A Big Mistake

One company that has made some big questionable, marketing moves lately is Dr. Pepper Snapple. Which with the launch of its new diet soda called “Dr. Pepper 10” has engaged in some disputed marketing moves that may, or may not, hurt the company.

The Dr. Pepper 10 is different from other sodas because it is said to be having more of an authentic taste, compared to other diet sodas. The reason as to why that is the case, is because it has ten calories, which is quite significant when you look at sodas like Diet Pepsi or Coke Zero which have zero calories.

Not so many men drink diet soda because they think that it taste too differently from regular sodas and that is why the Dr. Pepper Ten was introduced into the market to change the drinking habits of men and get them to drink more diet sodas.

What has gathered so much attention is the marketing campaign that accompanied the launch of Dr. Pepper Ten and that is also why I am questioning this new product because it is in many ways, outrageous. The new diet soda is positioned as a drink for men and men only by specifically mentioning explicitly in their advertising campaign that “it is not for women.” This is a very bad move for Dr. Pepper Snapple, although it is creating a lot of buzz right know as is so vulgar and controversial. It will probably not benefit them in the long run because the largest segment of soda drinkers is women and by saying that they cannot have a specific product might alienate just those customers. Some people even feel that it is sexist like the people in the video down below. They are trying to get more men to drink diet sodas, but at the same time they are enraging a lot of people who do drink diet soda at the same time. The marketing effort might be very successful in the short period because people want to try the new talked about product, but in  longer term they need more loyal customers and I do not think that they will get that by having this sort of a launch.

The soda market is especially competitive and there are two major soda companies that would do anything to grow and steal someone else’s market share. The soda market is hardly a growing market and since they are financial behemoths and that Dr. Pepper seems to be willing to risk by having this outrageous marketing campaign, they could stand to gain a lot and Dr. Pepper could lose it all.

Dr. Pepper should have instead had the marketing campaign have a tough attitude and say  “only for though people” instead of “not for women” like it does now. Also the commercials and the ads that they have now are very childish, which could also offend the target market by having them think that the brand assumes that its consumers are stupid. The world is becoming more and more educated so many could turn it down because of the lack of perceived knowledge by those who drink the soda. The campaign should still have a though attitude, but the humor should be more cheeky.

A Company that is Wasting its' Money

A company that I do not think have such a good advertising strategy is GEICO. GEICO is in the car insurance industry which many think can be quite a boring to work in, if you are looking at getting into the marketing industry. However, some car insurance companies though, have actually done a great job with their advertising and created a fun advertising camping like Progressive, which has the lady with the weird hair style and goofy coworkers, take a look here.

Other car insurance companies have taken the more serious route like Allstate or Liberty Mutual, their campaigns play more on safety and peace of mind. What all of these companies have in common is that they all have a clear sense of direction and their ads all have something in common. Moreover they all portray their company’s single most compelling fact clearly and you know instantly what company the commercials from, because they all have their signature colors, songs or other things that signifies them in the ad.

Even though All State might have two types of commercials that they run, they still keep hammering home the message of that one should protect oneself from mayhem in a believable and logical way which is All State’s catch phrase.

Although GEICO has a catchy phrase too with: “Fifteen minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance,” that is all they have that links its’ ads together.

First off, they have multiple types of ads; one with an old movie star type guy that asks rhetorical questions, and another type of ad where a lizard is the spokesperson. Let alone this fact can be quite confusing for the consumer but what is even worse is that the commercials and their messages do not go together with car insurance, I do not get it. For instance, the old movie star type always starts out by saying “could switching to GIECO really save you 15% or more on car insurance.”  He then goes on to use an analogy which should be obvious but it really is not: “Is a bird in the hand worth to in the bush?” and they then show a segment form the Antiques Roadshow where an expert examine a sculpture which is of a hand holding a bird and he, the expert says; “it is worth two in the bush,” and the women who owns the piece acts happy and surprised. This type of ad with the old-time movie star comes in a number of different and ridiculous variations.

However, I do not see how this is related to car insurance, GEICO, or their single most compelling fact; which is that people could save 15 % or more by switching to them. Frankly, they make me mad, and they make others mad too, because their ads are not even funny and when they run as often as they do, the only agitate us.

 I would like GEICO to rethink their marketing strategy and stick to the basics. Talk about why people should switch to GEICO and make clever ads that contain a fun message such as AT&T’s tarantula ad that I talked about before, or multiple ads that have a common theme like the series of ads that Target runs every year before Black Friday.

Because what GEICO is doing now is wasting its time, and money, and the time of their existing and potential consumers. If they do not cease with those ads and change their direction, then it will only create animosity and anger between their potential consumer and GEICO because its message is unclear and poorly executed.

Where they fail is where they pose the rhetorical questions and then the answer is supposed to be obvious, but the analogies that they present do not make any sense and therefore you cannot really believe in their claim that you can save 15% or more with them.

The consumer gets even more confused when they see the all the different types of commercials the GEICO is running, where in one ad their mascot, the lizard, is the main character and in another the old time movie star is the main spokesperson, both of those ads have totally different feels to them because the movie star has an all american accent while the gecco has a british accent take a look here.

This is why I feel that GEICO needs to get its’ act together and revamp their marketing efforts because if you do not pay attention while watching the commercials, and consumer does not usually do that, then you will not know what company the commercial is talking about and why they are advertising and what they are trying to say. That is not only bad for the customer but also the company because that money is now being wasted.

The Crazy Target Lady

Over the holidays I saw a couple of commercials from Target that I thought where absolutely amazing! They follow a lady and her personal build up until the two day sale at Target which starts on Black Friday.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that she is crazy and obsessed with the “Two Day Sale”. She is kind of like the character Sue Sylvester from the hit TV show Glee, but in the form of a well put together house wife which is obsessed with preparing and practicing for the sale. She is usually dressed in a red track suit with white stripes which are the color of Target, she always wears a pearl necklace and high heels and has a blond perfect pony tail.

            Target ran multiple ads featuring  “the crazy Target lady” this year but now when I researched those ads, I became aware that it is not the first year that she has been featured in a campaign. It has actually been running since 2009 under the name Christmas Champ, but she is more commonly known as “The Crazy Target Lady.”  

            What I think is so great about these ads is first of all they are funny, but “the crazy Target lady” has grown into a phenomenon of her own. She has her own Facebook page and people like me blog about her. However, what is probably the most important thing about the campaign is that that the advertiser keep hammering home the message in each ad, meaning that there she is, in very ad, looking the same; she still has that pearl necklace, earrings and her perfect blond ponytail to the side, and she is still sporting red and white (Target’s signature colors) in every ad.

That is what is common for a marketing campaign and integrated brand promotion, which is when you use different kinds of media or multiple ads, but they still have a common theme or themes, that people can associate with the brand and this is what is so excellent about Target’s ads. As people see her and the red and white colors they immediately think about Target and shopping there.

This is what VP of Communications, Dustee Jenkins, had to say about the Crazy Target Lady: "She represents the whole notion of Black Friday being a contact sport. Love her or hate her, she resonates with our guests."

In a sense she has become the symbol of Thanksgiving and the following Black Friday Sale. That is gold for a marketer and Target itself because this means that they have done such an excellent job that this campaign and “the Christmas champ” have become part of a tradition, and because it is associated with Black Friday it automatically means more sales for the company since it plays such a crucial part of the holidays now.

            Another great thing about this kind of advertising is that it is like a TV miniseries where we get to follow our favorite character and were we are in a sense; anticipating what she will do next. So when we are fast forwarding trough the commercial breaks on the DVRs we switch back to “play” if we see a glimmer of that particular kind of ad and then we will most probably rewind and watch the ad in its entirety and perhaps even watch it over again. This is exactly what the advertiser want to achieve; to have a viewer watch one ad and continue following and re-watch other episodes because this drives home their message and an idea that they might have of buying something from that store can be solidified after watching the ads a couple of times.

A Memorable Ad

Another of my favorite ads that I discovered fairly recently is the ad for AT&T’s Samsung Infuse 4G phone.  This piece of advertising has made me laugh so many times and it does not seem to get old to me. The entertainment value of the ad has leads me to purposefully look for, and seek it out, when I am fast forwarding through the commercial breaks of my favorite shows that I have recorded on my DVR.

What the advertiser and the company set out to do from the beginning was to have the phone’s best quality, which is the screen, be the central theme of the commercial. The AT&T commercial is simply brilliant because it displays its best feature, in a simple and clever way that makes the ad memorable.

The ad starts out where a group of coworkers meet up at a fancy restaurant for lunch.  One of them pulls out his phone as they are sitting down and puts it on the table and moments later his screen saver goes on and the screen saver is a picture of large tarantula. Since the screen is of such good quality, one of the members of the group, a young lady thinks that it is a real spider and jumps up from her chair and freaks out. She starts to scream which is quite the departure form the quite setting of the nice restaurant because she screams like it is a scene from a scary Alfred Hitchcock movie.  

What is even funnier is that the third coworker also thinks that it is a real tarantula and takes off his shoe and starts hammering down on the perceived spider which in actuality is his coworker’s phone. However, the funniest part is perhaps the restaurant’s unsuspecting guests because their reaction is priceless.

This is another way how a company took the strongest feature of a new product and produced a commercial that was both memorable and funny, and I can say in terms of myself, that they got their monies worth from that particular commercial

Effective Marketing

People usually wonder what makes a particular marketing campaign successful and others not so fruitful. The difference is that a successful one has the consumer form an emotional connection to your brand. By first liking the product and after that when you have additional campaigns that he or she enjoys, and then this relationship can develop further into brand loyalty. The key is to move the consumer in an emotional way, as he or she will then spread the word about the ad, and the brand, to his or her family and friends.

The best thing about word of mouth promotion is that it is free promotional information that comes to new potential customers from a trusted source, their friends and family. That could not be a better Christmas gift for the marketer, or the Brand Manager, as the Brand Manager always wants to spend as much as possible on campaigns and other forms of brand promotions. However, top management normally wants to keep costs low and some organizations cannot see the value of advertising so they try and keep those costs down as much as possible. If they can get free advertising in terms of having the customers going around to their friends telling them about the brand, its products and why they are so good, the Marketing Manager will definitely take it because that means her or she can spend the budget on other things.

So how can the marketer move the customer with advertising? The marketer can move its target consumer in a number of ways; like showing people in distress, by showing compassion for fellow human beings, or by being outright funny. It can use popular images or videos of moments in time, symbols, playing a song or jingle to move people, as people can easily relate to those things. As long as you affect the consumer in an emotional way, then the consumer will pay attention to your message. If the campaign manages to do this then the person in charge of the advertising has done his or her job, as they have engaged the consumer.

            One ad that I think has been extremely successful in getting its message out to the world about their product and company itself is Dirt Devil. Dirt Devil ran an ad that takes place in the setting of the movie “The Exorcist”. The movie’s story line is about a troubled little girl that has been possessed by the devil and a priest tries to drive the bad spirits out the girl, but strange things keep on happening to her. The ad itself has become immensely successful and has been named by a few as one of the funniest ads in time. If you have not seen it already, you should do it right away because in the next section I will explain the details of it so I do not spoil any of the details for you.

The exorcist starts out with that creepy scene where the priest is walking up to the room and he hears strange noises and screams from the bedroom. You can see his trepidation and the sweat building on his forehead, the music playing is a creepy violin that plays faster and faster until he finally walks in the room when everything goes quiet. He sees the girl stuck to the celling screaming like a demon while moving back and forth stuck on to the ceiling and acting like she is from another planet. The camera then shows the priest, which seems petrified and is frozen in his tracks, before moving up through the ceiling to the next level, like you would do when you are looking into a doll house. The funny thing is that up in the apartment above, on the next floor, there is a little old lady wearing a bed jacket and hairnet and she is vacuuming the floor that is right over the spot where the girl is stuck to the ceiling downstairs, meaning that the vacuuming machine is so strong that it sucked up the girl and that is why she is going back and forth across the ceiling! The girl’s parents and the priest all believed she was possessed by the devil himself.

This ad is supposed to show the extreme suction power of the vacuum machine, but in the beginning the audience thinks that it is a scene taken out of the movie The Exorcist and you do not know who the advertiser is until the end and that it is in fact an ad for Dirt Devil.

            What some marketers do not usually know is that when some ads are particularly good or funny, people notice them and pay more attention to them. Even though they might be fast forwarding through the commercial breaks when they are watching TV, they might see a short glimpse of an ad that makes them stop, reverse and watch it just because they think it is so clever, good, or outright funny. That is the power of a really good ad; you will get your money’s worth out of it ten times. This is true because not only consumers of the brand will pay attention to it, but the message will be spread by the viewers to their friends and family through social media. Also news sources might pick up the story and spread it to their audience as a form of comic relief which is happening on a regular basis with news outlets like CNN and many other news organizations. Although, great ads might be expensive to produce, one should not discount the fact that they can pay you back tenfold.  

Brand Personification

Sometime marketers do not know who to target and how. When in question they can employ a process that is called “Brand Personification”.  Brand personification is designed to help the marketer decide on who to target with their advertising campaign, and how to target that specific segment.

It particularly helps the Account Planner, who is the person that is in charge with the creation of the advertising campaign. Once the research has been performed and he or she has a better idea of what kind of camping they need to create, then they can better relay this image to the creative team who are the ones who are actually going to create the marketing campaign. If the Account Planner does a good enough job, then the creative team will say “Yes, that person is just like my brother Tommy,” and continue to say “If I would like to get through to him, I would talk to him in this way.” Then the creative team knows what kind of ad they need to create and what elements it should contain. If this is done correctly, then the campaign will resonate with the targeted segment and the camping will result in more sales, greater awareness of the brand and be considered a successful campaign.

The way that the account planer does a brand personification is by asking the question: “If this brand would be a person, what kind of person would that brand then be” Or if they would like to change that brand’s image, then they would ask this question: “If this brand could be any type of person, what type of person would it then be?“

The Account Planner would then describe the brand in terms of an imaginary individual that has a certain age, income, sex, hobbies, and interest and personality traits. However, to do this task, the Account Planer must possess experience in dealing with the brand as a consumer, and he or she should also have intimate knowledge about the brand like; what is its current market share, who are its competitors, and what is the single most compelling fact about the product or service that would make consumers want to buy it?

So how does one go about when doing a Brand Personification? That is what I am going to do now on one of my favorite brands: W Hotels. W Hotels or just W, is a chain of upper level to luxury hotels that are sprinkled all over the world. The chain is becoming a household name and is widely successful because of their customers’ extreme brand loyalty, because they want to stay at a W Hotel no matter where in the world they are.

If I was to describe W in terms of Brand Personification, what kind of person would then he or she be? The answer to that question would be a man by the name of Jordan. Jordan is originally from the UK and has a thick posh English accent, he is in his late twenties, he is single, successful and he has a yearly income of around 100 000 dollars or more. He travels all over the world and he always does so in style, he is always at the hottest parties and he always attended them with his sophisticated group of friends, or a new girl or guy.

You probably wonder how come I can describe him in such a detail. Despite what you think, this is pretty easy to do if you have insight into that particular brand.  As stated above you should have information regarding the brand in the form of your own personal experience as a customer, but you should also additional information in the form research in order for you to do a brand personification. Because combined all of this knowledge helps the person doing the brand personification to see the bigger picture and ultimately the brand’s personality.

Some things that set the personality of the W Hotel brand apart from other hotels are their innovative marketing ideas that they implement throughout all of its Hotels. These solutions are different from the next W Hotel which gives them all a different personality. However, the brand has common themes that reverberate throughout all of W’s hotels and those themes are: exclusivity, luxury and sensuality. 

One way that the personality is set for a particular hotel, is by having that hotel’s maids leaving post-it notes in the minibar or in other places of the room with cheeky phrases that says “Don’t let $200 go up in a puff.”  

Another strategy that W Hotels use to create a personality for its hotels is by hosting cocktail parties in the lobbies of its Hotels on the weekends with DJs playing music, where people that do not even stay at the hotel, come and dance the night away.

An additional way that the W in Westwood, LA, is successful in creating a personality for itself is by having a camera in the elevator that takes pictures of the passenger while they are using the elevator and during the ascent or descent it displays cheeky phrases like: strike a pose, surprise me, smile or something similar; to encourage interaction between the passenger and the elevator. What can be more appropriate for LA than to have a paparazzi elevator?

These are all tactics of how W makes its hotels have more of a cheeky young British personality that people easily can relate to and that leads them to subsequently having them stay there.

Every hotel has a different way of communicating its personality. So you will not be bored if you stay at the W Hotel in Westwood, LA, one week, and then the next week you stay at the W in downtown San Francisco.

When one better understands a brand’s personality and its customers, then you can better target them with advertising that catches their eyes. Because if you know their personalities and interest, then you can target those who have a similar personality or interest in what the brand represent and subsequently make them want to buy that product or service.  The way that W’s personality would translate into a marketing campaign would be to have the commercials and ads express exclusivity; cheeky fun and a sexy atmosphere. These messages would appear in TV, print media and others sources of communication but it would also be displayed in events and other campaigns. This kind of advertising would attract people similar to Jordan and make him and others like him want to stay at a W Hotel.

By looking at the brand as a customer and as someone who has research it extensively, I can see that the personality that I came up with in the brand personification is also apparent in their promotional tools. What I could extrapolate in terms of the brand’s personality from the commercials and ads is that the brand is a group of exclusive hotels that come without the usual stuck up and stuffy personality that most luxury hotel brands have. W hotel’s advertising also feature stunning photographs of their Hotels in various parts of the world like; lobbies, bar areas and other areas of their hotels which shows that the hotels are popular, modern and youthful. This can also be seen in their print ads which look like promotional flyers for clubs that you might see on notice boards or on lampposts. They have bright colors against darker backgrounds and they feel very current.

Another crucial part of their advertising is their distinctive font and the letter W which until the invention of this hotel chain had been a fairly unused letter for either a company logo, or a brand name for that matter.  The font is prevalent in this video which is from their “Warmth from Cool Campaign,” which features cool music while displaying pretty images and important information about the Brand. Another video that shows W innovativeness is this video which is very innovative with its use of different images and colors to form the letter W while displaying important facts again about the brand. What is common for all the ads and the videos are that they very lounge, relaxed, hip and cool which is what a person like Jordan would appreciate and be drawn to.

The W brand also use other forms of promotional tools or IBP (Integrated Brand Promotion) which is defined as: “The process of using a wide range of promotional tools working together to create brand exposure.” The ways that they do this is by employing different forms of publicity tools which are unlike their regular advertising devices. An example of that are the parties or events that they host at the location of their hotels where they showcase up-and-coming artists or support other causes or events. Those performances or activities will then be featured on the internet on sites like youtube, facebook, twitter or other sites connected to the W brand and on the global hotel channel.

They will also be written about in the W magazine which is The W Hotel brand’s own magazine which is distributed all over the world where one copy is placed in each hotel room. The W magazine is a lifestyle magazine that is very trendy, it follows fashion and celebrities but it also talks about what goes on at various hotels like what kind of events and parties have been held there recently. By being in touch with ongoing trends, up and coming artists and by hosting these various events in their hotels, I feel that the total brand package that they put out in to world is very similar to what the W Hotel brand in my view stands for, which is fun exclusivity, and fabulousness.

I consider that the W Hotel brand is very successful in its branding because it displays the great product that it has to offer to the right target segment. W also does this in an integrated approach not only with traditional media, but in other forms of public relations. Since they put out the personality of the hotel as being luxurious, elegant and spicy then people like Jordan who emulate that type of personality can relate to that brand because of their similarities in personality and interests. This why the job of the Account Planer is so important and this is why the account planner for W has done such a good job because he or she has relayed exactly what the creative team needed to know about the customers in order for it to come up with the advertisements and the various promotional tools that all have a common theme that attract young professional like Jordan to its brand.

Chevrolet's success

A company that has recently performed several good marketing campaigns is Chevrolet, a now successful car brand that recently under the umbrella of General Motors emerged from bankruptcy in 2009. Chevrolet has employed several advertising campaigns that have resulted in significant success, putting the company at the top in terms of the number of car sales in the US. 

Products like the Chevrolet Cruze have been the top seller for five months straight and the new Volt has raised hopes for the future. What they both have in common is that they have raised the profits for the company.

In fact, the Chevy Cruze which replaced the Cobalt, has sold 88% better than the Cobalt for the same period last year. This is due to that overall quality and that the prices have improved significantly compared to Chevrolet’s rival like Ford and Toyota, while their marketing campaigns have only highlighted those facts. According to analysts the new design and the technologically advanced car are the key selling features. Bob Lutz, a former product manager, had this to say: "Cruze’s interior and exterior design is more advanced than competitors in the same market segment.” The slightly larger size of the Cruze compared to its competitors makes the difference as well as the high MPG rate and the new interior.

 Although the product has improved significantly, one should not discount the marketing effort that allowed the potential customers to find the company in the first place. Because if there would not have been a marketing effort people would have been uniformed of the superior offering that Chevrolet provides in the form of the Chevy Cruze and the Volt.  Their excellent marketing campaigns got their word out to the consumers about their product and that translated into higher sales for the Cruz and now the Volt.  

One unified theme in Chevy’s ads is the perceived “humanity” of the brand. Many of its ads follow Chevrolet owner’s through their daily lives. There are Chevrolet commercials that go with them when they are apartment hunting to no avail, when they go to the gas station or when some friends go on a road trip across the US. They all portray an image of the individual; being human, patriotic or caring. This also reflected in the product being priced 1000 dollars less or having a higher MPG rate than its nearest competitor, the Ford Elantra. All of these factors show that Chevrolet and its cars somehow care about the person that drives the car.

Another common theme in Chevy ads is that they are produced in the same style because they all have the same lighting and feel to them. Plus, always when a Chevy ad ends it ends with a white screen and Chevrolet’s logo, the golden cross and with their slogan “Chevy Runs Deep.” These elements put together, create a common theme or signature that is specific to Chevrolet so whenever you see a Chevy ad you instantly know that it is a Chevy ad and you in a sense know what is coming.

One ad that is particularly clever is Chevy’s new ad regarding the Volt. In that ad a car pulls up to a gas station, the owner gets out and he is just about to go into the gas station to go to the bathroom when a nosy, know it all, kid comes up to him and confronts him. He says: “I thought that it was an electric car. What are you doing at the gas station?” The owner corrects him and says that it is a hybrid, so it does need gas sometime but not at this time. The kid keeps firing questions at him and he gets more and more annoyed with the situation until finally the kids father comes out and start over with the same questions.

The ads itself is very funny but what you might not notice is that the ad it is also informative at the same time. Because the owner in an attempt to respond to the questions that are fired at him explains important facts about the Chevy Volt that a potential customer might want to know. This ad is just one example of the many successful ads that Chevrolet has created, and although we might not notice it at first, the ads might place itself subliminally in the back of our mind and then hopefully create a positive imagine of the brand that makes us want to buy a car after that after we have seen that commercial. This process is called evoked set which is a set of brands that come to mind from a specific product category when we think about buying such a product. The brand that we end up buying is most likely one of the brands we think of first as part of our evoked set and that is where good advertising can help.