Tom Asacker

David Ogilvy on advertising

"It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea."

A former client forwarded me the following video, which was created by a 19-year-old Canadian, and asked for my thoughts.  Take a look.  And then read how I responded.

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My response: I think it's a great example of citizen-created content.  It demonstrates the passion and creativity of an amateur (btw, the root of amateur is lover, to love).  It's also an exemplar of marketing communication done right.  It weaves information and entertainment together to both engage and educate.  Agencies could definitely learn a thing or two from this talented young woman.

That being said, it won't do a thing to advance the standing of, and increase memberships in, U.S. credit unions.  Why not?  Two reasons:

1.  It fails to address the biggest consumer adoption issue; namely that most people don't realize that they can become a member of a credit union; and

2. The differences illustrated in the video are not apparent in real life.  Most credit unions look, sound, and feel like a bank.  And you know the old adage about looking and acting like a duck, right?

The funny thing is that credit unions are trying to look like banks to overcome issue #1. Some even refer to themselves as a bank. But that only serves to weaken their collective "brand" and force them to compete head-to-head with banks.  Can you say Catch-22?

Paris Hilton on marketing

"I am a marketing genius."

Why do many people have a strong aversion to marketing and marketers?  Well, there's Paris Hilton.  And things like this.  And things like the following, which I received unsolicited in a recent email:

Siegel+Gale Introduces Eyeopener™ Brand Decision Analyzer.  Invaluable New Research Tool Helps Companies Make Real-Time Brand Decisions and Reliably Predict Results.  Predicts Return on Brand Investment…Simply, Quickly, and Efficiently.

Or . . . perhaps the lack of sun has simply put me in a dark and cynical mood.

Stephen Garcia on popular opinion

"What we think others think greatly influences our own personal thoughts, feelings and behavior."

You knew that, right?  But here's something that you may not know.  According to Professor Garcia, "An opinion is likely to be more widely shared the more different people express it. But surprisingly, hearing one person express an opinion repeatedly also leads to the conclusion that the opinion is more widespread relative to hearing the same opinion expressed only once."

In a study recently published in The Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, Garcia and other researchers at the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and Virginia Tech had about 1,000 students read fake opinions on various subjects.  The studies found that an opinion is more likely to be assumed to be the majority opinion when multiple group members express their opinion. However, they also showed that hearing just one person express the same opinion multiple times had nearly the same effect on a listener's perception of the opinion being popular as hearing multiple people state the same opinion.

The researchers also found that when people have prior knowledge about where a specific group stands on an issue, they initially are able to discount the effects of repetition. However, after a time delay, an opinion repeated often enough by just one individual may cause others to believe it's true, even when they know the prevailing opinion may be contrary.

The bottom line is that we're interested in knowing what others like us think and believe.  And we often assume wide spread belief based on an insignificant amount of information. But, we need to receive that information multiple times during different occasions for it to have an effect.

Bill Cosby on the first law of advertising

“The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.”

There’s joy in Gotham City today, and more than a little pride, but none of it should be felt by Super Bowl XLII advertisers or their agencies.  Sunday night’s performance was disappointing and instantly forgettable.  From heart-warming Budweiser Clydesdales, a viewer created Doritos ad, and Justin Timberlake to Salesgenie.com’s dim-witted stereotypes, another GoDaddy tease, and more stupid cavemen (that’s redundant, right?), it was déjà vu all over again.

Many faithfully followed Cosby’s first law and were delightfully vague: Budweiser’s rejected Hank in a “Rocky”-like tale, a bunch of lizards doing the Michael Jackson “Thriller” dance, Shaq on a pony, and Doritos’ undiscovered rising stars.  Others broke his law and tried to weave in a promise, albeit in uninspiring ways: E*Trade’s talking and spitting up baby, CarrerBuilder.com’s gross beating heart, Toyota’s ferocious sleeping badgers spot, and Garmin’s Napoleonic trek (Is Garmin a French company?)

A few went directly for the promise, forgoing the creative all together; like DCU’s loans and Claritin’s non-drowsy allergy medicine. But the majority followed tired and true recipes; vague and distasteful (a unibrowed, peanut scented snacker); simply distasteful (a fat guy strapping jumper cables to his nipples); or on point and implausible (It’s Marilyn Monroe, Shakira and Madonna’s hair that tells their story? Umm, no it’s not.  Or . . . Hyundai’s ad for its new Genesis luxury car will strike fear in the hearts of marketers at Mercedes, BMW and Lexus?  Puh-lease.)

I could go on and on, but I won’t. It was hard enough trying to watch the sophomoric and formulaic ads during the game.  I most surely don’t want to relive them again today.  And I guess that’s the point, isn’t it.  A one-time, $3 million investment in 30 seconds worth of eye candy should elicit feelings that we want to replay in our minds and in our hearts. It should prime a network of mental associations for something desirable; something valuable. Something we want to investigate further or share with our friends.

A lot of people consumed a lot of food and alcohol last night (and some of us even ate some crow).  We also consumed a lot of advertising.  But, like the junk food available at most Super Bowl parties, just because we consumed the brands’ advertising doesn’t mean we’ll make them part of our lives.  Yes, there were a few worthy creations (Coke's dueling parade balloons was my favorite).  But overall, this year’s Super Bowl ad feast was an expensive smorgasbord void of brand-building value.  Here’s hoping that Super Bowl XLIII fares better for marketers and for my humble pie-eating New England Patriots.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on criticism

"The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized."

In keeping with the tradition of marketing-types blogging about this weekend's Super Bowl ads, I'll be posting my completely objective, non-biased views over at my friends at AdPulp on Monday.  C'mon over and join the fray!

P.S. Any Giants fan interested in a little friendly wager, let me know before kickoff. :)