Miindless Marketing - What a Sin
As I drove down the 401 highway in Toronto, Canada my wandering mind got a jolt. There in front of my eyes was possibly the worst billboard ad I had ever seen. Before we discuss the billboard let me explain why it had such an impact on me. I'm currently writing a special free report. It's about mindless advertising in many mediums. Not just websites, phonebook ads and commmericals-these mindless bits of advertising are everywhere. I wish I had the thousands of dollars to throw away-on advertising that could have been done by a grade fiver.
Back to the billboard. Imagine cruising down the highway, on a beautiful sunny day. You look at the cars around you, perhaps even the shimmering lake to your right. Then you spot it. A huge billboard with this written on it:
Maxwell Real Estate
"We are growing"
That's it. Talk about where's the beef? Frankly who gives a you know what-if it Maxwell Real Estate is growing. Now we all realize that you cannot put a great deal of content on a billboard. However with all that space, why not put one fantastic headline across the top-with a great picture of the president of Maxwell Real Estate just under it.
This is just one small example of how companies are not thinking when they pay to have advertising created. Another fine example of mindless advertising...is the new car commercial running in Canada. I hope we are the only country that is being subjected to this torture:
Here we are in the showroom. We get to watch a salesperson dance around a car while depicting a scene from a movie called Flashdance. Remember that one? The star-Jennifer Beals, played a welder who was a part-time exotic dancer. Now the car company which I do not want to name, agreed that this idea would sell lots of cars. Really!
Now if you have not seen the commercial let me explain one thing. The salesperson is a man. After doing his "dirty" dance bit, this guy does a dive over the car and ends up laying prone in a chair. To top it off and hold true to the movie-someone then splashes a pail of water over him-in a lame attempt at humour. Look at this, it screams, we weren't brave enough to use a sexy woman, so we will try to make you laugh by wetting down our dancing salesman.
There isn't one reason given-as to why you should buy this car or say a Honda or Toyota. Mindless advertising at its best.
Now I emailed the marketing manager of this car company and gave him a couple of reasons why this commercial was horrid. I figured if he didn't want to believe me, then hopefully he would be smart enough to click the link I gave him-to Clayton Makepeace's website. Hopefully he would believe a $3 million dollar a year copywriter.
Now if you want to test out what I have written-pour yourself a coffee and pull out an advertising phonebook. I don't say the word, "Yellow" here-because a certain corporation in Canada likes to sic lawyers onto copywriters. Thumb through the book and write down how many ads you see that are "different". Ads that standout, speak to you and ask you to take an immediate response. If you find more than one in any given phonebook-than you are not really listening to what I have just said. You see, I have gone through more than 100 phonebooks. In around 95 phonebooks, I found zero ads that were direct response and gave me a compelling reason to contact that company. In the other five, I found one ad-that stood out in the entire phonebook and gave me many reasons as to why I would want to contact that business. In North America, we have hundreds of ads...that are Mindless Advertising.
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