What do you say to people who say they aren't influenced by advertising?

Via the user ShamelessMendacity on Reddit in response to the question "Ad people, what do you say to people who say they are not influenced by advertising or branding?"

Great advertising changes your behaviour. It doesn't change what you want - doesn't even attempt to. It changeshow you want.

An example: If you ask people what they want to have five years from now, most of them will give you a list that's essentially an upgrade of things they currently own, or that their friends and colleagues have. A better car. A bigger house. A nice kitchen. Better furniture.

That's all fine - but then you should ask them what they're picturing when they say "a better car."

Chances are they're not thinking of a slight upgrade on their Ford Mondeo - they're thinking of an Audi. Or a Lexus. And when they say "a nice kitchen" it'll have a specific set of features that approximate to something made by Viking.

It's legitimate to want "better" things, but one of the most powerful effects of branding is that people have learned to benchmark quality based on brands with which they're already somewhat familiar. And even if the choice is negative, buying an Acura specifically because it isn't a Lexus is still a choice made with Lexus in mind.

By advertising themselves and branding themselves in a certain way, brands can completely change your relationship with their entire category.

Oh, and if someone says they're not influenced by advertising, they're actually admitting that advertising has the power to influence. Just that it doesn't influence them. And people don't make their choices in a vacuum. Even if you never watched TV or listened to the radio, never read a magazine, or surfed the internet, and only read books written before 1914, and were completely immune from the influence of advertising, you're still going to be influenced by what everyone around you is doing. You may not care about pop culture, but it cares about you.

You can read the rest of the thread on Reddit here. 

Smirnoff NZ: #PurePotential On Instagram

I’m a big fan of Instagram these days (I post there more often than Facebook, and even used it to find a photographer for some family portraits) but haven’t been impressed with with way brands are using it (Nike and a few other sports brands aside).

However, Smirnoff New Zealand made excellent use of the photo-sharing service throughout December with their #PurePotential campaign.

The gist of the idea was that Smirnoff NZ asked users to take a picture of the ingredients in their fridge, tagging the photo @SmirnoffNZ and #PurePotential and that the brand would give them a recipe for a vodka-based drink they could make with the ingredients. These recipes came in the form of high-quality videos, perfectly sized and paced for Instagram.

As far as I can tell, they responded to almost every single one of the fridge images that Kiwis uploaded (including this one of my very bare fridge).

It worked well by taking advantage of that fact that user’s are used to giving their followers an intimate look at their lives using photos on Instagram.

It wasn’t just a social campaign, either. They had out of home ads (billboards, bus shelters, wild postings) throughout Auckland (and, I presume, New Zealand) related to the campaign, driving to Instagram and pushing the "Pure Potential" message.

PS: I’ve been impressed with a lot of the advertising work I’ve seen from New Zealand since I moved to Auckland a few months ago, and I’ll try and share more of it when I can.

Toyota & Saatchi's Cautionary Tale

Sticking with the theme of automotive brands and engagement, you've no doubt seen that Toyota’s 2008 guerrilla marketing campaign, promoting its 2009 Matrix, is once again making headlines, and it aint’ pretty. As a refresher, in 2008, Amber Duick began receiving a series of emails from one by the name of ‘Sebastian Bowler’, a fictitious English soccer hooligan with a fondness for excessive drinking, destruction of private property and  general rowdiness (because these are all traits that every English soccer fan exhibits, of course). The first email Duick received from Bowler was to let her know he was on his way to her apartment – even so much as citing her address – to crash for a while. Additional emails chronicled his trip to her abode, often mentioning his frequent run-ins with the local law enforcement, while another email, this time from a hotel manager, demanded Duick pay for damages associated with a television, supposedly broken by Bowler, accompanied by an authentic-looking e-bill. Not surprisingly, Duick was a tad upset, or in her own words ‘terrified.’

Only after receiving a final email containing a link to a video did Duick realize what was actually happening: she was the target of a virtual prank designed to raise awareness of the new 2009 Toyota Matrix. What a rugged English soccer fan with a penchant for inebriation has to do with the Matrix is beyond me, and quite obviously, beyond Duick as well - a woman who was chosen because she represented Toyota’s target market.  The campaign certainly had a hint major dose of realism to it, something Alex Flint, creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi – the L.A.-based agency responsible for the campaign – boasted about. Now, three years later, news broke that a California court has agreed that Duick can move forward with a $10 million lawsuit against both Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi. Ouch.

I don’t think anyone can argue that this was a poorly executed idea, one that clearly – at least to everyone outside of Saatchi & Saatchi – wasn’t given nearly enough thought.  But as someone who works in the PR industry, this whole campaign fascinates me for a different reason, outside of its headline-grabbing concept.

Here Toyota was, in 2008, when Twitter only had 500,000 monthly visitors, when Facebook broke its first user milestone of catching up to MySpace, and when the concept of social media, and storytelling marketing was still in its infancy. Despite this, Toyota took a chance on a program, albeit one disconnected from its audience, and ran with a concept that was, to an extent, ahead of its time.

Today, one of the most difficult challenges PR, marketing and advertising professionals face isn’t always coming up with fresh ideas; it’s selling them to clients. Businesses have a comfort zone and it’s when they step out of it that great, award-winning campaigns are born.  To that extent, I applaud Toyota, which for the record, is still with Saatchi, for at least trying something new and taking a head-first dive into the unknown.

As for Flint, he told marketing magazine OMMA (Online, Media, Marketing & Advertising) that the prank campaign should gain the appreciation from ‘even the most cynical, anti-advertising guy.’ Three years, a flurry of negative articles, public backlash, and possibly $10 million later, I wonder if he still feels the same way.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

What do you think of advertising on Reddit?

I've been increasingly interested in exploring advertising options on social media sites over the past year or so. Facebook ads whetted my appetite, I'm fascinated by the possibilities of StumbleUpon's Paid Discovery service and now I want to learn more about advertising on Reddit. If you're a Reddit user, how do you feel about Sponsored Links at the top of your favourite website?

If you're an advertiser, have you advertised on Reddit before? How did it work out for you?

Thanks to everyone who responds!

-Parker

Advertising

A powerful video from the Advertising & Design Club of Canada

(via Ed Lee and Emma Brooks)

Fashion Friday: Shoes Without Socks

I don't know if this is a new trend or simply something unique to Toronto but for most of the summer I noticed that a lot of dudes weren't wearing socks. Its not like these people are at the beach - they were at the office and wearing shoes.

While the professionalism of this trend is debatable, I'm more worried about the personal hygiene aspect. Leaving the house in the morning without socks means that you're probably headed towards 9-10 hours of sweaty feet during the hottest months of the year. Doing this day in, day out in the same pair of shoes just seems like an awful idea.

However, Michael at Avoid Robots makes some good points about the issue. He even suggests that men invest in some shoe-liners (mini-socks) so they can rock the sockless look without the sweat worry.

Is this a trend I just don't get? Or is it actually a fashion mistake?

-Parker

A Paradox of Individualism: Me vs. the Environment

I don't usually pay much attention to advertisements—billboards, television spots, print ads—but when I'm driving, I often listen to the radio (when I don't throw on an old Nirvana cassette), and besides tuning in to college and public stations, there's no good way to avoid listening to adverts. And like on television, they often repeat during every commercial break. Nonetheless, it took me several listens and a contextual conversation to make the connection I'm about to describe. A recent Bochner Eye Institute radio spot says something like, "We know you could pay less for eye surgery, but why would you? You've only got one pair of eyes." (If anyone can point me to a recording of the advert, let me know.)

What they're saying is clear: by using an eye surgeon or service that charges less, you're putting your eyes at greater risk of complications or worse. They are trusting that consumers will pay a premium for a service that offers better quality and lower risk. It's a long-term scheme: pay more now and worry less later.

The same argument applies to many consumer products and services: you can pay more for a better car and (hopefully) it will have lower maintenance and fuel costs down the road; you can pay more up front for a better new home and it is less likely to sink into the ground; you can pay more for quality clothes and they will last longer and maybe even remain in fashion.

It's a risky game, presenting these arguments to consumers in the age of convenience and cost-consciousness, but it must appeal to enough of us that some companies continue to employ it. I think it's especially effective for cars and homes, and occasionally effective for luxury or semi-premium items, like watches and dishes. But it's mostly ineffective for more everyday items, like clothes and furniture, and it's very ineffective in the face of competing campaigns from fast and convenience food companies.

But back to the eyes: they are an integral part of the body, providing probably the most important sense in our visually over-stimulated culture. In this sense, they are us, and without them, we are nothing. I suppose I've answered my own question here, but still: if this type of advertising does work (if only in relation to certain products or services with recognizably high value, why doesn't it work with respect to environmental concerns?

I think (I guess it's just hope, really) it's clear to pretty much everyone that our environment is more truly beneficial than our eyes or any other body part a person could lose without dying. That is, without our environment, we are truly nothing.

Is it that environmentally focussed organizations and companies haven't tried this line of argument? I don't think this is true. Do they just not have enough money to get their message out to enough people? Possibly. Is it that we simply value the environment so little, or that we are incapable of seeing the value? Maybe they're up against a short-term culture with a mindset that is just too fixed to change. Have we made ourselves disposable, and therefore not worth spending premium money on, like we would for a fancy car?

Tell me dear readers: why do people choose the cheap and low-quality product over the one that might last a life time or longer?

-Adam

Study Shows HubSpot Is Ineffective At Evaluating Public Relations and Social Media

I'll admit, it wasn't a very scientific study (consisting of a survey group of only myself) but it makes for the same kind of sensationalistic headline that HubSpot  went with in a post that says "Study Shows Social Media Releases Are Less Effective Than Traditional Press Releases." In that blog post, author Rebecca Corliss tests the effectiveness of Social Media Releases compared to regular News Releases when both are distributed via major newswires.  I've got no problem with her methodology, in that the evaluated the effectiveness of the respective releases by the number of places they were syndicated.

However, I don't know what this proves.

I know that ranking highly on Search Engine Results Pages is important for organizations, and I know that getting a great deal of inbound links from different sources is a good way to achieve this.

But I also think that as soon as this becomes one of the primary goals of PR and news releases, the game is over. We'll be writing for search engine spiders, not people, and we'll be evaluating campaign successes by incoming links, not relationships and engagement.

The whole point of a news release isn't to blast it out to as many places as possible so that people see it.

That's called Advertising, not Public Relations.

The point of a news release has always been to provide a journalist with information that they can use to write a story.

The same is true with Social Media Releases. However, rather than just providing journalists with plain text to tell their story, the Social Media Release makes it easy for them to use all kinds of multimedia elements in their story.

I don't think that news releases aggregators such as the places Rebecca is getter her releases syndicated to are going to get a lot of eyeballs, nor are they eyeballs that do go there going to be particularly enthralled by the release there. Similiarly, I can't imagine that links from these aggregators are particularly valuable.

Admittedly, I don't know which syndication sites she's referring to so I don't know how many views those releases are getting, nor how valuable the link juice that they might pass on is.

However, I still feel that it is more important to focus on getting good, editorial coverage than it is to have your release regurgitated and repeated verbatim a thousand times across the web.

As I've often said, put the "social" into social media. Use the Social Media Release as a way to reach out to bloggers and online journalists in a personal way. Just blasting it out there and hoping it gets picked up is wasting everyone's time.

What do you think about Social Media Releases versus traditional news releases?

-Parker Mason

*Note: As per usual, posts on BlogCampaigning are based on my own personal thoughts and opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, CNW Group or any of the other authors at BlogCampaigning.

Krazy Kiwis and Their Kash Konverting!

Well, maybe that isn't the most accurate title for a blog post but it got your attention. Anyways, according to Emily (my favorite cell phone geek) at Textually,  one New Zealand bank has developed a system that:

 "...lets customers use mobile phones to pay for services while on the move. Friends set up digital/virtual wallets, linked to their everyday bank accounts. They can then text cash to one another or to pago-linked businesses.

To launch the service, they offered the following campaign:

First, the bank placed peelable stickers showing highly pixilated images of Sir Ed over his regular portrait on 5,000 $5 bank notes. They seeded these stickered notes into circulation. When any curious member of the public peeled off a sticker, they found a message on its back promoting pago and directing them to the Web site, www.pago.co.nz."

First of all, I think that this method of paying things will be increasingly popular as mobile phones become so ubiquitous in our daily life. Congratulations to the Kiwis for being so confident about it.

Secondly, it seems like a pretty cool advertising campaign. Is this even legal in Canada? 

-Parker