Made You Look Marketing

It's cheap. It's easy. It's virtually worthless. And it's happening far too often these days thanks in a large part to the proliferation of media and all the 24/7 platforms that unquenchable thirst for constant content.

I call it "Made You Look Marketing." Or in other terms, executions in search of a strategy.

The latest trend is auto manufacturers to get attention is to have someone make their cars out of Legos and seemingly everyone is doing it from Chevrolet to Bugatti to McLaren. For Chevy maybe it makes some sense because it's a tie-in to the Lego movie (we'll discuss the merits of that at a later date), but why are manufacturers of multimillion dollar cars that are already sold out doing it? And, how can a tactic that's right for a mainstream brand be appropriate for a niche manufacturer targeting the 1% of the 1% of the 1%?

It's not just Lego cars either. So much is happening in marketing right now that is both derivative and ephemeral, with no grounding in marketing strategy and no lasting impact on brand image.

This short-term thinking is leading marketers to follow the latest shiny new thing regardless of its effectiveness. In some cases, it's undermining the integrity of our entire business.

Marketing and branding is strategic and requires long-term vision from which short term tactics can be executed. The pressure to get clicks, views, likes, and follows as a proxy for awareness, preference, and sales has been going on for far too long. It's time for marketing leaders to thing about the future of their brands, not the next big thing in marketing.

The penalty of idiocy

The Cadillac ELR is a fine car. Not great, but not bad at all. It's comfortable, well-appointed and drives nicely. If you're looking for a luxury electric, you should test drive it. But that's not the point of this post.

This post is about the god-awful spot that launched this pretty good car.

By now you've probably seen it. The all-too-proud American mocking others for their work ethic (or lack thereof). But in case you haven't, here it is.

First of all, Cadillac is not expecting to sell too many ELRs, especially given that this electric sled will set you back $75K. So being polarizing isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just as important for a brand to know what it doesn't stand for as what it does.

The ELR is a statement car, one that's supposed to halo the brand. Unfortunately with this spot they've made the statement that the Cadillac brand is all about "me." Egoistic, self centered, arrogant and unapologetic.

GM's PR team have argued that the spot is about success, but that's not the message one takes away from the wink and sneering use of French at the end.

I think somewhere in their misguided heads, the creative team at Cadillac's new agency, Rogue, thought they were updating this classic and brand-defining print ad from 1915 for a new generation.

If  that's the case they whiffed badly.

It's one thing to voice your objection to the critics. It's another altogether to poke fun at other people and cultures.

In doing so Cadillac has alienated the very people they are hoping will buy new ATSs, CTSs, SRXs and ELRs; BMW, Audi, Mercedes and Jaguar owners.

It's time for Cadillac to admit their mistake and pull this spot.

"N'est-ce pas."

CEO No!

I wasn't going to comment on the new Yahoo! logo until I read this headline in Ad Age.

Wow, she worked a whole weekend on it!

No wonder it looks like it came right out of the 1980s.

Ms. Mayer, you are the CEO of a company that some say is worth $25 billion. Do you really think the best use of your time is playing with Illustrator? Every designer in America had to cringe when they read this quote:

"On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator. I think it's one of the most incredible software packages ever made. I'm not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous :) So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team."

Well, at least she was right about one thing. Based on the result of this project, she is dangerous.

What is it with CEOs and their belief that there is no subject they are not expert in? Are they given a subliminal messaging tape in business school to play while they sleep that says, "You know everything about everything" on an infinite loop?

Here's a tip for CEOs everywhere.

Unless you went to RISD, CCS, Pratt or Art Center, leave the design work to the professionals.

I'm not saying you can't have an opinion, but believe it or not great designers aren't a dime a dozen. Designing a logo isn't as easy as powering up a Mac and opening Illustrator, even though the best designers often make it look that way.

Design matters as much as anything in business. Would you "roll up your sleeves" with your lawyers and help them file your patent applications? Would you dive into the trenches with your software engineers and help them write code?

If the answer is yes, you're going to have a hell of a time getting good people to work for you.

Do your job and let other people do theirs. You'll be surprised at how much better that works for everyone.

Hyundai commits brand suicide

As a young ad writer, I created some pretty dumb commercials. I once proposed a campaign for a Chevrolet that used Imelda Marcos' shoe collection, the falling of the Berlin Wall, and the Tiananmen Square uprising as reasons for a year-end sale. 

But I never created anything this dumb.

Fortunately, I had a creative director who was smart enough to know that making light of others' suffering is not a great way to endear yourself to those you want to sell something.

Apparently no one at Innocean, Hyundai's European agency, got the message.

To be fair, Hyundai's American marketing arm quickly offered the following statement after this spot aired:

We at Hyundai Motor America are shocked and saddened by the depiction of a suicide attempt in an inappropriate European video featuring a Hyundai. Suicide merits thoughtful discussion, not this type of treatment.

You'd think it would be obvious, but after a string of incredibly tasteless ads, apparently it needs to be said. So as a public service to all the young creatives in the advertising industry, here's a list of just a few of insensitive and tasteless subjects in addition to suicide that should never be used as a foil for your message in an attempt to create a humorous ad:

1. Murder
2. Rape
3. Child abuse
4. Natural disasters
5. Brutal oppression
6. Torture
7. Drunk driving
8. Terrorism

Don't worry, that still leaves you plenty of stuff to make fun of. I hear David Hasselhoff is considering going on tour again.

JWT India goes rogue

Every creative at every agency has one, a file filled with ideas that were killed at one point or another by a creative director, account director or client. Most of us have the good sense never to share those ideas with the outside world.

Such was not the case with some staffers at JWT India who decided share these offensive ad comps with Ads of the World in an effort to show how creative they are.

Oops.

Now the team at Ford has a full-fledged PR crisis on their hands, JWT global executives are bending over backwards to try to save the account, and the people who thought this was a good idea are deservedly on the street looking for new jobs.

The fact that they spent the time and money to hire a professional illustrator to create the comps leads me to believe that someone at a senior level in the creative department approved these "ideas." I'm not sure if they ever made it to the client, but somewhere along the way, this concept was rightfully killed and should never have seen the light of day.

The advertising business – thanks to its fascination with youth – has always attracted people who feel their talent and creativity entitle them to privileges well beyond their years, that their inflated titles and meteoric rise make them smarter than everyone else in the room. It's that attitude that leads to events like this.

Advertising is about creating memorable messages to support and build a client's brand. That requires creativity, maturity and judgement. Unfortunately it appears that no one in the creative department at JWT India has any of those qualities.

In an update, this article by Ad Age suggests that not only did people at the highest levels of JWT India know about these ads, but so did someone at the client who had to sign a document stating that the ads were real before they could be entered in a local awards show. My guess is more people will be losing their jobs very soon.

A funny fail

As I stare out over the water at yet another incredible Wisconsin sunrise from the serene and sandy shores of Lake Michigan, I have only one question.

What they hell were they thinking?

Behold the latest effort from the Travel Wisconsin, my adopted home state's marketing arm.

Directed by Wisconsin native and master of low-brow comedy, David Zucker, the spot is filled with all the slapstick mastery he has displayed in his films Airplane!, Naked Gun, Scary Movies 3 & 4, and BASEketball.

Having been raised on the Three Stooges, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and other slapstick masters, I can tell you that aside from a few continuity errors, this spot is actually quite well crafted. The appearance by Airplane! star Robert Hays is a nice touch.

But does this little comedic gem convince people to spend their hard earned travel dollars in Wisconsin? I'd argue no, and that's not the director's fault. It's the agency's.

Advertising isn't that hard. It really needs to do just three things, two of which this spot does well.

First, great advertising has to grab your attention. Check.

Next, it must be memorable. Check.

And finally it must communicate a message that is relevant to the target and different from the competition. Fail.

The message I get is "any idiot can have fun here."

I'm not sure whether the idiot featured is a native or a visitor, but in either case he works against the objective.

If Mr. Hays is supposed to depict a hapless tourist, then the creators of this spot are making fun of the very people we'd like to come visit. (A quick advertising 101 refresher: never insult the people you're trying to separate from their money.)

If Mr. Hays is supposed to be a Wisconsonite, then he's doing a great job of portraying residents as drunken, simple-minded buffoons with a total lack of self-awareness.

I know the argument will be that the spot is generating a lot of buzz. But as we learned from coca cola yesterday; if you're counting on buzz to make the cash register ring today, you can plan on filing for bankruptcy tomorrow.

CBS can't stop progress

CNET, the powerhouse digital publication for all things tech, released its "Best of CES" last week and one of the nominees was the Dish Hopper with Sling, the auto ad-skipping DVR from Dish Network... until it wasn't.

If you visit their Nominee Page now and scroll down to the very bottom you get this statement:

The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.

If anyone ever wondered about the impartiality of the press, wonder no more.

Clearly someone at CBS said to the publisher of CNET, "Hey, these guys are trying to break our business model. You can't give them an award." And the publisher of CNET, liking his job very much, said "No problem."

By making CNET pull its nomination, CBS is now allowing the Hopper to play a role in the erosion of two of its businesses. Not only is the Hopper a threat to the ad-supported revenue model the network was built on, but its sudden exclusion from the Best of CES list brings into question the most important asset CNET has, its editorial integrity.

Millions of people have trusted CNET for what was believed to be impartial reviews of technological gadgetry. I used it last week when deciding which new television to buy. Yet, if its editorial independence can be so easily undermined by those on the business side of the publication, how can anyone trust anything they write?

CBS needs to stop trying to make time stand still and begin to create a new reality in which traditional advertising and appointment viewing are no longer the be-all-and-end-all of network television. Pulling petty, vindictive stunts like this hurts their brands much more than it will slow the advance of technology that is coming whether they like it or not.

Gone in an Instagram

There's a new verb in my vocabulary today:

Instagrammed

It's what happens to companies who cavalierly alter their terms of service without properly consulting and communicating with their user base.

When Instagram slipped the following clause into their Terms of Service the other day, the firestorm was as swift as it was inevitable.

A business or other entity may pay Instagram to display users' photos and other details in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

Yeah, that was going to go over well. Allowing advertisers use photographs without the consent of or compensation for the owner of the image. It went over so well in fact that yesterday tens of thousands of Instagram users backed up their images on other services and closed their accounts.

I understand their desire to make money, and as revenue models go this isn't a bad one. But Instagram forgot one simple step: ask for permission.

Rather than just set up a blanket policy to profit from user photographs, they could have created and marketed a program that Instagram members could opt into. Then when advertisers found images they wanted to use, Instagram could share a percentage of the revenue with the user. This would have created both monetary and emotional benefits for the users who would take pride in seeing their images in an ad somewhere.

Would they have made as much money? No. But then again, they wouldn't have had to issue this apology.

What this demonstrates yet once more is how fragile a brand is and how those brands that take their customers for granted can be gone in an instant.

The next time you're thinking of making a change to your product or service, think about your customers, or yours might be the next great brand to get instagrammed.

It's always something...

This is what happens when well intentioned people dip their toes into the marketing pond.

Gilda's Club in Madison, Wisconsin along with several other regional chapters are changing their name to Cancer Support Community because, according to their executive director,

One of the realizations we had this year is that our college students were born after Gilda Radner passed. As we are seeing younger and younger adults who are dealing with a cancer diagnosis, we want to make sure that what we are is clear to them and that there’s not a lot of confusion that would cause people not to come in our doors.

This is a stupid reason to change your organization's name, especially to something generic and purely functional like Cancer Support Community.

There's nothing unique about the new name, nothing memorable, nothing ownable.

Not to mention they're tossing aside the reason they exist in the first place.

A few years after Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer in 1989, her husband Gene Wilder and Joanna Bull, Ms. Radner's therapist, helped to found the first Gilda's Club in New York City, as a place where women, men and children living with cancer could build a social support network to supplement their medical care. It's a great and moving story.

Throwing out this story because it's been 25 years since Ms. Radner passed away is ridiculous.

Ford didn't change its name after its founder passed away and the brand is still relevant.

I'm fine if you want to add Cancer Support Community as a modifier to the name the name Gilda's Club. A lot of brands do that.

The directors of the club would do better to make sure people know Gilda's story and use it to attract people to their red door. It's a huge asset to the brand and one they're tossing aside because they don't care enough to make it meaningful.

And that is shameful.

Thanks to my friend Yi Shun Lai for the tip on this one. You can read her thoughts on life, writing and other subjects on her blog, The Good Dirt.

Delta screws "up"

Here's what Delta tells those they are trying to convince to fly with them.



A beautifully shot, wonderfully written message about how they're doing everything possible to earn your business.

And here's what they tell musicians who have to buy two seats for every flight.

Lynn Harrell is a concert cellist who has travelled the world for over 40 years plying his trade. In the last 45 days he's performed in Carmel, Singapore, Paris and Los Angeles. His traveling companion: a 1673 Stradivarius worth millions of dollars. Needless to say, he does not check it.

What he did do was get frequent flyer accounts for his instrument for every airline on which he flies to earn an occasional free ticket and help defray his expenses. Apparently Delta is one of the few airlines that does not allow you to accrue miles for seats purchased for musical instruments and has now kicked Mr. Harrell out of their program.

This is why I hate blanket policies.

They turn opportunities to help your best customers into PR disasters.

Here's a world-renowned musician who is willing to pay two times to ensure he and his irreplaceable instrument arrive safely so he can entertain classical music fans around the globe. Instead of encouraging this guy to choose another airline, Delta should sponsor him.

His audience, I imagine, is both wealthy and worldly. Just the kind of people you'd hope would fly Delta.

And now they've given them one more reason to look somewhere else.

Thanks to the tip from my friend, Drew for this image from one of Delta's other commercials showing a cellist with her instrument at the check-in counter. Nothing like a little irony to brighten one's afternoon.

You've come a long way, baby

I guess, it seemed like a good idea in that brainstorming meeting.

What if we made a pen specifically for women?

Women have smaller hands.

And the gals will love a pen that comes in pink and other pastel colors to match their outfits and make up!

Bic For Her? What year is this? Are there any women at Bic?

Whoever is in charge of marketing and innovation at Bic needs an intervention or at least to come out of his parent's basement and spend a little time with his sister's friends.

I'm not a huge focus group fan, but spending four hours with a few dozen women would have averted this disaster. I don't have too much of a problem with the actual product, but the inane, ham-handed positioning is classic internal team under-think.

The literal name and tagline, The Cristal reserved for women!, are lazy and uninspired.

They could have come up with a hundred name options that wouldn't have pigeon-holed the product and brought a deluge of derision to the brand.

Bic Tints, Bic Stylewriter, Bic Chic, Bic Vogue... Anything would have been better than "for Her!"

At least one good thing has come out of this product positioning debacle, the hilarious reviews on Amazon. Enjoy.

Making a mockery of science

This is why government commissions, educators and other do-gooders should leave advertising to the professionals.

A European Commission developed this video in an attempt to attract more girls to study science in school. Instead they managed to insult both girls and science. Needless to say, it received scorn from all corners and was promptly pulled.

Making advertising looks easy because it's all around us. 

But when you actually have to develop a strategy, generate an idea, and execute it in a way that is both different an memorable, it all falls apart in the hands of amateurs.

Just another reminder that we are professionals. Don't try this at home.

The Olympic Committee crafts some bad PR

Susan G. Komen, Dodge, and now the United States Olympic Committee. 

They all ignored one of the golden rules in trademark protection:

Don't be a bully.

Sure, if a large, multinational organization or competitor tries to profit off your trademark, by all means, threaten them with your worst and take them to court.

If it's a local charity, a cash strapped high school or a group of knitters, however, you might want to start with a softer approach.

Last week the USOC choose to send a threatening cease and desist letter to Ravelry.com – an online community site for knitters and crocheters – that included this gem of a paragraph.

The USOC is responsible for preserving the Olympic Movement and its ideals within the United States. Part of that responsibility is to ensure that Olympic trademarks, imagery and terminology are protected and given the appropriate respect. We believe using the name "Ravelympics" for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country's finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

The ravelers were understandably upset.

If you want to tick someone off, tell them that their avocation is not as important and doesn't take as much hard work as yours.

So now the USOC has to endure articles about their heavy-handedness in publications that include the New York Times, The Atlantic and Business Week, thousands of tweets and more than a few blogs like this one.

So instead of talking about the phenomenal athletes, the incredible achievements, the Olympic ideal, they've been forced to apologize where they managed to screw it up again.

Apparently common sense went out the Olympic door with amateurism. In whose mind did it seem like a good idea to ask the people you've just insulted to send you free stuff?

ABC pays tribute to Apple and fails

Marla Provencio, Chief Marketing Officer for ABC, calls her new promo for the show Duets an "homage." I'd call it something else, but this is a family blog...



It features lousy acting, terrible direction, unwatchable cinematography, inane music and a stolen idea. So it's just like everything else on ABC.

I have news for Ms. Provencio. This isn't an homage. It's not even a parody. It's just dumb.

The only good thing about it is, I now have an excuse to watch the original Apple 1984 spot one more time.

Real klassy Sears

So this is what Sears has become.

A retail chain so desperate for attention that they're willing to throw away what little brand equity they have left to hook up with the Kardashians.

Sears is not the first mass retailer to collaborate with a celebrity designer. But in the cases of Target with Jason Wu and Kohl's with Vera Wang, their co-conspirators have actually accomplished something and gained a level of respect in the fashion industry.

Who's wearing anything from the Kardashian Kollection (yes, it really is spelled with a K) other than a few reality stars and "celebrities" whose fame will be lucky to outlive a fruit fly?

I may be wrong. There may be some fans of Kourtney & Kim take..., Keeping up with..., and their other "work" who are willing to rush to the mall for this stuff.

But if aligning with the Kardashians and spelling Kollection with a K are the best ideas Sears has to klass up their image, they might as well kall it kwits and klose their doors.

This isn't going to save them from Walmart, Target, or anybody else who has a real brand position.

Shelby loses power

Two days ago, Shelby American sent out the press kit for the new Shelby 1000 to reporters around the world. In it was this photograph that demonstrated the incredible accelerative powers of this 950 horsepower beast.

There's only one problem. The wheels were not elevated by horsepower but by photoshop.

Oops.

When an editor at USA Today challenged the authenticity of the photo, Gary Patterson, Shelby American VP, came clean admitting it was fake.

And now at the car's debut at the New York Auto Show, the story won't be about how fast this $200,000 limited edition Mustang is, it will be about the picture.

Shelby and Ford lost a great opportunity to continue to build momentum for their brands because they broke the one unbreakable rule of marketing:

Don't ever, ever, ever lie.

This message isn't going down smoothly

From yesterday's post where the message was controversial but relevant and effective we go to the opposite end of the spectrum.

An online ad so obviously stupid and offensive I have no idea who could have created or approved  it.

There's no escaping the message here. This is not a case of, "oops, we didn't know 'goes down' meant that!" And there's no way you can construe her reaction as anything other than horror.

To their credit, Belvedere is owning this incredible lack of judgement:

"My name is Charles Gibb and I am the President of Belvedere Vodka. I would like to personally apologize for the offensive post that recently appeared on our Facebook page. It should never have happened. 

I am currently investigating the matter to determine how this happened and to be sure it never does so again. The content is contrary to our values and we deeply regret this lapse. 

As an expression of our regret over this matter we have made a donation to RAINN (America's largest anti-sexual violence organization. www.rainn.org"

Good for Mr. Gibb. My guess is the digital media agency and digital marketing manager will be fired over this.

Creativity may be celebrated in advertising, but it's judgement that separates the professionals from the hacks.

Sony hits a sour note

Here's a tip: Profiting from someone else's misfortune or death always reflects badly on your brand.

Sony found out the hard way this weekend after they hiked the wholesale price of Whitney Houston's "Ultimate Collection" by 60% on iTunes in Great Britain just hours after her death. After much hue and cry from her fans, Sony lowered the price and attributed the mysterious increase to a "error" by an individual employee.

Even if I believed that excuse, then it only demonstrates how weak and ill-defined Sony's brand is.

A strong brand not only provides a recognizable image and position of your company and products for consumers, it also helps guide decision making for your employees. If your brand values are to treat customers fairly and with respect and they are clearly communicated to your employees, this "error" doesn't happen.

If, on the other hand, your values are to maximize profits and shareholder return on investment, this is exactly the kind of decision you make. It's why people are skeptical of the motives of companies like Sony, Bank of America, Walmart, BP and Ticketmaster. And why their brands have taken a beating over the past few years.

#McFail

How could this possibly have turned out badly?

Last week McDonald's ran a promotion asking people to share their favorite stories about the hamburger chain on Twitter using #McDStories.

In just two hours McDonald's was forced to shut down the campaign but not before people shared some stories that were less than complimentary.

"#McDStories worked there for one month-unhygienic staff; managers, plus my boyfriend got a hair in his burger the day before I started-Sign!"

"Memories of walking into McDonalds: the sensory experience of inhaling deeply from freshly-opened can of dog food #McDStories"

"I haven’t been to McDonalds in years, because I’d rather eat my own diarrhea. #McDStories"

While a lot of people enjoy McDonalds and a lot of people have good stories, there are some who don't. There are some who think McDonald's is evil. There are some who'd rather McDonald's not be around.

And that's where McDonald's made their fundamental mistake. They forgot the old adage, "'Dog bites man' isn't news, 'Man bites dog' is."

Rick Wion, Social Media Director for McDonald's is quoted as saying less than 2% of the total tweets that day about McDonald's were negative.

McDonald's may have had 10,000,000 favorable tweets, but you're only ever going to read about the bad ones in the paper. Nobody ever writes news stories about all the planes that don't crash.

So just a few negative tweets was all it took for this to become a firestorm of bad publicity and a case history for how not to do social media marketing.

The lesson here?

You can't control what people say, but you don't have to give them a megaphone and put them in the middle of a crowd.

BoA is DoA when it comes to PR

Whoever is running the PR department at Bank of America better own stock in Rolaids.

This summer a homeowner in Florida foreclosed on a BoA branch after it refused to abide by a court order and pay his legal bills. This was after Bank of America tried to foreclose on the house, even though the home was bought with cash and BoA never held a mortgage on the property.

They're the butt of jokes regularly on Colbert, The Daily Show, Letterman and other late night talk shows.

And just a few days ago, when two customers, following an Occupy Santa Cruz rally, tried to close their accounts, the bank manager refused and threatened to have the customers arrested.



I'm not here to talk about the politics of the situation, rather the marketing.

Here's a tip. If your customers don't want to be your customers anymore, let them go as quickly and quietly as possible. If the manager had just said, "I'm so sorry you feel that way. Come with me, we'll take care of the paperwork and get you your money right away." The video would have ended there and the protesters would have looked like whiny, privileged middle-class suburbanites out for a thrill.

Instead the bank looks like a bully and those they are trying to silence have been able to amplify their voices via Youtube and the news.

The lesson: Don't deal with difficult customers by being difficult. Kill them with kindness and you'll lower the noise.

(Oh and for all you would-be documentarians out there, don't do what this woman holding the camera did. Keep your mouth shut and let the action play out. You're not the star of your movie, they are.)