Author: stephanielai

Way back in my first post I talked about those stick-in-your-head slogans from ad campaigns, and now in chapter 17 I’ve finally found out what they’re called: unique selling propositions (USP)!

Anyway, I really liked the class where we got to see some very creative outdoor ads, so to end off here are some more ads that I like. I became aware of these ads at “Bad Ad Good Ad”, a simple but interesting blog by Aaron Goldman, a CMO.

1.  Windows Vista

I haven’t heard the greatest about Vista (bugs, uninspiring, etc). This ad tries to sell Windows Vista as a fun, entertaining operating system. This message was a surprise for me, since those Mac vs. PC ads have always portrayed Mac as the “fun” choice and PC as the “stodgy” choice. Because of those ads I have the impression that Windows is for professionals (work), while the Mac OS are for more young, “artsy” people.

That Windows would spend money to try and appeal to a different market (that is already cornered by Apple/Mac) is interesting. I guess Windows was trying to rescue their boring, no-fun image by running this imaginative ad. It certainly caught my attention – imagine living in a bouncy castle.

2. Bic razors

I like this outdoor ad because it’s simple. The white background of the billboard brings to mind an idea of clean smoothness, while making the Bic logo in the corner stand out more. The only downsides I can see to this ad are maintenance and possibly extra cost. Someone would have to cut the grass once in a while, and Bic might have had to rent not only the billboard, but also the field. But hey, the ad is eye-catching and cuts through all the noise!

I’m also wondering where this billboard is – on the side of a highway, or near a rural farm area? Could Bic have also put this ad in a city park, or something like that? But parks usually keep all of their grass nice and trimmed, so the visual impact would be lost.

The other day we talked about noise in the communication process. The textbook defines noise as not only the clutter of competing messages, but also as a lack of clarity in the message or the choice of a wrong channel.

At first I started thinking about noise in the normal context – for example, how many ads during a commercial break do I really pay attention to? How many billboards do I actually see or remember on my daily commute? Then I thought noise could be expanded to even more examples.

Take books. E-books and Kindle are the way of the future, right? But for me there’s still nothing like curling up with a paperback or the solid heft of a hardcover. Most of the time, I pick books to read not because I’ve heard of the author or title, but because I was intrigued by the book cover. I’d never considered book covers as a form of marketing, but I now I think they definitely are!

What a cover does is try to communicate the essence of the story. The sender is the author, who created the book. The sender has to work with the transmitter, who may be the book cover designer or the publishing agency (or both?). The sender’s message is encoded into a visually-arresting cover design, sent through the print communication channel, and is hopefully decoded properly by potential readers, the receivers.

Noise in this case would be competing books on the shelf, or an unclear message. Feedback may come from book sales figures, or the number of times a book is borrowed, and so on.  

For instance, take the cover of The Brief History of the Dead, written by Kevin Brockmeier, book design by Iris Weinstein. It’s a cool book with a cooler cover – the empty jacket with the hands makes you do a double take, effectively cutting through the “noise” of other books.

What I find interesting too is that popular books that appeal to different receivers also get different covers. The most famous example I can think of now are the Harry Potter covers. When the book is marketed towards children the cover is colourful and fantastic.

The cover marketed towards adults is darker, has one focal point, and most notably has a real photograph of J.K. Rowling on the back instead of Hogwarts. Perhaps kids want to submerge themselves into their favourite fantasy world, but adults be curious to see what the author looks like. Both books have the same content but different encoding approaches. Even the title font is subtly different, though still similar enough for readers to recognize a Harry Potter book when they see one.

I’ve been thinking about the inherent difficulty in translating an ad or campaign across different cultures. Slogans or slang phrases often don’t translate directly into another language. And how would a marketing person who isn’t acquainted with the other language be able to know that the translation is accurate?

For example, my family and I recently watched an Air Canada commercial that was translated into Cantonese. My mom is a Chinese-to-English translator, and she immediately recognized that the translated version of the ad’s slogan was awkwardly phrased and not at all catchy. And since the whole ad was premised on the repetition of that one phrase, the whole ad… tanked.

In another instance, last year my mom translated a print ad for Lansdowne Centre, a mall in Richmond. The heading of the ad was, “Bundle Up in Style: Fall into autumn at Lansdowne  Centre”. I still remember the difficulty she had (while cursing the creativity of the person who came up with the concept) in translating those seemingly simple lines: it was hard to find a phrase in Chinese that captured the subtle meanings of “bundle up”. It was harder to work with the pun of “fall into autumn”. (In Chinese, as far as I know anyway, there is only one common set of characters that means “autumn”.) If she translated the other meaning of “fall”, Chinese readers would wonder why they had to trip over themselves into autumn.    

As the global economy grows, more and more companies will stumble into this translation problem. At best the translated ads would be puzzling; at worse the mistranslation may even be laughable or offensive, ruining the brand’s image. One last (in)famous example: translated into Chinese, Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” unfortunately became “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave”. Shudder!

I was checking out Things and Stuff, my classmate Claire Eagle’s always-interesting blog, and she had one cool post about broccoli. I’ve seen those ads and they made me laugh – however, I’d thought the ad was part of a campaign from broccoli farmers to support their industry (kind of like the baby carrots thing, but without all the packaging). Imagine my surprise when the ad turned out to be an experiment from TVB, proving that “advertising can sell anything”.   

After some reflection I’m not sure if this broccoli ad is the best example for the idea that “advertising can sell anything”. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Anyone who knows a little about healthy eating knows that broccoli is good for you – they might not know about all the nutrients in broccoli, but they’re already aware of its benefits. As a result the ad had to just convince people a little more about broccoli’s value so they’ll actually buy it at the grocery store.

2. Continuing off #1: there’s growing awareness about obesity and other food-related health problems. Eating more fresh vegetables is part of combating these problems. How do we know that the ad caused the increase in broccoli sales, and isn’t just a correlation?

3. Broccoli isn’t “new to the world” – it’s not facing any hurdles preventing its sales apart from the general “I don’t like the taste of it”. What if someone had come up with a product that is not a food, that wouldn’t be familiar to the market? Would clever advertising truly be able to “sell anything”?

4. Broccoli is relatively cheap. I’m not sure if this holds true in other cities, but I know here that if Kin’s has a sale on broccoli, it’s usually the freshest, most amazing broccoli available. As we’ve learned in marketing, new to the world products are usually more expensive – the company has to cover r+d costs and their high marketing costs. If you think of broccoli as a commodity, would non-commodities be able to sell the same way with an ad like “the miracle food”? 

If there’s one thing I’m learning from marketing, it is that customers want to exchange their money for something they value. It’s easy to value the miracle properties of broccoli (I’m a personal fan – there’s nothing like sweet broccoli simply stir-fried with a little garlic); after all, food is essential. However, it’s harder to value something customers don’t know, or don’t relate to.

On Tuesday’s class we did an exercise where we tried to identify parts of logos as fast as possible. I was very surprised by the amount of logos my group was able to identify! After all, these were just parts of logos, but we managed to identify all of the logos correctly except for Vodafone’s (which we thought was part of the Campbell’s soup logo, as befitting university students). The impact of a distinctive colour/style/font is stronger than I thought.

The class got me interested in what makes a logo work, and I came up with some criteria that seemed to apply to most well-known, successful logos. I think that good logos are clean; they express a lot without clutter. I learned this lesson from experience, as once I had to design a logo for a school club. We designers made our initial logo too detailed, and it took some painful editing before that logo could be reproduced on t-shirts without becoming a muddled blob. Another example is Toyota’s logo, which is simply three ovals together: clean lines, simple colours, and through some serious marketing, almost always recognizable.

Another criterion I came up with is that the logo has to be different from logos of close competitors. I was thinking about GlobalTV and CTV, both news channels that cater to British Columbians. Their logos are completely different, even though they’re producing the same product (news). Perhaps if one company is planning to enter a mature category in a market, they’ll have to be careful that their product’s logo design is not too similar to its mature competitors. Unless, of course, the product is a copycat brand!  

I found a useful online article called “The Anatomy of a Logo”, in which it examines in much greater thought why some logos work. What I found particularly interesting is how companies have to be careful of colours.

Some colours and shades that show up digitally may be very hard to reproduce in print or on merchandise. Colour meanings could also vary from culture to culture; for example, I know that traditionally Chinese people wear white to funerals, not black. The article also noted rather wryly that while red is always an appealing primary colour, it is “taboo in financial communities”. Of course finance companies wouldn’t want to evoke thoughts of “being in the red”!

I work part-time at a fairly large clothing chain. Ever since I started comm 296, marketing has always been at the back of my mind when I work – after all, as a sales associate, selling is my main job.

I am acutely aware that I am selling the brand through how I look and what I do. Keeping the store clean and the music at a decent level are also situational factors that may positively influence customers to buy. I’ve categorized what I do during my shifts into basically two things: keeping the merchandise/store looking good (which can be extremely hard during the mad holiday rushes), and keeping our customers feeling good.

So anyway, our store made budget for the quarter, our racks and shelves are looking good, and no one’s yelling, so they must be good. Everything seems on track. Then our district manager – the big boss for the BC stores – walks in and asks us why the heck our sale items were on the front table.

We explained that we made a simple strategic decision to put some sales items out front, where passing shoppers would see the eye-catching “for sale” signs and come in for a look. That table really draws customers in, and once they’re in us sales associates can work our magic.

We also (cunningly?) placed the rest of our sale items at the back of the store – so customers would have to walk through all of our merchandise before they reached the holy land. (Now that I think about it, nearly every store’s sale section is in the back… is this why?) I thought this was a pretty smart place/distribution strategy.

But wait! Our store seemed to have committed a Visual Merchandising Crime – i.e., we apparently weren’t adhering to this season’s visual codes (highlighting certain colours, showcasing non-discounted items, for example) with our front sales table.

Well, okay. So the following day (Saturday) we changed the front table to comply with the fall colour and style codes, and – I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not – the store was absolutely dead. This was on a Halloween weekend. Practically no one came into the store in the morning, and by 2pm we’d only made maybe $800 (a major disaster).       

I understand that consistency is hugely important in a store chain. In fact, I advocate visual standards. I obsessively fold corners to 90-degree perfection, tuck in every price tag, and pop every mock-neck collar for added “character”. As I later realized from comm 296, these are all part of the situational factors that may prompt more people to buy.

But I feel that store managers should be able to have more power over their own store, especially if they’ve “proven” themselves with making budgets quarter after quarter, as our store has. We’re located right beside another clothing store known for selling inexpensive clothing. We know our clientele’s demographics, and there’s nothing they like more or appreciate than a sale.

There’s also an art to dressing a mannequin attractively, as there is in positioning racks. Shelves that are too close together, or racks that are too tightly packed, will both deter customers from looking, touching, and therefore buying. Anyone who has ever worked in retail will know how much work actually goes into what customers simply see when they walk in. So I guess it stung a little that we still failed our visual standards check.

But whatevs. Our store made budget, so that ought to placate the bosses.

Over at Kai’s, fellow 296 blogger Kai Gan’s page, I’ve found several really cool posts about national and personal branding. Before going to university I’ve never really thought of branding myself – isn’t a “brand” just for products and companies? Now that I am older (aaahh, high school…those were the good ol’ lazy days) I know better.

Kai talked about a country’s brand, a topic which I found especially interesting. She talked about kimchi being so integral to Korea’s food culture that it’s become part of Korea’s brand. I’d never thought of it that way. When I think of Korea, I do think of kimchi – and I also think of darn good figure skaters, snow, and Korean bbq. Maybe those are all part of its national brand.

Where did I get those examples from? I remembered that Korea had fantastic figure skaters from the 2010 Winter Olympics (a major marketing showcase for participant countries if there ever was one). And on the VisitKorea website, Korea’s official tourism organization, the first picture I see is of a snow-covered temple.

How do different cultures’ brands translate? When non-Chinese people think of Chinese culture, what comes into mind? Wontons, chopsticks, dragon dances, calligraphy, good at math? I don’t consider those things part of my brand, yet I am Chinese – are chopsticks and good at math also part of my brand in a way that I’m not aware of? (Then maybe I should clarify: although I can wield some crazy chopsticks, I am no good at math.)

I was browsing through The Michel Fortin Blog on copywriting and marketing when I found out about a product I’d never heard of before: an electronic cigarette. Whoever thought up this design was very creative – I would never think of linking “electronic” with smoking – and I thought it was all a scam at first.

In a recent post Mr. Fortin talks about his discovery of “Green Smoke”, an electronic cigarette that apparently doesn’t have tar or emit smoke. Users of the e-cig still get their nicotine kick, but without all the bad breath/smoke inhalation that comes from regular cigarettes. With these changes, the Green Smoke site claims that their product is better for the environment, cheaper in the long run, and is great for social gatherings (no odours, don’t have to step outside, etc).

I’m interested by this product not because I’m a smoker, but because of its implications. Michael Fortin calls the e-cig “an alternative solution to committed, long-​​terms smokers”. I agree that the e-cig would be targeted at long-term smokers who just can’t quit. First time smokers, or those “experimenting”, wouldn’t go and buy a basic e-cig “starter kit” that retails for around $139. The e-cig is handled like a normal cigarette, and for many smokers the physical and oral habit of dragging on something is also very addictive.  

First, I thought that these e-cigs might motivate people to quit, acting as a bridging step between smoking a normal cigarette and, say, a nicotine patch. Then I had second thoughts: if the e-cig is so safe and appealing, smokers may turn to it as a way to cut down on the health risks without actually quitting their nicotine addiction. 

The Green Smoke has a few things going for it. First, it’s targeting a significant part of the population (according to a 2005 poll, around 21% of the US population smokes, which is around 45.1 million). Secondly, it is a novel idea – I don’t think I’ve heard of any other product like it. Thirdly, it has a large online presence – it got itself advertised on Michel Fortin’s blog, which boasts “52,139 readers”!  

And finally the e-cig is calling itself “Green Smoke”. Right now going “green” is a big trend – consumers on the lookout for new green ideas might just click on “Green Smoke” out of curiosity, like I did!

I was browsing through some ads online, and I was continually amazed by the creativity in many of them. I was interested to see that many of the ads in a website/blog’s “most creative ads” collections have been photoshopped/digitally altered. Outstanding ads from ten, twenty years ago were probably just as creative, but in a different way. New technology has given ad agencies a new tool to create visually-surprising, attention-grabbing ads.

For example, this Sony VAIO ad exaggerates the idea that their laptops/notebooks are light enough to fly away on the wind like paper. This “light” claim surprised me, because I have several friends with VAIOs that are not particularly easy on the back (perhaps they own different models). The well-dressed businessman is caught in a dramatic, slow-motion pose, watching in consternation as his laptop floats away from him.

For me, the strategic placement of a private plane in the background only highlights the implication that this man is important, and possibly wealthy. This ad is saying to me, ‘real, important professionals use the Sony VAIO – it’s so lightweight, you’ll hardly notice it when you’re carrying it around’.

I’m thinking about how this ad was created. It looks like the actor was in a photograph, but was his papers part of the picture? Or did Photoshop whizzes add the papers (and presumably the laptop) on the computer afterwards? The ad looks like a composite picture too – it’s likely the mountains, plane, and businessman were all separate pictures. With my untrained eyes I can’t really tell, and this only attests to the quality and possibilities of digital manipulation. 

I also wonder where Sony will place this ad – possibly in business magazines or similar journals. Although lightweight laptops will also appeal to students and other target populations, this ad is clearly aimed at the young professional. The emphasis of the ad does not seem to be on the laptop as a whole; rather, it highlights one trait of the laptop.

So by the end of this ad I don’t really know that much more about the Sony VAIO, apart from its apparent propensity to blow away! I guess running through a whole list of technical specifications in an ad would put any reader to sleep, so finding one or two traits that differentiates “your” product from a competitor’s is a key to creating effective ads.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes comic strips are one of my few, constant loves.

 (If you can’t see the comic very well, here Calvin is messing with market research by giving a magazine reader’s survey outrageous data. August 23, 1995, by Watterson.)

 Not many people know this, or would be interested in knowing this. If you’ve never experienced the magic of Calvin’s world, borrow any paperback collection from the library now! (It doesn’t matter if you’re six years old or forty, if you have any sense of humour you’ll chuckle. Then again, if you have no sense of humour, humour me and go away.)

I’m not alone in my madness either: my sister and I go around quoting entire passages verbatim to each other. But what do comics have to do with a marketing blog? You’ll remember I’ve mentioned that “not many people know” of my Calvin and Hobbes fanaticism. Why not? It’s because most people who don’t know the strip associate Watterson’s creation only through unauthorized, bootlegged versions of Calvin, such as car stickers of Calvin urinating on various logos.

Those stickers are not legitimate, and definitely not in the spirit of the comics. I certainly don’t want to be associated with those stickers, which mar the wonder and creativity of Calvin’s imagination. Sometimes I wonder: if Calvin and Hobbes had been commercially licensed/controlled, would such bootlegged merchandise have found a foothold? Or is the argument that as long as there are brand names, there will be knock-offs?  

Mr. Watterson had always flatly refused to allow his comics and characters to be commercialized, so that’s why you’ll never find a stuff plushie of Hobbes. His characters would tell their own story in their original medium – that of print media and book collections. His refusal to let his characters be marketed is a striking contrast to other comic strips. For example, Charles Schultz’s Peanuts has a main website where you can go to the “Snoopy Store” and get t-shirts and mugs and buttons.

I guess if you look at this whole debate over “should I or should I not allow my characters to be commercialised and turned into faded, plastic renditions of themselves?” from a financial viewpoint… then Peanuts definitely has the upper hand. The Peanuts comic strip is literally a vast empire of television specials and theme parks, and Wikipedia states that it’s earned over $1 billion from its comics and merchandise.

This is what marketing and merchandising has done for Peanuts: everyone over the world knows Snoopy and the permanently unsuccessful Charlie Brown. Not many people my age, however, recognize Spaceman Spiff (one of Calvin’s many alter egos) – which is a shame.

As interesting as such marketing strategies are for comic strips, they wouldn’t seem to fit Calvin and Hobbes. Then again, I’m hopelessly and idealistically biased.