| |
February 22
More on advertising since I've been bitten by the marketing and advertising bug, and have shared some thoughts on how the Apple commercial fails, and how the Microsoft commercials succeed to people in recent converstations. The MacJihad love to compare their current marketing support to the Intel bunny-suit ads which admittedly are hokey, but are at least in high-enough rotation to build brand equity. It's interresting that they stay the hell away from Microsoft's ads though. The reason, perhaps, is they're solid. I mean really solid. It's no secret that they are well done, on par with the current commercials for Nike, and there's a reason for that as well which is a bit of a secret for those outside the advertising community. The same company does both. The company is Weiden Kennedy from Portland Oregan, one of the most hip advertising agencies on the planet - if not THE most hip. There's a reason that the Microsoft "where do you want to go today" campeign is as tight visually and emotionally as the recent "I can spots" for Nike. It's all about empowerment and boosting the product into the spotlight as a solution. But if you look at the latest spots from Chiat-Day, namely the snail spots you find several cardinal rules being broken from the outset, and on the inside even more evidence that there's plenty of trouble in the planning department as well. Let's take a look at the violations. First, they compare themselves to the competition. This isn't amazing since Apple and their throng are in crisis mode and somehow feel it important to nay-say the competition. This is wrong though and was largely abandoned in the 80's as a marketing practice and is only served up by companies that are truly desperate for one reason or another. The other major reason this is a no-no is because you're spending crucial advertising time and dollars giving someone other than yourself exposure. Sure it's not ment to be positive, but when you have two names on the bill, both are still getting mindshare. Just saying Pentium in an Apple ad is a sure fire gurantee that someone at Intel is laughing his ass off thanks to the exposure. Second, you're not showing why you should buy the product in the ad. Youre not giving customers a real reason why their lives would be better for even thinking about your product let alone buy one. What you're doing is touting some kind of nerd-advantage to present customers, along the lines of a smear spot - which everyone is butt-tired of. It's painfully obvious from the shrinking marketshare that they don't need to be preaching to the choir about upgrades, they need to be moving more boxes into first time owners who don't really care about all the technical nonsense but just want to see why they should own a computer. Microsoft does that everytime you hear the tagline, but more importantly you see real world applications of their product, the tools they can provide for solutions, and more importantly how all this can be an enriching experience. The fact that they can do this within a 30 second spot with a catchy David Bowie tune that enbodies stick in the head appeal insures that if they're browsing a computer store they may not be humming "we could be heros" but it may come up faster than insects with microchips glued to them. Not necessarily lastly, but importantly, they also break the rule of media buying. I don't know what the hell Apple is thinking but this ad rotation they're doing is pathetic and an embarrasment to other Chiat-Day clients like Energizer and Nissan which have "dogs love trucks" and "bunnies" beaten into everyone's eyeballs at least several times within a prime time schedule all over the network and cable map. In sad contrast, Apple's own site gives schedules as to when their ad actually ran. I mean come-on, giving marketing time to promote when the ad will acutally air is beyond pathetic, it's criminal. Talk about mishandling your media-buy. This gets even worse in the outdoor advertising department because I don't even have a car presently due to living and working downtown, and yet I still see Microsoft billboards every day. Compare this to Apple. Sure their production value is there - if not necessarily their taste in content - but they're only doing California primarily. I don't know if this means the people in the Venice Beach office think that it's only important enough to pad Steve Job's ego with available space allocations from Gannet and other outdoor firms, but it's lackluster at best. I'm seeing AOL everydamn where on busboards, but not a single Apple ad. So what the hell is Chiat-Day doing with this 100 million dollar account anyway? Well I've got a pretty good idea from previous track-records with them and Apple as well as an insider knowledge of how the Chiat-Day advertising agency runs things as well as office banter knowledge of Lee Clow the head of creative in the Venice office - since I've logged time with that firm personally, check my resume. The combination of the two leads me to this conclusion. The Steve Jobs/Lee Clow buddy situation is not only intact, but rampant. I mean this goes beyond comprehension because, with contracts that hit 7 figures, you usually don't let the client call the shots. You do your job and get the product into the media and let it do what they hired you to do for chrissake. But for 100 million it's deplorable that Lee would let Steve call the shots and micromanage this campeign into the ground. I mean forget client approval Steve even wanted to lend his talents to voice over the first burst of the "Think Different" televisions spots when they first ran. At least they got him to loose the "gimmie" mentality and settled with Richard Dryfus - but the script sounds like it came from Steve Job's desk just a tad. No sense letting that 100 million acutally go to the writing staff in the creative department eh? It get's worse. Steve's ability to dictate the situation was so bad the first time around with stoner Lee, that they completely offeneded their potential customer base in 1985 with the Lemmings spot. And before you think that was a fluke, I'll clue in to what a fluke really is. I've mentioned it in the past, but for a recap, the 1984 spot never was supposed to run in the first place. It ran only because they couldn't sell of the 3rd quarter Super Bowl spot. The reason? It was such a pile of crap, that Mike Markula, the person whose money actually got Apple Computer out of the garage, hated the ads so bad that he was holding his head on the conference room table and pounding the table with his fist. They were received that bad. Granted their production value is great, but again misses the whole reason you should give Apple computer the time of day. After the failed 1985 spot, Day was kicked off the account, and BBDO NY was given a nice run of cracks at empowerment ads which were tight right up to 1993 when Michael Spinder screwed things up again, and started the biggest series of mistakes in Apple's history short of Gill's letting Steve back in with the purchase of NeXT that let Chiat-Day back in as well. That was then this is now. But have you noticed that the commercials continue to not do very much? I guess some things never change.
|
|
