To my surprise, I recently learned that Coles and Woolies together own more high-intensity pokies than the top 5 casinos in Las Vegas combined. Did you know that? I didn’t either. I was shocked. I think it’s a bad idea. Well, it appears that Coles and Woolies might be worried about what we think. Coz guess what? The TV stations are refusing to air an ad created by GetUp! to let the Australian public know about this. Wow! And I thought we lived
in a democracy…
GetUp are now focusing on getting the ad aired in the cinema, because it seems that cinema owners are NOT too scared to show it. Yes it’s controversial. It’s supposed to be. But the ad is based on fact (unlike many ads on TV) so I don’t see the problem. Let the little people (us) have a debate on what is right or wrong. Stop censoring our content! We are intelligent enough to make up our own minds, surely? If you want to see the ad that the big guys don’t want you to see, click here https://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/pokies-reform/pokies-people1/help-spread-the-word
I was sitting in my doctor’s waiting room with my broken ankle when I came across a lovely magazine ad. Written in first person, ‘from Madame Flavour to you’. She tells a simple story about her journey to Sri Lanka and around Australia, following in the footsteps of her mother. We learn she has a husband and a little girl. This is a woman passionate about tea, and curious about other people’s tea drinking stories. She even says ‘It’s only tea, I know. But small things can make a difference.’
It’s a really lovely story, very well written. Personal and conversational, it doesn’t sound like an ad at all. It was so nice to read such well-written copy, I visited her website where the delightful journey continues. If you have a product that needs gentle conversational copy to build a rapport between you and your potential customer, make sure you check out www.madameflavour.com
If you’re a regular reader, you’d know that most of my blogs seem to be rants about rubbish advertising. Because there’s a lot of it out there. But every now and then I see something and say ‘Wow, wish I’d written that…’ The latest ad in this category is one of the TVCs for Jeep. The one with the line ‘Jeep. The ultimate search engine.’
This is a great example of borrowing a term that we usually associate with something else (computers) and using it in a unique way to get our own message across. Nice. Simple. Clever. Memorable. Wow, wish I’d written that…
As a small business owner, I know what it’s like to be bombarded with sales pitches from all and sundry. The question you’re left asking yourself is ‘Where exactly should I spend my money?’
The newspaper?
A local directory?
Yellow Pages online?
GoogleAds?
A bigger better sign?
Letterbox drops?
A corporate brochure?
Leaflets or handouts?
A function or market?
Somewhere else?
And who do you believe?
That Email Marketing expert?
The SMS specialist?
The Web Dude?
The SEO guy?
The latest social media PR?
A Current Affair?
OMG! It’s all so confusing. And exhausting.
Many of my small business clients come to me because they need help to work out the best place to reach their target audience. For SkinThings, the answer was local. Manager Nicole Hepple realised that most of her clients were from the local area, so repeated exposure in the local Messenger Newspaper – both ads and editorial – worked extremely well. But there’s no one right answer – each business is different. Another coaching client was horrified to realise they were spending well over $20,000 in all the wrong places (EVERY YEAR!!!) when what was really needed was half a dozen personalised letters and a quick trip to Queensland!
So, before you hand over any of your hard-earned dollars, it’s well worth sitting down with someone and working out your strategy first. That’s why I designed my Ad Coaching sessions – specially for SMEs who don’t have the budget for an ad agency, but still want some strategy and good creative work. Book a coaching session with me and not only will you get loads of direction, some great ideas and a plan, you’ll also get a free eBook with 75 pages of tips and tricks to (hopefully) help you stay out of trouble. www.copywithcream.com.au/services/coaching
Sometimes even the big guys don’t get it quite right. Here’s a bank that has the best logo colour combination for visibility that you can possibly have – black and yellow – and what do they do? Go white on yellow. I’m sorry, what were they THINKING??? You can’t see white on yellow. Honestly, this ain’t rocket science.
Then, to add insult to injury, they came up with a very clever headline which says…Zero. On an ad at the bus stop. That people are zooming past at (usually over) the speed limit. The only people who will be able to read that headline and the text below (which probably explains what they are talking about in that really bad headline) are the people sitting at the bus stop. Who may or may not be their target audience. I doubt it. All in all, a massive waste of money. If I was the boss, I would be kicking some serious butt.
Posted in advertising, branding, colours, copywriting, design, logo, signage
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Tagged bad design, bad headline, bad use of colours, bus stop ad, Commonwealth Bank
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From the looks of it, decades. I recently saw a British Paints ad with Rolf Harris in it. He looks a lot older than he did when he starred in the first British Paints ads, but that’s fair enough…they dated from the 1970s.
This is a great example of the old nugget….’If it aint’ broke, don’t fix it.’ Many times, I see clients and companies ditch a campaign, or a logo or a concept while it’s still got legs. Yes, it sounds crazy, so why would they do this? Lots of reasons. New blood, new manager, new ad agency trying to prove themselves, or simply people in the company getting bored with what they’ve got. I say, if it’s still working, keep it as long as you can.
The public are often just getting used to your logo or your look after a few years, and then if you go and change it, it’s just a massive waste of time, money and it’s crazy too. For an example of what works well, take a look at Coca-cola. They’ve only had a few very minor changes to their logo in well over 100 years. You can recognize a Coke logo in Arabic. That’s the power of good branding.
This billboard is a fabulous example of a very strong visual and a strong message. Trouble is, it’s such a disturbing image, your instinct is not to look at it. In the same vein as ‘any publicity is good publicity’, thinking that ‘any attention is good attention’ is a big mistake.
The Quit ad with the guy coughing his guts up, the drinking ads with people spewing into the toilets, this MAC ad with the matchsticks in the eyes, the old Lay’s chips ads with the guy in hospital with the freakish head, plus spiders, cockroaches blah blah blah… people just don’t want to look at them. And if people are turning the page or turning the channel or turning away from your billboard, you have failed.
Last week, I was talking to my painter, Charlie. He was thinking about signwriting his vehicle, but since he was going to be selling his van in 12 months he wondered whether it was really worth it. I kicked into brainstorming mode immediately… which sounded a bit like this…
How much signwriting did he want done?
How much would it cost?
Was his van clean?
Did it have any dents?
Did he drive like a maniac?
Charlie’s answer’s were…
Not much, just basic script lettering.
A mate would give him a good price.
No, his van was dirty.
No dents.
No, he drove nicely.
Well, I thought it was a no-brainer. I recommended Charlie get just the back of his van done. The back of a vehicle is the most important and often overlooked space. Think about it – when you’re stuck in traffic, what are you left staring at? The back of the vehicle in front. You have a potential mobile billboard on your bum with a captive audience behind you, too. The side of your vehicle doesn’t get nearly as much exposure.
So, Charlie could get the lettering done for a few hundred dollars, then keep driving nicely and start washing his van. He should recoup the money outlaid within a job or so. The rest is icing. But, you may be asking, ‘who writes down phone numbers off a vehicle?’ Lots of people. I once asked my workshop participants for a show of hands for who kept a piece of paper and pen on the passenger seat for this very reason. Almost all the women put their hands up. And as you know, it’s the ladies who organise the tradies…
There once was a time when simply having a web presence put you way ahead of the pack. But not any more. Today, not only are all your competitors online with a website, your customers’ behaviour has changed as well. According to my SEO guy, Peter Cornish from Succinct Ideas, people today refer to a helluva lot more websites before making a purchase than they used to.
Twelve months ago, people would check out 3 or 4 websites, today they check out 10!!! Wow! That’s a lot of competition. But there are many ways you can make sure that you get onto their short list. Having some really
great content on your website is a good start.
Does anything about this sign look a bit familiar? Yeah, I thought so too. I doubt that Coke would care very much about this logo infringement, in fact I do think it’s quite clever. However, in business it’s not recommended.
I am occasionally asked by small business people to take information from someone else’s website to put on their own. Sorry, not a good idea. Firstly, it’s copyright and belongs to the author, secondly I believe that Google is now getting very good at recognizing ripped-off content. They also reward original content with higher rankings – and deservedly so.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting ideas from other businesses, and seeing what your competition is doing. I would then advise to create advertising that stands out from the crowd. Don’t be an also-ran, do your own thing. You want to be noticed, don’t you?
