I used to be quite a fan of Meet the Press and other Sunday morning talk shows. At the time, Orrin Hatch was a favored guest, and boy, he was ALWAYS on. So I stopped watching. I also really liked David Brinkley, and of course, he passed on. Now, I only watch the programs occasionally. What hasn’t changed is the advertisers and type of advertising. Sunday morning public affairs shows have image advertising, rarely retail. Back in the day, a huge advertiser on Sunday was the Archer Daniel Midlands company. Or BASF (we don’t make the plastic we make the plastic better). This past Sunday, I noticed image advertising for Boeing. Clearly, viewers are not shopping for their very own 737. These commercials are mostly designed to promote the company as a do-gooder or a well run company and really, are designed to appeal to the company’s own stakeholders (employees, shareholders and other internal audiences). It is a very unique segment of advertising. The idea also is that policy wonks and other influential people tune in to these Sunday morning shows and these image commercials are meant to create name recognition for these companies. Of course, at some point, policy wonks will be involved in an airline requisition and may have to choose between Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. I wonder if these image campaigns truly influence these types of choices. After all, there is a large difference between choosing Jif Peanut Butter instead of Skippy and deciding to buy a Boeing 727 over a MD-80.

Today, I picked up new glasses at For Eyes. The name is brilliant. And the tag is great: The store for people who can’t see spending a lot for glasses.  I love this! Clever but not at the expense of making sense. And, I really like their ads…generally funny. Plus, I got good service and what I hope are a nice pair of glasses at a reasonable price.

Tag lines are not slogans, although they could be.  Slogans can serve as tag lines, as in Nike’s “Just do it.” Tag lines help the advertiser define the service or product beyond its name or the headline on the ad. As you can imagine, they can be hugely important. Today, an ad for a mattress store caught my eye. It is called Sleepy’s. Not sure I care for the name, but the tag line “The Mattress Professionals” just didn’t do it for me. In fact, Mattress Professionals would be a better name for a store. Sleepy’s is a fairly “unprofessional” name. But they want you to think they know what they are talking about. I think professionals is the not best choice…it doesn’t match. I guess “Sleep experts” must be taken…that would have been better. Or “we know mattresses.”  In any case, to me this illustrates a disparity between a brand name and its brand identity.  You want to keep those separate.

Please keep in mind that I have never been to a Sleepy’s store and this is just a commentary on a particular element of a particular ad.

Any thoughts?

In the end, consumer behavior  is stimulated either by needing something or wanting something. Guess where marketing communications plays the bigger part?  As I mentioned some posts earlier, Comcast has some very funny commercials. It doesn’t make me WANT to be a Comcast customer but I am a Comcast customer. Why? Because, at the time, they were the only cable tv alternative available to me.  I NEEDED to sign up with them. Yet no amount of advertising is going to make me get their voice package. Why? Because I already have a telephone service I am satisfied with, so I have no NEED or WANT.

This need vs. want dichotomy explains why you never see advertisements for certain items. How often do you see an ad for plain rice? Never. Uncle Ben’s Wild Rice? More often. You probably need plain rice, but you have to want wild rice. The whole advertising business is built around the idea of creating desire. That is the AIDA theory–Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. An ad is supposed to catch your attention and then create a want for something, which will lead you to spend money on something. It’s not all nefarious–charities do this to. Who hasn’t seen pictures of starving children in Africa and not wanted to help?

Successful marcomm will stimulate a want. We get what we need anyway. You’ll want to try new brands, new items, new services, all because the advertiser has convinced you that they have some unique or special attribute.

Viagra sponsored the limited-commercial edition of tonight’s ABC News. On the one hand, this makes sense. Evening news generally skews toward an older demographic. On the other hand, ABC News has a new in-depth series, on what it’s like to be 21 in different places. So how does this make sense for Viagra?

Viagra, an ED drug certainly faces competition (I could pun here, but…) from Levitra and Cialis. All three drugs spend lots of ad dollars on high production value tv commercials. I am not sure which drug has the biggest market share, but here’s another example of marketing driving the drug companies.

Well…the flavor of course! But how do you even try a beer you haven’t tasted before? Recommendations from friends and bartenders, magazines and ADVERTISING. Case in point, Stella Artois, a Belgian beer with a long history. If you’ve ever gone to an independent or art house movie theater, you’ve probably seen Stella Artois advertised. These commercials usually have no talking, and feature Old World settings. Generally, the idea of most of them is that you would always rather have Stella or that you won’t give up your Stella, no matter what. I saw one on cable television recently. It showed two robbers who have just dug their way to a pot of money. They toast with Stella Artois, and while they are doing this, the pot of money catches fire. For a split second they consider using the beer to put out the fire, but think better of it. Moral: no amount of money is better than a nice cold Stella Artois.

Demonstrating the power of persuasion, I was faced with a choice of beers recently that included Stella. I had to try it. After all, they claim it would make me happier than a pot of money. (It was fine, I would drink it again, in case you are wondering.)

Bottom line is that this advertising is effective because it has a very specific point shown in outrageous ways. It also uses the images to convey a European/historical feel for Stella Artois. In my opinion, this type of advertising is far more persuasive than the American beer advertising we see for the big companies like Budweiser and Michelob. In any case, the taste of those beers speaks for itself.

Marketing really has driven the drug business says Melody Petersen in the new book Our Daily Meds. Review can be found in today’s Washington Post, link here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/03/AR2008040303377.html

Drug advertising, by its nature, is full of pitfalls. Obviously, drug companies that advertise are pushing their medication. One problem is that many of the medications are expensive (generally, they are still under patent and not available in the generic). Another problem is that advertising, even with all the small type, can’t address all the pros and cons of drugs. We’ve all seen or read the ads for drugs, “which may cause side effects such as nausea, headaches, drowsiness, lethargy, cancer, etc.” Also, patients are now armed with the brand name of a drug and can inquire about it directly to their doctors.  Drug companies spend millions on research and development, so they then spend millions on marketing to make sure the drug sells before its patent expires.  But the biggest problem with this massive marketing is that not all of these drugs are safe or effective

The latest drug to be exposed is Vytorin, a cholesterol medication. According to news reports, studies have found that Vytorin is no more effective than other cholesterol-lowering drugs available in the generic. Remember, generic is usually cheaper. Schering-Plough, the makers of Vytorin, have actually had layoffs and a reorg. However, today, there was a full two-page spread in the Washington Post for Vytorin. On the one hand, I understand why they do it. On the other hand, it seems like they think that readers of the Washington Post would dismiss the findings of the study simply because of a large ad in the newspaper. The ad does not address the findings, but really, how could it? Vytorin’s USP (unique selling proposition) is that it addresses two sources of cholesterol. So this ad continues to tout this two-prong approach even though it is not better than statins at lowering cholesterol.

We are a free society and a market-driven one at that. However, marketing for drugs that have potential complications or don’t work as well as advertised does need to be regulated. Public health is at stake. And I, for one, do not think the bottom line trumps health and wellbeing ever.

Have you heard of Yael Naim? No? You probably have heard her song New Soul. Let’s say if you watch any TV at all, and have seen the commercials for MacBook Air then you have heard it. It seems Steve Jobs personally chose her song for the commercial and it has now propelled the song, and Naim, into new popularity. Anyway, her song is catchy and has a very specific sound that has helped brand MacBook even further. Apple has been using music in their commercials for a long time–sometimes using previously lesser known artists like Naim, and sometimes using megabands like U2. Their strategy seems to be working. If you ever walk past an Apple store, you will notice that it is NEVER empty. People respond to music and when U2 appears in a commercial for ITunes, people listen.

But how many advertisers can afford to pay U2? Not many. So is this a level playing field? No way! For instance, there are many MP3 players out there and the most popular is the Ipod. I would argue that some MP3 players are better or have more features than an Ipod (and are certainly less expensive) yet Ipod rules. In my opinion, this boils down to having Apple, its advertising agency, and a big budget behind it.

Update to post below–Advertisers are turning to gaming online. Read this article in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/business/media/01adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin