of mostly-mediocre commercials. I shouldn’t be saying this since advertising has been my bread-and-butter for a long time. But it seemed to me that the density of the commercials during the Vancouver games was high while their quality was not.

Of all the automotive spots that ran, the only ones that stood out to me were the Toyota commercials that invariably brought forth a wiseass comment from someone in the room. My favorites were the spots from Procter & Gamble praising Moms. I also liked the Visa spots with Morgan Freeman narrating stories of triumph but the series I liked best were from GE built around their Imagination campaign. But oddly enough, the best one really irritated me. It starts out with a doctor putting a tongue depressor in a little boy’s mouth and telling him to “Say Ahhh.” The boy does and it’s followed by a series of people saying “Ahh” each on a different note which builds into a crescendo of Ahhhs that blend into the finale from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Excellent so far. Then the voiceover announcer starts in explaining the rationale for all these “Ahhhs”. But he’s drowned out by the singing. So the commercial never paid off for me. Having written and produced dozens of commercials I know that all they had to do was bring the announcer in a little louder. It was really frustrating for me.

But what about you? What commercial did you like best? Or, if you prefer, hated the most?

How tweet it is!

Deborah — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:13:46 +0000

I was surfing the web this afternoon looking for something interesting to blog about when I was rewarded with a great story on Mashable about Trident Layers. I’ve seen their TV commercials, in which people trade their work for the gum as payment and I’ve thought they were pretty silly. But I think their use of Tweets as testimonials in a full page, color print ad in USA Today was brilliant.

What happened was this: The Trident people searched on Twitter and found ten unsolicited, authentic comments from fans, contacted each person to get their approval, and then ran them under the headline “The People Have Tweeted”.

It’s a great example of a brand integrating print and online communications in a very clever way and making the most of both the “old” and the “new” to reinforce each other. Now if only they had integrated those TV commercials into the program….

Making web ads that click…or that make people click.

Deborah — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:20:18 +0000

I read a piece the other day that really got to me. It talked about a book that discussed a study of what draws people to a web ad.

Now you have to understand I’ve spent my whole career working hard to create advertising that has stopping power — ads, commercials, direct mail pieces, etc. that have a unique graphic, message or story that attracts people’s attention.

But the study found that what draws people to a web ad isn’t fancy graphics or animation. It’s text. Plain ol’ text.

The study tracked people’s eye movements while they were on the web. It found that ads that featured text only or text and an image drew almost twice as much attention as ads that featured any kind of motion or animation.

To me that seems to fly in the face of common sense…and real life experience. No way you’re going to miss seeing that guy in the yellow chicken suit waving at you outside the fast food restaurant. And the motion in a good television commercial can keep you from taking a much-needed refrigerator break.

But, according to the study, the same people who chuckle at the chicken guy on the street are likely to bypass an animated chicken in a web ad. What’s the difference?

One possible explanation is that until now, we’ve been more or less passive when exposed to advertising…browsing through a newspaper, couch potating in front of a TV, listening to the radio while driving. We’re not focused on anything in particular so we’re more easily diverted.

But when we’re on the web we’re more likely to be on a mission. We’ve chosen to visit a website for a reason. We’ve entered a search term with a purpose. So we’re less likely to be diverted from that mission by an ad. But if the ad has something to say— text—we’re more likely to take a look. (“Maybe it has something to say about what I’m looking for?”)
So I learned a lesson: keep doing that traffic-stopping creative work for our clients in other media. But when we’re working on web ads, keep it simple. Apparently, glitz doesn’t grab.