Zazou Marketing

If you’re launching an ad campaign, you certainly want a return on your investment. So it’s nice to know that research shows how to make your ad campaign increase sales or profit.

Here are the results of a study done by The Journal of Advertising Research, as published in Ad Age today, which found that the following strategies are most likely to increase sales or profit:

* Focus on hard objectives, such as specific market-share gains, rather than soft ones, such as brand awareness
* Focus on price, not volume
* Focus on penetration (winning new consumers) rather than loyalty
* Influence consumers emotionally rather than rationally
* Create ads with “talk value”
* Have a high share of voice relative to brand market share
* Include TV in the mix
* Include a small number of media channels with a concerted message

Source: Les Binet & Peter Field, June issue, Journal of Advertising Research.

While some of these elements are part of an overall marketing strategy, many of them are very much intertwined with your copy. So remember, for instance, to consider keeping your focus on specific objectives that win new consumers.

Of course, each advertising campaign is different and some “rules” are meant to be broken, but the above list is certainly a good guideline when mapping out your ad campaign — or, for that matter, any marketing materials or marketing campaign.

Advertising campaigns inevitably responds to the times. And, as we are all very aware: The times are now tough. Which is why some brands have eschewed upbeat ads that dominated the boom times, opting instead for sober messages that harken back to the Great Depression.

Here are a few examples, as covered in a New York Times article that ran yesterday:

• A Farmers insurance ad campaign talks about how the company was started “a year before the crash.”

Farmers insurance ad campaign refers to the Great Depression

• Retailer Brooks Brothers is reprinting advertisements from the 1930s.
• Print ads for Soyjoy bars describe how “the Great Depression turned the land of opportunity into a land of despair.”

The effectiveness of these ads will inevitably run the gamut. But I do wonder about the wisdom (not to mention the relevance) of talking about the Great Depression in relation to a food bar. Though, to be fair, I should reserve my verdict until I actually see it.

Just in case anyone at Chase is reading this…. I think that you need to rethink one of your ad campaigns.

Here’s why: One of the first things I tell my clients is to drop the “We’ve been in business for xx years” from the first line of your marketing materials. Why? Two reasons:

• If you are thinking about buying a service or product what do you care about first: Do you care about what the service or product can do for you, or do you care that they have been around for 10 or 20 years? I guarantee you only care about the latter after you know what they can do for you.

• The longevity of your business may or may not be relevant. Need an example? Bear Stearns was founded in 1923; Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850; Washington Mutual was incorporated in 1889**. Need I remind anyone what happened to each of these banks in the last year? Clearly experience doesn’t guarantee success. (And, yes, I’m writing about banks and their marketing campaigns again.)

What does this all have to do with Chase? I was driving down the freeway and saw a billboard that read “Chase. New to California, but not to banking.” (or something close to that — I was driving so not only could I not get a photo, but I also couldn’t write it down.)

If I had seen this advertisement a year ago maybe I would have thought, “Well maybe my rule can be broken in some instances.” But now? I think it just makes my point even clearer. After all, what does the length they have been in business promise or guarantee — especially now that we know huge banks with a long history can go belly up?

So, I’ve said this before and even before that and will say it again: If you are creating marketing materials for your business, I remind you to wait until you’ve made people care before you tell people how long you have been in business.

**These dates are all according to Wikipedia, which is not always accurate. But for the purposes of this blog, the point is that these companies were all around for a loooooong time.

It’s one thing to waste free space. It’s another to pay top dollar and waste it.

In an earlier post, I talked about a banner at Lincoln Center that simply tells you to “Celebrate Lincoln Center’s 50th Anniversary.” I brought this up as a reminder that advertising copy and marketing materials need to include the information that people want, as well as what will make them care–both of which this banner sorely lacks.

So that covers the wasted free space. What about paying to waste it? Well in the May 2009 O Magazine, there is a similarly uninteresting and uninformative Lincoln Center advertisement. It splashes the same “50″ across the page and has the following copy: “Saluting Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on its 50th anniversary.” Then there is the “Lincoln Center 50 Years, just the beginning” logo and the website, LincolnCenter.org.

Lincoln Center 50 years ad campaign

Is it just me, or is this another missed opportunity to make me care?! Seriously, use your advertising copy to tell me something, anything that will entice me! What have you done that’s so special? What are you planning that is so special? What exactly are you doing to celebrate? If I am interested, what can I do to celebrate? And why should I take any time out of my day to go to your website when you haven’t told me a thing about why I should go there?