Ad Speak Admonition #1: Words are nothing when not followed by action
March 3, 2008
It doesn’t matter if it’s media attention for which you are paying (a.k.a. advertising) or media attention for which your company has not paid for but rather “earned” (a.k.a. Public Relations or PR)…. WORDS ARE NOTHING WITHOUT ACTION.
Take for example, the recent 4-hour shut down instituted by Starbucks in the name of “nationwide company training.” Starbucks garnered some nice press coverage as a result of the move and customers might have been lulled into thinking that Starbucks recognized a problem and was intent on fixing said problem.
Customers Are Always blog in their post The Starbucks Event of the Year writes:
You have to show your customers that you are going to back up what you say. If you’re promising them quality service, then you have to show them you mean business. If anything else, it’s more than what other corporations out there are doing! I’m going to stay hopeful…
Hope is an opiate of the consumer… not the savvy stock investor. 24/7 Wall Street.com calls Starbucks on the obvious “words not backed by action” quality of the “stunt”.
The nationwide program was designed to make the people working in the stores do a better job of serving customers that way that founder Howard Schultz thinks they should be served.
Investors would think that the action of closing so many stores and putting so much effort into improving service would show results immediately. These results might not last, but they would be a sign that management and employees both want to help the company’s results through better customer service.
Ok Starbucks… you’ve made a national announcement and subjected your loyal throngs to a day without Starbucks. You’ve acknowledged that “Starbucks” no longer means a pristine coffee experience and you’re stepping up to the challenge. BRAVO! Here’s to the hope that springs eternal in those addicted to your liquid offerings.
I peronally hate Starbucks coffee and think the coffee tastes like it came from my dog’s favorite body part to lick! The only reason I can fathom to visit the prolific chain is the obvious ambiance of the stores. A visit to Starbucks used to be a guaranteed pleasant experience. The “Starbucks experience” was so good that people would suck down the vile liquid served within to enjoy the experience. They did this to the point where they damaged their taste buds to the point where they think that is what coffee SHOULD taste like!
Obviously, the ambiance of Starbucks is fading quickly…. the 24/7 blog continues….
A visit to a Starbucks in Mt. Kisco, New York indicates that no one was paying attention during the training day. The store was dirty. A cigarette butt at one door. A snow shovel against the new coffee makers on sale. Floors that had not been swept recently. The service area for getting milk and napkins in disarray.
Words mean something only when they’re followed by action.
Small Biz Mentor calls it s”avvy, creative marketing at its best” and I agree… but only if the WORDS are backed up by ACTION. It can only be classified as brilliant marketing if you aren’t greeted with the Starbucks experience of Mt. Kisco, New York when you enter your local favorite Stargbucks.
Web 2.0 makes it SO HARD to manufacture “spin”. In the world Web 2.0… not backing your words with actions can provide witty, articulate people with much needed blog fodder, as is evidenced by the blog post by Gawker, Mandatory Job Training Was ‘AWESOME,’ Say Starbucks Robots.
If your business is not willing to back marketing style words with action… well, then I recommend that if you aren’t wearing your flame retardant undies… then suit up ladies and gentlemen. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are often tipped with flames!
Ad Waste and Marketing Speak
May 7, 2007
I recently wrote about the experience of re-entering the “Ad Speak” waters after a full 10 days of going cold turkey.
10 days of abstinence from Ad Speak has helped me to “reconnect” with the average small business owner. You know, the one who speaks DIRECTLY with his/her ad rep. The business owner who has the ability to make a decision regarding advertising without getting a PO or approval from the home office. The business owner who knows that once he/she okays the purchase of advertising space, that he/she will be writing a check whether that advertising is deemed “successful” or not.
The second article I consumed after my Ad Speak fast was 5 Tactics for Finding Your Niche. To Jim Meskauskas credit, he does a GREAT job of trying to pull more than a few heads out of the sand with regards to targeting a niche market.
Again, I am reminded of the contortions one must go through on the journey to convey and convince a faceless mob of the value of common sense. Jim writes:
When using available syndicated third-party research to find the sites that might be most appropriate for your client’s advertising, take a look at composition index rather than the reach the site might have against your target.
The index represents the likelihood of the site consisting of your target audience versus that target audience’s presence on the web as a whole. If a site has only a few percentage points of reach but a unique visitor index of 200, that site is twice as likely to consist of your target audience as the overall web.
In layman’s terms, what Jim is trying to illustrate is this:
The Yahoo portal reaches, in terms of numbers MANY MORE visitors than a magazine web site like, say South Florida Parenting Magazine. As a matter of fact, the Yahoo portal reaches a LOT MORE women aged 25-54 with children than the South Florida Parenting Magazine web site reaches. However, when you advertise on the Yahoo portal, you’re PAYING to reach EVERYONE, which is overkill if you only want to reach mothers with children who live in Southern Florida.
See, you’ll pay DEARLY for a position on the Yahoo portal. So while you may reach 10 times the number of mothers with children living in southern Florida than you might reach with the South Florida Parenting Magazine web site, you’ll be paying for a LOT of impressions …. wasted impressions.
Advertising on the South Florida Parenting web site is an example of tightly targeting a niche market. By tightly targeting a niche market, you can eliminate a lost of WASTE from your advertising dollars.
Transmedia Engagement
May 5, 2007
I spent last week traveling, so as a result didn’t have the time to devote to staying current with my favorite “Ad Speak” blogs. So when I saw that IMedia Connection had a post on “The Matrix” Guide to Brand-Building: Neomarketing & Transmedia Engagement” I felt compelled to click. After all, we had passed the time on the trip watching The Matrix trilogy and so the reference to the movie franchise was actually quite timely from my point of view.
Adam Cahill writes:
A switch to transmedia branding would mean that not only would we use multiple media to tell a brand story, but each of the channels would communicate a unique, complementary piece of that story.
If The Matrix took the lead in the world of entertainment, then Geico’s disgruntled Caveman has emerged as a transmedia brand leader. After gaining some traction with the TV spots, Geico launched CavemansCrib, where visitors can explore the Caveman’s bachelor pad.
Whereas a traditional cross-channel approach might have led Geico to edit down the popular TV spots to a more consumable length and run pre-roll video placements (i.e., new channel, same content), CavemansCrib introduces a new channel, as well as a fundamentally different experience, that amplifies and extends consumer engagement with the television spots.
Now I remember why I ran screaming from a career in a traditional advertising agency. I had forgotten all the “contortions” one had to go through to convince layers upon layers of “management” in the client’s company that, in the end, if people connect with the Caveman…. then creating other ways for them to interact with the Caveman is good for the brand.
Obviously, common sense has not seen a renaissance since my depature from the offline “ad game”.
Do we really need to call it “transmedia engagement” to simply state that since audiences are connecting with the much maligned “Cave Man” created by the Geico commercials, then it makes sense to give audiences other ways to experience the “Cave Man” than just via 30 second commericals?
I guess a week of “abstinence” from ad speak has only made me recognize why my clients hire me. What happened to the role common sense plays in marketing and advertising?
Or is the Geico Cave Man another example of the Nissan GI Joe and Barbie advertising debaucle from the 1990’s? Is the caveman generating a lot of hype without a corresponding increase in sales?
I guess THAT is where injecting common sense can get ugly. What is your advertising goal? Is the goal to create a character with whom people can “relate”? Or is the goal to create increased sales, in this case of Geico insurance?
I don’t have access to Geico’s sales figures…. but it’s been my experience that it’s a rare breed that axes a popular campaign merely because it’s doing nothing to boost the bottom line.
