THINKing

ManLaw – Ads Must Work

Miller Brewing is jerking its ManLaw Miller Lite ads because sales dropped while they were running. Some thought the spots were funny. None of the ads really connected you with the brand. This is so often the case.
During an unscientific survey of six male friends with whom I watched the playoffs, I asked what commercials they liked. They described their favorites with an intricacy I thought impossible…except for the final detail. Not a one of them could tell me who the ads were for. Hmmm. Apparently there are a lot of agencies out there wasting their clients’ money on spots that are funny but don’t work.

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Oops, He Did It Again

Brittany cast-off Kevin Federline is the butt of a Super Bowl ad that has ired The National Restaurant Association. An ad for Nationwide Insurance – tagline “Life Comes At You Fast” – reportedly shows Federline falling from hero to zero, working in a restaurant after being dumped by his sugar mama. Some 12.8 million people work in restaurants and the association is miffed that a big corporation would denigrate its many workers.

Oh, pleeeeeeeeeze. Is anyone else out there as tired as I am of people not having a sense of humor? Last time I checked there was nothing in the Bill of Rights that said you have the right not to be offended. Get over it, fast food boys!

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Bad News, Katie

When you start seeing headlines like this one – “No Changes Planned at CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” – you know things are about to change. CBS’ Sean McManus says he is “happy with where the show is and doesn’t plan any changes.” Yeah, right Sean.

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Social Media Comes On Strong

Newswires like PRWeb and PRNewswire are doing a better job of staying on top of online trends than are the traditional media. PRNewswire has lagged some. But it now has announced a deal with Technorati to provide real-time social media link tracking for all of their press releases. Recently, BusinessWire inked a deal to get a co-branded version of the PRWeb direct-to-consumer and SEO service. Business Wire members may disseminate press releases so they will be indexed by major search engines, distributed to thousands of news sites, including Google News and Yahoo News, and delivered through more than 20,000 RSS feeds that collectively reach tens of millions of consumers and thousands of journalists daily.

If you are still thinking about news releases as just a vehicle to send to journalists, you are so 20th century. Wake up and discover the potential of by-passing the media filter.

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Briefly Speaking

Creative people work best when they are given limitations. I know that sounds counterintuitive but is it true. These limitations help your creative team members focus so that the message they develop will be relevant, impactful, original and true. So, how do you provide these limitations to your creative team: with a creative brief. Let’s take a look at how you go about developing one.

There are five basic areas of information you need to supply your creative team in order to get the best possible work. First, is an overview that spells out what’s happening in the market and with the client. Additionally, you need to outline who the communication is addressing and what is the one thing we want to say to that target audience. Think of this area in terms of headlines. We’ll get more specific later in the brief.

Next, what is the purpose of this communication. What do we want our target audience to think, feel, or do after seeing the message? Do we want them to visit a website, call an 800 number, tell a friend? In the next section of the brief, we more clearly define who we are addressing. Delve as deeply as possible into the demographics and psychographics of an audience. What drives them? Will this be a rational decision or an emotional one for this particular audience? What are their media habits? Where do they live and work? What do they read, watch, listen to, and which websites do they frequent? Detail is king in this section of the brief.

Next, we outline the single most persuasive idea we can convey. This should be a simple, highly specific sentence or two. This is hard work and is where most creative briefs fail. You shouldn’t expect great creative if you can’t give your team this highly condensed information.

Now we need to provide the rest of the story. Is there evidence to support our single most important idea? This is where we layer on both rational and emotional reasons to believe what we have said. Are there other major copy points to help persuade our audience? What is the client’s brand personality? This helps your team understand the tone the message should take.

Then, relate all the details of our offer, if there is one, as well as mandatory client information like logos, address, phone number, and web address.

A final word on developing great creative briefs: bring your brief to life with customer quotes, stories from the marketplace and research. Once you’ve outlined the limits, your team can come back with communications that are on target, creative and effective.

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Take Your Marketing Vitamins

The best marketing programs are focused, disciplined and consistent. Developing and implementing a program like this is tough. So, sometimes you just need to do something to get yourself off dead-center. That is where my One-A-Day Marketing Vitamins come in.

These are ideas that easily can be added to your daily routine and they don’t take that much time out of your day. Add one-a-day and soon you have a marketing program. Here’s my marketing white paper on the topic.

Let me know what you think of it and feel free to pass it around.

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