Is Hiding Your Flaws The Best Marketing Strategy?

Posted on October 25, 2010 by admin

Halloween is here. That means candy is here. Which inevitably means Smarties are here. Now I love Smarties. They’ve been one of my favorites since childhood. And since each one is little more than a flavored disc of sugar, I typically take stacks of 4 or 5 at a time and devour them.

Of course, it’s 2010, which means Smarties can’t exactly get away with a marketing strategy of “sugary treats your kids will love.” They aren’t healthy. They don’t encourage or promote a healthy lifestyle. So how do the folks at Smarties solve the problem?

Like this (as it appears on a podcast sponsorship disclaimer I saw this morning):

“The podcast edition of this article was sponsored by Smarties: the gluten-free, dairy-free, tamper-evident, low-calorie candies for Halloween. Buy Smarties this year. They’re the smart choice for Halloween.”

Wait…what?

They’re…they’re just sugar, right? Apparently not, according to their marketing folks. Rather than focusing on the unhealthy aspects of the product (kids love candy and candy is made of sugar), they’re using every health-related buzz term they can use to avoid the negatives of their product.

Is it deceptive? Probably. Will it work? Maybe. I’m not a parent, so the language isn’t exactly targeted toward me, but the general premise remains; the people at Smarties are basically trying to tell the public that Smarties are the “healthy” choice – though not quite in those words.

While we at ADwërks don’t encourage deception in our marketing practices, we must admit that Smarties has taken an interesting approach. If they plan to differentiate themselves from dozens of other candy options this Halloween, this is certainly one way to do it. We just don’t know if claiming to be a “low-calorie” candy is fair. Sure, only eating half of a roll might count as low-calorie, but which kid at Halloween only eats one roll of Smarties?

I personally think “the smart choice” for Smarties would be to focus on the things they are rather than emphasizing the things they aren’t, but maybe that’s just me. All I know is that I’ll be much more likely to buy (and devour) Smarties this Halloween for their delicious, tangy taste rather than their gluten- and dairy-free ingredients.

What do you think about this approach? Do you think it’s an innovative strategy in a saturated market? Think it’s a shady advertising practice? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

-Mike B.

Photo via flower7 on Food.com.

How YOU Can Help the AdStuds of AdFed’s Student Day

Posted on October 13, 2010 by admin

We just wanted to take a minute to point out that the South Dakota Advertising Federation will host Student Day on October 27, 2010. As part of that effort, some young and energetic advertising professionals have built a website for the event that lets students ask questions, find information, and get engaged with the local advertising community before Student Day arrives.

As one of the young and energetic advertising professionals helping out with this great effort, I wanted to make sure we at ADwërks did our part to pass along the website to anyone who might be interested. Whether you know a student interested in the marketing and advertising world or simply want to pass along a tweet about the AdStuds site/effort (@adstuds on Twitter), it would be awesome to have more people spread the word about this impactful event and the strong effort leading up to it.

If you have any questions about anything, drop me a line at mikeb@adwerks.com and I’ll be happy to help.

We now return to our blog’s regularly scheduled programming of marketing insight and opinions on advertising. Thanks!

-Mike B.

The Big One Day Sale

Posted on October 7, 2010 by admin

I had the strangest dream. I was sitting in the office running my hands through my luxurious blond hair (hey, it’s my dream!) when the phone rang. It was a new client who wanted us to help with a big new campaign. I quickly set up a meeting.

The client was SofaTown—a major furniture store—one of the biggest in the state. They wanted us to create a complete campaign for a big one day sale. They had been saving all of their advertising budget for the last four years and wanted to spend it all on this Big One Day Sale on the first Tuesday in November. I asked them why they had chosen that day. “Because that’s the day that our main competitor Couch City is having a big one day sale and we can’t let them beat us.” We questioned the intelligence of gambling everything on that one day sale, but they assured us that they had done this every four years and it had always worked well for them.

So we set off to create a fantastic ad campaign for the Big One Day Sale. We did television and radio. We created direct mail, print and outdoor. We did internet banners and social media. We had a strong public relations component and got lots of news coverage about how great the sale would be. We even went so far as to contact people who had purchased from SofaTown before and asked them to put signs in their yards and bumper stickers on their cars to let their friends and neighbors know that they intended to buy new furniture from SofaTown.

It was awesome. Everyone in town knew about the Big One Day Sale. But Couch City wasn’t going to take this lying down. They hired their own ad agency. They ran TV, radio, print and outdoor. They had a cool website and lots of fans on their Facebook page. And their PR had made Couch City a bit of a media darling.

Uh oh. Things were really starting to heat up. We did market research to ask people who were likely to purchase furniture in the fall where they intended to shop. Couch City was gaining on us. In fact, in some key neighborhoods, Couch City was in the lead.

When we told SofaTown about the research, they said we needed to spend more money, but this time it wasn’t their money, they were tapping into their “co-op funds.” With this new budget, we created a whole new campaign.

The new campaign, since it wasn’t being funded directly by SofaTown, took a different direction. The new ads didn’t talk about SofaTown’s great selection and low prices – these ads talked about Couch City. The ads said that Couch City’s “free leather ottoman with every purchase” was made from puppies. We attacked Couch City from every angle, insinuating that if you bought a dinette set from Couch City, it was like inviting terrorists over to dinner. But it wasn’t like SofaTown was attacking Couch City directly, because the ads said they were “paid for by Citizens for Better Furniture.”

Of course Couch City had co-op funds of their own. They started running ads saying SofaTown’s mattresses were stuffed with kittens. (Not true!) They said our client’s salespeople were escaped war criminals. (OK, so one guy in recliners was questionable, but SofaTown fired him and sent out press releases apologizing for ever hiring him.)

In the end, all of the ads started to turn people off. Our research showed fewer people were going to buy furniture in the fall. We learned that some people who had bought furniture from SofaTown before were thinking about buying from a smaller furniture store, Recliner Village. Some people even said they were so disgusted they were throwing out all of their furniture and were going to sit on the floor.

That’s when I woke up. Man, what an awful dream. I’m glad that never happens in real life.

-Jim

Is Your Business Ready For The Future (according to Google)?

Posted on October 5, 2010 by admin

Google recently gave a keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference in New York where they discussed a topic many innovative companies focus on – the future. Specifically, how the world of display advertising will look in the year 2015.

Although the full blog post is worth a read, here are some of the key elements we took from their keynote address:

• “With smartphone growth skyrocketing, mobile is going be the number one screen through which users engage with advertisers’ digital brands.”

Think about that. Four years from now, Google predicts the most used screen for digital brands won’t be desktop computers or even laptops, but mobile connections like smartphones. Have you considered how to advertise your brand through mobile phones rather than just traditional digital advertising methods?

• “Just like most news articles on the web today can be commented on, shared, discussed, subscribed to and recommended, in 2015, 75 percentof ads on the web will be “social” in nature—across dozens of formats, sites and social communities.”

Within the next five years, 75% of ads will be “social.” Interactive ads and digital engagement practices won’t be the rarity, they’ll be the majority. And Google isn’t talking about “click this banner ad for more info” type of engagement. They mean full-fledged, multi-platform, interactive campaigns that will leave traditional digital advertising (in its present day form) seem archaic at best.

Of course, Google wouldn’t present this info (and more) if they didn’t have a vision for their own role in the evolving display advertising landscape. Amongst the many technologies they play to employ, one of the most fascinating is the vision they have for their “Google Goggles” project.

• “You might be familiar with Google Goggles, a way to search the web on mobile devices just by taking a picture. We gave a preview of some experimental uses of Google Goggles that could one day enable advertisers to deliver great display ads to users. Imagine pointing your phone’s camera at an ad for a car in a magazine, and having the car appear in 3D in your mobile device. Or pointing at a movie poster and having the movie trailer play in the device, right in your hand. No QR codes, no downloads!”

Needless to say, Google presents some compelling reasons to start investing in your online marketing and advertising strategy. While Google isn’t the be-all / end-all in the marketing world, their vision for the future of advertising certainly isn’t unrealistic.

Whether or not you choose to embrace the potential and use it to your advantage is up to you. And if you want help using it to your advantage, drop us a line.

Photo by popculturegeek.com. Thanks!