Volkswagen. Asleep at the Wheel.
It’s never too late, but this whole fuel efficient, lower emission car thing should have been the provenance of Volkswagen. It was made to order for them. But NOOO, they had to spend time designing the Touareg.
It’s never too late, but this whole fuel efficient, lower emission car thing should have been the provenance of Volkswagen. It was made to order for them. But NOOO, they had to spend time designing the Touareg.
TIAA-CREF, which stands for TIAA-CREF, is launching a new branding idea thanks to the people at Modernista in Boston. The idea revolves around TIAA-CREF’s status as a nonprofit. Generally speaking, people know that nonprofits tend to pour money back into the organization…and the cause.
According to J. D. Power a number of Buick automobiles are as reliable as those of perennial reliability winner Lexus. Surprised? Me too. Two of those cars, the Century and Regal are no longer in production, however. Ironic? You bet. Why would Buick work so hard on quality just to jettison those two cars? They weren’t selling. Their designs were tired.
Dan Pink is an author with a great thesis for today’s marketers. It’s his contention that right-brainers will soon rule the marketing world. I fancy myself a right-brainer and am, therefore, quite happy.
Prediction Time.
In my last post I mentioned how digital agencies are offshoring video production work to make it affordable to version TV and Internet ads for multiple target audiences — a strategy that mirrors direct marketers one-to-one mantra. Versioning may be lucky enough to have some successes but on balance it is a flawed strategy.
Good brand planning attempts to find a single voice and idea for its selling stories. Coke is refreshment. MySpace is friends.
The fact that a TV commercial costs over $350,000 to make today, makes it an imperative that marketers and ad agencies agree on a single selling idea. L’Oreal hair care used to take close to a full year to prepare a TV ad with Heather Locklear. The dress had to be perfect, the staircase just right, etc. Ads, in many cases, were works of art. But with 20+ versions of an ad running, the quality of the idea must suffer.
Developing versioned ads, the production of which is handled offshore, with multiple scripts written by God knows whom and casting handled by committee, spells disaster.
Publicis Groupe, the French advertising holding company, is doing some of today’s most forward thinking and, in my view, has jumped over the other holding companies in terms of trailblazing this digital adventure we’ve embarked upon.
One of the Publicis companies, Digitas, is doing some curious things in terms of targeting broadcast. They are offshoring production work to
If we can somehow identify a digital fingerprint for each viewer and serve them up a tailored ad, we have achieved the holy grail of the ad biz. The copy would change based upon the age and education of the viewer. The visuals might change based upon the address of the viewer. Price, promotion and even product could be tied to income level.
But let’s face it, video editing and content versioning of all this stuff will take thousands of hours, and though offshoring it to a workforce making $5 a day sounds appealing, who will be the exercising creative oversight? The first wave of this stuff will be nasty bad. The good news? You may only see that nasty commercial once, thanks to digital tracking. Stay tuned for more discussion of digital and 3-D targeting.
Whenever I start a post with the words “Okay, so I’m…” you know you are in for a rant. Or as an ex-boss used to call it a screed.
Kohl’s department stores (Are they still called department stores?) is attempting to upscale it image and bring in new customers with some branded clothing lines. Tony Hawk and Elle Magazine have clothing in Kohl’s now and those brands are making a difference. New this fall, Vera Wang will be launching a line at Kohl’s called Simply Vera which has raised more than a few eyebrows.