3 Commercials I Don’t Get

Jan 062012
 

I try not to watch too much TV. However, football requires much of it. Along with football, naturally, comes commercials. Over the past year I have been increasingly more critical of commercials and their messages. Sometimes I see a commercial and just totally get confused by it. Here are three that I just don’t get.

Snowboarding Nissan Frontier

I get escapism and suspending reality in commercials. I get it. With that being said, I still don’t get this commercial:


Nissan Frontier Snowboarding

The commercial is not showing me anything even remotely possible whereas many other truck commercials seem to give me an idea of practical real-life applied solutions. Again, I understand escapism and I think it works for some ads. Axe is a good example. Use Axe, and scantly clad (if that) women magically show up. I get that.

However, I can suspend belief for a $3.00 stick of deodorant. Am I willing to suspend belief for a $20,000 truck?

Chase United Mileage Plus Explorer Card

Actually, I think I do get this commercial but I’m not certain it is the message they want me to be getting.

I am unable to find it online, but it airs constantly. It has two business travelers one of which has the Chase Visa Mileage Plus Explorer Card and he scores a free checked bag, while the buddy pays. The one without says he knows some hidden place they can hang out where there is a three-pronged plug they can share. But, lo and behold, the guy with the Chase card has club passes! Then the Chase guy gets to board earlier than the dude without.

Essentially the commercial is telling me that the airline nickels and dime you, is a pain in the butt, and they suck balls. Although, if you pay them a little bit more for membership into their Chase Explorer Card the experience will suck a little bit less.

It takes some hubris for their marketing message to be, “Hey we suck, but pay us more money for it to suck less.”

Corona Snow Sand Commercial

In general I like Corona’s ad campaign. Traveling on an airplane can suck (see above) and the desire to have a cold beer to escape to an imaginary beach is compelling. Meeting your buddies after work to have a beer? I get it. Oh boy do I get it as PJ Harrigan in State College, Pennsylvania can attest to. Damn you and your well-priced happy hour specials.

Anyhow, I don’t get this:

So when on your nice ski vacation you really wish you were on the beach? That’s gotta be a nice problem to have. Who, exactly, is the target audience for this gem? People with way too much money and time?

“Man, this Aspen ski lodge is way too much work, I totally wish I could relax in Cancun.”

#YuppieProblems

Bonus: Viagra

One dude in the mountains popping Viagra with two horses. Not judging, just throwing it out there.  . . one man . . . two horses . . . mountains  . . . Viagra.

 January 6, 2012  , , ,

J.K. Rowling and the Boy Wizard of Marketing

Jul 012011
 

J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame launched a new website: Pottermore.

Here is a video from the Pottermore site with J.K. Rowling giving her own description of the site:

Wired Magazine has a good article on this story: J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore Details Revealed: Harry Potter E-Books and More.

Besides being a prolific and successful author, Rowling seems to be a savvy marketer as well. We all know the plight that brick and mortar bookstores are currently suffering from. The Amazon Kindle is killing print sales and the iPad will likely rub salt into the wounds. By embracing not just ebooks, but creating an environment where readers, and the author, can interact and shape stories, Rowling is moving past books as a physical artificats. The reading experience will be an experience that includes interaction with others. In a sense this has been in the making with the well-publicized crazy book launches for the last few titles, and this just merely takes it to the next step. This is the evolution of the book publishing industry, not the death of it.

The Point: To achieve sustainable success, authors are going to have to engage with the readers beyond what lies between physical book covers. Will this type of engagement forever change we experience reading, or is it a gimmick?
 July 1, 2011  ,

Phenomenal McDonald’s Ad Film

Jun 202011
 

If you are remotely interested in marketing or advertisement, then you must watch this advertising film.

In this advertisement – clocking in at nearly 9 minutes I see this as a sort of short film – McDonald’s acknowledges many perceived negatives regarding the brand. Instead of arguing point by point, it feels as if McDonald’s embraces those negatives and shows, by way of the film (character development in a commercial??!!) that in today’s Great Recession those negatives really are not all that negative.

Basically, it is better to have a job flipping burgers than no job at all.

One could argue that McDonald’s may not have stellar pay or benefits (being that this is taking place in the U.K. let us ignore their NHS structure), but I think the implied message from this film could be, “Sure, the benefits and wages aren’t great. But, they are better than nothing at all which is what you have if you stay at home unemployed.” Additionally, the messages of community service and how to interact with customers are hardly things which one can reasonably and effectively argue against.

Jim Edwards at BNET has a fantastic commentary regarding this film. It was where I first learned of this, and for the most part I agree with his analysis.

The Point: Bravely facing criticism and using it to one’s advantage can be a clever and strong way of marketing your firm. If you were college educated, from a single parent working-class household, with no other job prospects, does this film change your perception of  McDonald’s?
 June 20, 2011  ,

Managing the Writing Skills of Customers

May 292011
 

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) had a piece on well-written customer reviews on websites such as Yelp:  The Value of Teaching Your Customers How to Spell – Justin Fox – Harvard Business Review.

I am not an expert on grammar, and I am a terrible speller (thank you spell-check). However, like many others in the world, I have a pet peeve for the atrocious spelling and grammar that is so readily found on the web. For example, I am a big fan of Amazon, and part of my fandom is the ability to read customer reviews. Very often those reviews have been the deal-maker when buying, or not buying, a product. In many of the customer reviews, I have considered the quality of the writing more so than the actual content. I figured that if the reviewer cannot construct a somewhat coherent review of the product, then their opinion is worthless. This may not be fair. It may be closed-minded of me. I doubt I am the only one that thinks this, though.

Occasionally I come across a website in which the text box offers a spell check. This does not seem to be typical. Perhaps a spell check feature for text boxes could help customers correct spelling errors. However, I know my browsers of choice, Opera and Chrome, have spell checkers and I assume other browsers (Firefox and Internet Explorer) do as well. Therefore, it may be reasonable to assume that people have access to spell checkers and either choose to ignore corrections or that spelling itself may not be a problem. Perhaps companies can go one step further. But, how would customers react to a Microsoft Office Word style grammar check that lights up a poorly written review like a Christmas tree?

Have any of you been influenced one way or another based on the writing skills of a customer’s review?

The Point: The voice of a customer influences acquiring or retaining other customers. Companies have an incentive to make certain that the customer’s voice is coherent and reasonably well constructed. How can companies incentivize customers to improve their writing skills?

 

 May 29, 2011  ,
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