“You know what, Jean? it’s just … just … something’s nagging at me …”
This is a real product.
It’s on the company website.
This went through product development, the creative team that designed it, the client’s various levels of management, and they still came up with this.
There is much we could say. After 25 years in the marketing business we will simply say, it is possibly … unwise.
Words. Fail. Me.
Oh dear. A rather, er, prominent mistake.
Well, OK, technically the first one is packaging, not advertising. But, you know – same diff.
Always a good idea for the creative department designing the label to know the ink density and absorbency of the paper being used.
Once you know that, it’s all about kerning, people.
But then again, does anyone in today’s ad industry actually know what kerning is?
Hmmm?
Doesn’t the Apple just do that for me?
Mummy?
Meanwhile, Dear Reader, a quick lesson in not necessarily using every space available in this lovely world of ours for advertising, or if we do, let’s make sure the creatives actually see the site before they’re asked to beaver away at their keyboards, eh?
Take their coffee and cocaine away from them, pop some sunglasses on their precious little noses, and send them out into the real world.
Coz, see, I am reasonably sure this is not the sub-conscious image that Turkish Airlines wish to leave in the minds of their potential customers.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
(BTW, I really can’t be arsed to post links to all the F*** Ups of 2012 – just type advertising in the search box top left and you’ll soon find them all.)
Excuse me? Say what?
Well, I just told you, actually.
It’s as easy as this.This is the good oil. The stuff the ad agencies never tell you, either because they don’t know themselves, or because they’re trying to keep what they do a mystery, so you keep paying squillions for it.
Make your headline a question, not a statement.
See … you’re reading this now, aren’t you? The headline has done it’s job: it’s got you into the body copy, to find the evidence you now know you want.
And here is that evidence. In a survey done by the NRMA in Sydney some years ago, headlines with questions in them were found to be SIX TIMES more effective at gathering a response than headlines that were statements.
So in other words, restrain yourself from saying “We make the best widgets in the world.” Or even “New widget released!”
Instead, say “What would it mean to you if we had invented a better widget?”
Most marketers have never learned this, and consequently blather on about their own products or services intensely and boringly. (And expensively.) Then they wonder why their ads don’t work very hard.
Most ad agencies are now staffed with people who don’t know this too.
If you don’t believe me, run one ad with a question for a headline, and the identical ad with a statement, and see which works best. It’s dead easy to do online now, for example, at virtually no cost, and very easy to track the results.
If your ad agency won’t listen to you when you see that I am right, call me on 0419 290 708, and I’ll re-write your advertising for you so it works harder.
Yes, really. Life sometimes IS that simple.
I was originally going to do these once a month, until they came flooding in so thick and fast that they just demand being published.
For today’s it’s All Hail the Mighty Target, (Australian branch), who, in an interesting wrinkle on recent controversies, (forgive the pun), are here found guilty of not air-brushing their models enough.
He’s very handy, this chap, isn’t he? Still, I expect he’s basically ‘armless.
How many can you count?
The catalogue page on the Target Australia website has now been corrected – luckily someone spotted it and got it out into the blogosphere first. And thank you to Caitlin for bringing it to my attention.
Somewhere inside Target is a little marketing assistant who won’t sit down for a week, not to mention his or her counterpart in the art department of the ad agency. “Such a drag, all that proof reading. I know: let’s go to the pub instead!”
And wait … those perfect families in catalogues aren’t real? Surely not!
The world’s stupidest billboard placement: http://wp.me/p1LY0z-gX
Not the holiday anyone would really want: http://wp.me/p1LY0z-hJ
Stores abusing innocent shoppers: http://wp.me/p1LY0z-j8
My personal favourite so far, the most embarrassingly badly worded headline in history: http://tinyurl.com/7enukvd
And the most recent. Oh, those crazy whacky country McDonalds eaters: http://tinyurl.com/83vgpng
More soon, no doubt. Keep ’em coming people.
Musings by George Polley
Wondering how God could have got all this into such a short Tale
The name of the blog says it all, really. My take on interesting stuff + useful re-posts :-)
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are" - Anais Nin
It's the thin line between reality and fantasy. It's the thin line between sanity and madness. It's the crazy things that make us think, laugh and scream in the dark.
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