Where Did The Ads Go?
In the past, Dell was unique because you could go online and customize a computer to your specifications. As a matter of fact, you can STILL do that…BUT did you KNOW that? NO, because they don't remind you that they can do that. You probably also didn't know that Dell enhanced their presence on QVC and that they added Alienware's high end gaming PC's to their arsenal. The U.S. military has a contract with Dell as well and updates all their PC's every 2 years on the average, perhaps as a direct result of their market saturation at the height of Dell's popularity They don't remind you that it was their company and founder Michael Dell that revolutionized the home computer industry by simply catering to consumer needs and streamlining the production process. The point is that once you have a successful marketing campaign, you don't stop. You alter your approach, but YOU DO NOT STOP ADVERTISING.
As a lovely freebie to those of you who read this blog, let me just add that you no longer need to spend a lot of money on a computer. You can purchase a bare-bones PC at Best Buy or another convenient retail chain for around $300 brand new, and it will do everything that 80% of you need it to do. The only thing it will lack is high end processing and graphics capabilities that gamers require and it won't have the software or maybe even the hardware to support a media software intensive job. Aside from those two things, if all you use your computer for is to type the occasional document and surf the web, a cheap one will do just fine. You're welcome. 🙂
Fact Where There’s Only Fiction
As we continue our pursuit to set a new bar for our industry, I too relate to the main protagonist in this series who is “on a mission to civilize”. And I suppose it should not be surprising when people we encounter are confused by this approach, but it is a little saddening when someone doesn't understand your business model when you say, “we are not looking to take advantage of you”. I kid you not; people can't quite seem to get how we could operate with this mentality. It's an explanation I'm all too ready to share every time I meet with a prospective client.
Competitive rates and good work do not need to be at odds with one another. At the same time, just because something costs a lot, doesn't necessarily mean it's the best. Take a page from the creators of the Newsroom and give yourself a second look at the processes of those around you. In business – notice quality of content and attention to detail, these things are most important. Money is how we all survive; yes, but don't judge a book by what it costs. And, furthermore, just because people aren't talking about it yet, doesn't mean they won't… it could simply be because they haven't heard of it yet. Let's civilize up folks and start getting things done right.
The Foreign Nature of Foreign Marketing
Case in point… The first advertisement that stood out to me in Italy was a HUGE ad for shopping mall outlet stores (keeping in mind that the entire ad was in English – which is a completely different topic altogether) it was on a drop cloth, suspended in the beautiful San Marco Square in Venice. It was brought to my attention due to my mother's complaints that the gigantic poster was taking away from the beauty of the square. She asked why anyone, in their right mind, would drape an enormous ad over the front of such a beautiful and historic building… I then noticed, as we looked closer, it appeared they were doing some restoration work on the building, so the facade was already covered. But this brings be to my point… the advertisers took this opportunity to use the already covered space and pay, what I can only assume would have been an exorbitant amount of money, to place their “English targeted” ad in the most touristy spot in Venice. Good show indeed – but interesting tactics – no room for your regular billboards there. With all that being said, I actually found myself almost ignoring the ad due to its size alone. And due to the fact that the square is so beautiful, my eyes were hardly drawn to the gaudy draping down at the end.
One effort that did catch my eye, however, was a picture hanging in one of the restaurants. It was a splendid example of a company using the surroundings to impart their message, in an entertaining and intriguing way – instead of an 'in your face' large draping that covers up half a building side. The black and white photograph showed San Marco Square (known for its many pigeons) with the large words Coca Cola, somehow shaped on the ground in the middle of the square. It was only when I looked closer, that the words were in fact spelled out by, none other than, the pigeons themselves! Coca Cola, cleverly, must have spread out bird feed so precisely, to entice these birds to do their flash mob style bidding. Now, that is resourceful advertising. No wonder Coke is the only American made soft drink I saw when in Italy…
Stay tuned for more observations from abroad…
Foreign Ad Market
As I head to Italy – I will be on the lookout for all sorts of traditional and nontraditional media expressions and impressions alike. I'm looking forward to report on my findings, so as this initial set-up may seem short, the American market will get biweekly updates from me abroad as I observe, react and report on how those Europeans do it differently.
Stay tuned for an exciting adventure through the World of Advertising!
A Flawed System (part 1 of 2)
As I’m writing this, an advertisement for Barack Obama has just aired on the television, condemning the fiscal policies employed by Mitt Romney during his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts. The commercial uses visual aids like bar graphs and pie charts to compare the state of the economy before Romney as well as under his leadership. The advertisement cites web sites such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the source of their data. Can you trust the data that you read though? Surely, a government entity like the Bureau of Labor Statistics would be above the kind of corruption that cynical Americans believe to be commonplace in the daily activities of government officials, right? The truth is that we have altered different statistical models at different times in our history to skew the numbers so that they don’t look as bad as they really are.
How does the Bureau of Labor Statistics gather its data? The short answer is that they use surveys, and because they use surveys a great deal, there is an inherent flaw in employing this method of data collection. First, people are not completely honest about how much they earn. It can be a source of pride or shame for some people, so disclosing that kind of information is a sensitive subject. Second, when you do a survey, your sample size has to be highly randomized to get an accurate sampling of the population. Third, your sample size has to be large enough to extrapolate and make a generalization regarding the remaining population. The Bureau of Labor Statistics acknowledges their payroll survey’s confidence interval is suspect due to the admitted lack of randomization and built-in bias. Recently, the BLS has adjusted its bias factor. Instead of merely adding 150,000 jobs per month to account for new job creation and no job loss, the BLS have now accounted for that possibility and numbers have ranged from -321,000 to +270,000 in past years (Williams, 2004).
In order to better understand unemployment in the United States and the formula used in the past and the one used now, it would be beneficial to understand the concept of what exactly a discouraged worker is. A discouraged worker is any physically able person with the will to work, but has given up searching for a job because of the perception that there are none to be had. As much as I like President Clinton, it was during his tenure that he removed these people from the unemployment formula. Clinton removed all discouraged workers who had been out of work for more than a year and did not include those people in the data at all. Not only did Clinton shore up his unemployment numbers by omitting these unemployed people, but he also lowered the survey sample size from 60,000 to 50,000 or a 16.7 percent change. Before George W. Bush took office, the survey sample size had reverted to its original sample numbers, presumably to make Clinton look as though he were the one responsible for higher employment numbers and less poverty, leaving Bush to take the blame for economic downturn.
Please don’t get the impression that I’m trying to throw the Bureau of Labor Statistics under the bus, I’m not. They have the monumental task of accounting for statistical data in a manner in which they are directed to collect it. The only problem with the BLS is that they don’t have any way of collecting the kind of data that can be representative of the entire nation, often through no fault of their own. Perhaps the majority of the population isn’t ready to know the real unemployment numbers; maybe the outlook is just too bleak. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.