Guy Kawasaki once wrote that “Advertising is the plastic surgery of business,: a procedure to make ugly and old products look good” in his book Selling the Dream

However, the business of business has become corrupted by charlatans practicing what can only be called some kind of voodoo economics- be it in banking, insurance, or even selling cars. We’ve started taking our own economic buzzword driven drivel and packaged it into arcane business models- ones that suggest that selling “Credit Default Swaps” is actually business instead of grand theft.

I recently questioned if Venture Capitalists, as they practice their craft now are anything but parasites. With the casinoization of Wall Street- where stock prices can drop by half, even when a company hasn’t changed it’s products- business model or suffered from any change in demand (Google during the current financial meltdown), is there any reality attached to the very real and tangible ways to define and guide business?

Either you have solid financial goals, objectives and strategies- with real products and services that fill a need, or you don’t. Back in the dot.com bomb of 1999-2001 we had VC backed online companies opening only to go out of business the next day (www.bigwords.com ended up at a local liquidator- the breadth of the offering was amazing- Amazon like, when all indications that laser focus is the key to most online success).

I lay the blame purely on the shoulders of Wall Street and Bull Speak. You know, the ability of CEOs with no “skin in the game” who are able to “push the envelope” inventing new “ecosystems” for “profit optimization through….” while forgetting the basics of business, which is providing goods and services that fill real needs.

So, I was ecstatic to find this:

Bull has become the official language of business. Every day, we get bombarded by an endless stream of filtered, jargon-filled corporate speak, all of which makes it harder to get heard, harder to be authentic, and definitely harder to have fun. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

via Fight the Bull - Why Business People Speak Like Idiots.

Which besides having the book: Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter’s Guide

Also comes with a downloadable BullFighter software program, which allows you to analyze your Microsoft Word document for a BS quotient. If there is one thing that stops advertising from being able to do its job- making the “ugly and old products look good” it’s the clients inability to clearly describe the market, and the product without lapsing into bull speak.

Copy god, Howard Luck Gossage once famously said “people don’t read ads, they read what interests them- and sometimes it’s an ad.” If you try to read some of the horse hockey coming out of our corporations, talking about “making paradigm shifts” when what they really mean is we can’t clearly tell you why we do what we do, but you should still believe our CEO is worth $2K an hour- and we’ll be lining up for a bailout from the Federal Government as soon as we figure out how to explain what we’ve been squandering our stockholders money on.

Business and advertising both are easier without bullshit. So go get your Bullfighter now- and lets work together on selling stuff.

We won’t confuse you with anything that won’t directly impact your bottom line (translation- make you money).

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Posted in: Advertising humor, Practical Marketing 101

You’d think with the world watching as the worlds greatest automotive company declares bankruptcy, the first effort to rebuild the brand would reassure you that they still know how to produce quality - would at least mention it?

Not so with the new spot from Deutsch.

The reason GM failed was that they took their eye off the ball, and refused to listen when Americans started buying smaller, higher quality, better fuel efficiency from companies that didn’t change the trim a little bit and try to convince us that a cat was now a dog.

Telling the American people that “This is not about going out of business. This is about getting down to business” in a spot full of canned imagery including hockey, football, baseball and horse racing- isn’t about getting down to business at all, it’s more mumbo-jumbo from a company that has not only failed it’s stockholders, stakeholders but our entire country.

When the saying used to be “What’s good for GM is good for America” you can’t just slap some anonymous announcers voice on top of  emotional images like a tattered flag waving and expect people not to wonder why our government just backed you up.

Lee Iaccoca set the standard when Chrysler took a bailout, coming on camera with a direct and honest apology for failing- and making a promise to come back. What this spot says is that GM doesn’t even have anyone left with balls enough to lead them out of their mess.

Compare this Chrysler spot from 1984, and you’ll understand why GM still has no clue about what “Getting down to business” means.

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Posted in: The craft of advertising

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is proving why they are at the top of almost every agency search consultants list. Burger King continues to have same store growth after years of failed campaigns, and changing agencies. VW was almost ready to give up on the US market, again, but have at least started to rebound sales. But what started out as an embarrassingly bad intro for Microsoft with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, and then into an “I’m a PC” has now hit pay dirt by not even talking about Microsoft’s products, but by doing a comparison between PC hardware and Apple hardware.

“Laptop Hunters” is credited with changing perception of brand value, according to a BrandIndex study:

Based on daily interviews of 5,000 people, BrandIndex found the age group gave Apple its highest rating in late winter, when it notched a value score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (a score of zero means that people are giving equal amounts of positive and negative feedback about a brand). But its score began to fall shortly after and, despite brief rallies, hovers around 12.4 today.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has risen from near zero in early February to a value-perception score of 46.2.

via In Mac vs. PC Battle, Microsoft Winning in Value Perception - Advertising Age - Digital.

Hefty gains in a short time, although Apple hasn’t sat idly by:

But, while this battle royal can wage for years, the real reason that Crispin Porter + Bogusky keeps winning for their clients is that they get the fundamentals right.

They know that advertising is supposed to surprise and delight, not inform and sell. They take great pains to make sure that you might actually want to talk about the ads they do around the water cooler at work the next day.

Today, they pulled one out of the hat for me. I own a copy of “Hoopla” which is their monograph. For the most part, it’s heinously designed making it almost impossible to read, but, inside the back cover- I discovered (via a tweet by Alex Bogusky) there is a secret second book:

This guy @DomineConcept discovered the hidden book that was bound inside the back cover of our book Hoopla » link to Dominé Concept | Hooplanetics and a ripped up HOOPLA book….

Which led me to carefully operate on my $50 copy:

A secret book awaits inside the back cover

I’ve also been watching the CP+B Ebay auction of their interns time:

ANNOUNCING THE CP+B INTERN AUCTION

In the past, our interns have created work for companies like Burger King, Volkswagen, Guitar Hero and Microsoft. And now they can do the same for you. Bidding starts at $1 for three months of service with all proceeds going to the hardest working people we know - the CP+B interns themselves. So bid early and often, and world-class advertising can be yours for a fraction of the going rate.

via Crispin Porter + Bogusky Intern Auction: Summer 2009 - eBay (item 270392380113 end time May-27-09 10:57:37 PDT).

Which is currently going for $5,400.

It’s innovative, it’s interesting and it’s not strictly advertising. It’s a conscious effort to manipulate and shape contemporary culture, cajoling and dancing outside the boundaries of conventional advertising wisdom. Everything can be an ad if you make it interesting enough.

And that’s why they are winning awards, accounts and owning the crown of the Hoopla kings.

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Posted in: Apple Advertising, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, The craft of advertising, VW advertising

It’s becoming an epidemic, your competition does a “great ad” so we should “one up” them with something derivative.

Here is TBWA Chiat/Day’s original MacBook Air commercial introducing the super slim computer”

And, then Ogilvy does a response ad (much later) for Lenovo:

And while this may seem funny, it’s not really building the Lenovo brand, but reminding you of who was there first.

I heard a great quote the other day, “cover bands never change the world.”

The same thought applies to advertising.

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Posted in: Apple Advertising, Differentiating your brand, The craft of advertising

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been around for a while. What’s changing is that old ways of reaching and interacting with customers just aren’t working the way they used to.

Now, more than ever, it’s about doing business with people you know and brands you trust. Brand value isn’t just connected to sales, image or size, it’s now based on how well you build and maintain trust with your customers and potential customers. For service to be outstanding, the more you know about your customer, the more opportunities you have to over-deliver and build wow factor into every transaction.

We’ve been looking at data driven CRM and how the 800 lb gorilla in the market is Google with the amount of knowledge they can gleen from your surfing habits, your e-mail (via g-mail) and the relationships you establish online (through links and locations online). Google may become the central clearinghouse for all things advertising, while taking a nice cut to be the agent in between advertisers and customers. Unless you like the idea of paying a middleman, now is the time to start harvesting your data that resides in your A/R files, your Rolodex and card files- looking to establish and continue relationships with people that already know you.

Maintaining connections within your sphere of influence can be time consuming and difficult, if done on an individual basis. Opportunities may be missed, or overlooked due to changing priorities and being asked to do more with less. We’ve started looking deeply into online CRM tools like the open source software SugarCRM and it’s offshoot vTigerCRM at The Next Wave.

Our goal is to make sure we maintain our relationships in a systematized fashion, where the entire organization has access to our collective customer base.

There are plenty of other CRM systems out there, including Salseforce.com and solutions from Oracle, SAP and down to ACT! and Goldmine, however, it’s our philosophy to believe in the power of open source to eventually eclipse the closed wall competition. If your organization hasn’t implemented a CRM system as part of your marketing plan, it’s time to start.

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Posted in: 1 to 1 marketing, Future of advertising, Personalization of advertising

The economy is tough. There are strength in numbers. But, advertising/design firms in Dayton merging is rare. Most of the time, they buy the assets like vultures over a carcass. From their press release:

Design District is pleased to announce that, as of January 1, 2009, we have merged with three other creative studios to form FORGE. After more than a year of close collaboration with Catalyst Creative Partnership, Jeremy Loyd Design and Chad Mullins Creative, it was evident that we could accomplish much more together than we could apart. Thus, FORGE was born….

FORGE
where ideas take shape

http://www.forgeideas.com
w 937.461.6560

via Design District Merges with 3 Local Creative Studios to form FORGE | Design District.

As far as I can tell, they are still at 411 East Fifth Street, Dayton Ohio 45402

Way to forge a new firm in Dayton. We’ll update our list of Agencies that aren’t The Next Wave right away.

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Posted in: Ad Agenices In Dayton OH

Comparison advertising. It’s been around for a long time. In days of old, it was the way to go. Choosy Mom’s choose Jif, the Pepsi Challenge, We’re number 2, so we try harder, the demos showing how Bounty was the “quicker picker upper.”

During the boom years, comparison advertising became passe among market leaders- why give credit to your competition.

Typically, it was a way to leverage a smaller brand against the leader.

Audi challenges BMW and loses

It’s a dangerous proposition. Look at the smackdown Audi gets from BMW in their billboards in Santa Monica on the right. Those who don’t study their craft are doomed to get hit twice. Honda fired Chiat/Day from their motorcycle account. Their new agency came up with “Follow the leader” to which Chiat/Day came back- now working for Yamaha with “Don’t follow anyone.”

When the economy goes bad- all bets are off. It’s time to go into the cage for a brand on brand death match.

While scrapping for every dollar might not be an option as consumers cut back, the damage it can do to a brand is real. Do you really want to be the cheapest, lowest price product when the money starts flowing again.

Chuck Porter once said at the Cincinnati Ad Club “Anyone can do a better price and product ad, all they have to do is have a lower price” so it sort of shocks me when Crispin Porter + Bogusky starts running ads for Microsoft based on price.

Where “Laptop hunters” Lisa and Jackson go to buy a laptop for under $1,500 and do a comparison between Apple and a PC.

After the drilling Apple has given Microsoft with their “Get a Mac” campaign, which has won an Effie,� and has been credited for doubling market share, Apple had to see it coming.

But, this is the kind of attention Microsoft wanted when they hired the best ad agency in the country to try to breath life back into their bankrupt Windows/Vista brand.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is again proving that edgy, strategic advertising can get people talking about a brand differently, quickly, by pushing buttons.

They did it for anti-smoking with Truth, Mini with “Lets Motor”, the creepy King and subservient chicken for Burger King, un-pimp your auto for VW and now MSFT is getting the treatment.

[The reality is: both Apple and Microsoft will be in trouble if some 17 year old does for Linux what Blake Ross did for the Mozilla code base to create Firefox.]

Realize that Microsoft isn’t even comparing their product to Apple in the ads- they are comparing their partners hardware- people aren’t validating Microsoft in the buying ads- but Sony, HP, Dell etc.

How many companies would spend their marketing dollars on promoting their marketing partners?

When times get tough, consumers do spend more time evaluating major purchases. However, it’s not price that they look at as much as value. Giving consumers reason to talk about your brand value is only a good idea if it is really there. Look at the response to a Business Week story on the subject of the Microsoft challenge- compared to a holy war.

Maybe the best advice still comes from that old Chiat/Day ad: “Don’t follow anyone” and don’t compare. Leadership has its privileges.

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Posted in: Apple Advertising, BMW Advertising, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Practical Marketing 101

There must be a school of stupidity where automotive marketers all study.They apparently have two steadfast rules for TV spots:

1) They must show the car driving in (pick one):

rain soaked streets at night, across the salt flats with a plume of dust behind them and camera angles from a helo or down a twisty road.

or:

2) the car must revolve.

Lately, the “revolution” seems to be winning.

Ever since the Arnold agency introduced the New Beetle with a rotating CGI car-

and “Turbonium”

We’ve been doomed to watch cars, spinning, cameras revolving around them, and ridiculous effects as the car transforms from the rain soaked streets at night to across the salt flats onto a twisty road.

The third option is to pick some neat music and do the glamor shots. However, we’re not making music videos- we’re trying to sell cars.

(and for some odd reason, Ford put an expiration date on the URL for this Flex ad- DUMB)

Watch your commercials carefully. They either fall into the above category- or they may actually be advertising, that tells us something about the car and why we might want to buy it.

This may be part of the reason people don’t feel compelled to buy a car lately.

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Posted in: Advertising humor, VW advertising

I read an incredibly stupid post this morning about how Google would have to shut down YouTube because it wasn’t making money.

It would seem that a lot of companies should have been doomed for not making money, including the American automotive companies, but that’s not how finance works when you are the 800lb gorilla in your field.

A lot has to do with trust and confidence in a corporations ability to convince people that it has intrinsic value. Newspapers have been getting away with this for years, even though their business model died when CraigsList went global.
Didn’t people say Google would never be able to successfully monetize search?

YouTube is now the second leading search site. People now want to watch video to answer questions as well as reading text.
If you’ve seen the new audio transcription tools in Adobe Premier, you know it’s not long until video is easily searchable as well. That will change the value of YouTube considerably as the largest depository of video online.

Getting back to value, most people don’t realize that all those annoying ads they can’t stand have value to them- because they were used to subsidize the content they’ve been enjoying for “free” for all these years.

The mass media have been asleep at the wheel, believing that as long as they have great content, they’ll have big audiences and can continue to count on advertisers accepting that some of their message will be skipped or delivered blindly.

Those days are over.

No advertiser will be willing to accept less than 100% targeted delivery in the near future, and this is where Google will deliver the ultimate power play of modern business history.

Google was never in the business to monetize content: it’s in the business to monetize you- the viewer. By building a trusted relationship, based on providing a superior service (search) they have earned the right to become your middleman in serving you premium content in exchange for showing you personalized relevant ads.

They know you from your search history. They know you from your browsing habits. They know you from your gmail account, your Google voice account, pretty soon, you realize you have a benevolent big brother who knows you better than you do. Google has been called the database of future intentions- and by comparing you to others like you, they can make some pretty good guesses of what you’ll like and won’t like- much like Netflix and Amazon do with their suggestion engines.

You watch ads relevant to you, they serve you the content you want, advertisers reach exactly who they want, Google gets a better understanding of you with each ad and your response (did I mention you’ll have to respond to every ad with a brief thumbs-up, thumbs-down or answer a few questions?)

As the mass media model fails- Google will be in the unique position to be your agent in brokering ads to pay for your content.
That’s their business model, providing value to you and to the advertiser, and YouTube is one of the keys.

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Posted in: 1 to 1 marketing, Future of advertising, Marketing & the Web

Advertising has always about telling your message. Maybe that’s why John Wanamaker famously said “I know half my budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half”- and he was almost half right. Instead of telling your story- listen to what customers say about your brand and make new stories. Take this story about a hotel guest who tweeted about his stay at a hotel- and their follow up and it’s results (read the whole post to get the whole story):

So a tweet, a few emails, and all of a sudden I have a hotel in Boston that feels very much �mine�. Why would I stay somewhere else when I know the people, and feel like they�re genuinely happy when I come back again?

It�s not about the discount - I�d happily pay their going rate to stay there, just for the experience. But it is about the personal connections I�ve made with people, the feeling of being a valued customer, and the sense that I�m dealing with a business that really cares about the people that support it.

via Why It�s Not About the Tools Again | Altitude Branding | Brand Elevation through Social Media.

There is a another old adage: People do business with people they know. Establishing connections, building a network, are part of building those business relationships. Twitter is just one more tool in the social media toolbox. How many tools is your brand using?

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Posted in: 1 to 1 marketing, Public Relations in the Web 2.0 world, social media