It's Your Money Ralph

Three posts in three days.......It's a blogging frenzy!!!

This latest Commonwealth Bank campaign got me thinking.....how far off the mark are these guys and what really is a relevant insight for a banking customer?

And do you have to employ an american ad agency and feature the bloke who directed Transformers to bring that insight to life?

Maybe the client got sucked into the typical ad agency hype about how an ad has to be funny for it to be effective. I've had this shoved in my face so many times without any insight back to how the target is likely to respond to it in the context of what the brand is trying to say.

So here's the thing. 20 years ago the State Bank of Victoria created an amazing campaign that worked it's way into the vernacular with four words - "It's your money Ralph".

Two actors on a couch, with a newspaper prop, well directed and well written.

It's not funny. It's just true. And it struck a major chord.

Guess which bank owns the State Bank of Victoria now?

The Triple M of Blogs

Hurrah!

I've made it onto the top 50 marketing blogs in Australia, even though I've spent much of 2008 talking about advertising to my mates rather than blogging it.

So even though my site was described by a fellow blogger as being on 'life support', I'd prefer to think of it as the Triple M of Aussie marketing blogs....not a whole lot of new stuff, but heaps of classics that go back through the years!

And no ads....just 136 blog posts IN A ROW!

Anyway, who says a blog needs to be updated every day or week. There's only so much interesting new news out there. With all the advertising theories, strategies, models, principles bla bla bla, I'm still trying to work out how to make an effective 30 second tv ad!

Thanks to Julian Cole for putting together the whole shebang.

Which Insight?

So the Commonwealth Bank campaign has continued on from it's launch in February. There was a lot of speculation about whether it was genius which would lead to an amazing campaign that would help separate it from the other banks and really lead it forward.

So I guess it's now safe to say what it really is.

And it's still shit.

It all seems a very expensive way of getting across a simple message without any depth whatsoever, wrapped up in an insight that...um....I think has something to do with Americans not really understanding Australians.

But it's late at night and maybe I'm not thinking very hard about it.

I wonder if the consumer could be bothered to?

Advertising in Shit Places

A couple of good ads suiting the environment, this time in the crapper at the Fox and Lion....

Scare yourself shitless this boxing day with Aliens vs Predator




And then an ad for RSVP.....part of a bigger campaign that says the chances of meeting someone really compatible in everyday life once you drill down through the odds are pretty much next to nothing.

Nothing like a campaign built on a strong truth!

Determined to be Different

Perhaps I was a little harsh on the Commonwealth Bank when I rubbished their latest campaign for failing to understand the Australian consumer and their attitude to banks.

Now I realise, that by taking up it's mortgage rate by more than the official rise, they really are "Determined to be Different"!

I suppose they had a choice didn't they? Customers or profit. Guess which won again?



The Commonwealth Bank integrated it's new Determined to be Different campaign through the whole company by providing all staff with a range of 4 different coloured mouse pads.

The Commonwealth Bank of Rubbish

What's going on over at the Commonwealth Bank?

Here's the scenario......

The banks keep reporting record profits year on year. Interest rates keep going up (and banks are quick to take 'em up and slow to take 'em down). Branches are closing and the there's no-one at the window for the ones that are left. They're greedy knobs and not many people like them.

So why not make a stupid ,expensive ad that says nothing, made by idiots, approved by bigger idiots, that does absolutely nothing to address anything. I'd like to know who this ad is meant to be targeting and what they're meant to think about the bank after watching it?



I'll stick with Westpac thanks. Even though they're milking me for profit like everyone else, at least I feel good about the fact that they're helping the environment and spending the profit on something worthwhile. Not million dollar rubbish ad campaigns.

Who the Hell is Clive Peeters?

The question on all Sydneysiders lips (well, mine anyway) is who the hell is Clive Peeters and why does he have two e's?

I know full well who Clive Peeters is. I grew up in Melbourne and the family often ventured out to the Ringwood store to check out all the latest electrical items like Beta video recorders and jaffle irons. From memory that's where dad bought his two tier organ from as well.

Now, all these years later, Clive has entered the Sydney market and opened 5 stores. It's a tough market to crack - Harvey Norman and Bing Lee are very established players.

So what's Clive Peeter's point of difference? From the advertising I've seen it's the tagline "So easy". Well OK Clive, it might be easy if I lived next to your Auburn store, but that's a long way away. What else is so easy about it??

Apart from the fact that you have two e's, there's not a whole lot of difference going on. So I guess it all comes down to price, and that's not a great market entry strategy.

The best retailer who's established a point of difference has been Bunnings - Lowest Prices are Just the Begining - selling the message through their passionate staff. Enthusiasts for the home selling stuff to fellow enthusiasts. Plus they won't be beaten on price. Great strategy.

So it will be a diificult riide for Clive. Then again, Bing Lee has done pretty well using ad music sung to the tune of Monty Python's "I Like Chinese" so anything is possible I guess.

Farewell Slim Shady Snr

Get This - the best radio show on....um...radio, came to an end last week because it was too popular. Or something like that. Too much talking, not enough Nickleback, despite increasing the station average.

Tony Martin, Ed Kavalee and Richard Marsland will no doubt pop up elsewhere but in the meantime we'll have to do with the archives. Like Slim Shady Senior, who was around in the 1930's and was apparently the inspiration for Eminem.

Bear in mind with this video I've pulled the audio clip from their web site and cobbled it together with a couple of old photos I found floating about. Please welcome Slim Shady Snr.....



The amazing thing about Get This is that every week 50,000+ podcasts are downloaded. For the final show, something like 270,000 of the things were downloaded! That includes me. I don't listen to the radio in my car anymore. I just hook my iPod into my cassette deck and listen to Get This and my CD's straight off the iPod.

No ads, just the stuff I want to hear.

Also, an interesting report from David Dale in todays Sydney Morning Herald. He points out that sales of the top 15 DVD's over the last 3 months is quite different from last year. Back then it was movies. Now most of them are TV shows.

Like Get This and the Triple M network, shows like The Family Guy scare the crap out of the good folk at commercial networks so it just gets shunted around in bad time slots. Any wonder they can't handle it - this is their idea of a good station promo.

Consumers, not networks, now control the way in which shows are watched.

My media agency told me the other day that Channel 7 was increasing it's rates by about 10% next year. Channel 9 is pretty minimal and Channel 10 is somewhere in between. I need to reconfirm the data but it's something like this anyway. So as viewing audiences go down, the rates go up. Work that one out.

As an FMCG marketer, this is all really exciting. With the growth of private label, a reliance on price promotions to drive volumes, and margins being squeezed, it will be the best marketers who shine through and capture consumers hearts and minds.

And it will be the best agencies who can balance this quest with the commercial reality of having to get 3-5% volume increases in mass brands.

Drunk on Election Night

Rudd's on his way. I can't help feeling there's a hint of the Mark Latham Self Implosion Principle going on here. When Rudd has to deviate from the script it all gets a bit scary.

Anyway, best to drink this off in Kings Cross tonite and face the consequences tomorrow morning. The election that is, not the girl next to me. Possibly.





.....now I know how Dan Kelly felt

Fox up on the 9 & 7

Saw a great ad for Foxtel the other day which was talking about how you could program shows onto Foxtel digital from anywhere you have internet access. In this case, some bloke in the Himalayas. The message was strongly built into a visually spectacular landscape and impossible not to watch.

Got me onto the website to see how much it would cost to upgrade.

Then it got me thinking about the creative team over there. There's new ads coming out all the time which I reckon really position Subscription TV as a viable, modern day alternative to the tripe served up on free to air.

Maybe I'm just the target, but these ads do a great job positioning the brand...

Foxtel Tumble ad....



Foxtel Ninja...




Compare this to the rubbish served up by Channel 9 and 7. I remember when this ad came out a year or two ago and came quickly to the conclusion that it's no wonder people are turning away from TV and onto other mediums....these guys have lost the plot.

And surely Richie Benaud is the closest thing we have to Weekend at Bernies....

Good Things Ain't Coming

Good things come to those who wait.

Except in the case of Guinness drinkers, where ordinary ads come to those who wait.

I'm still confused about why Guinness don't take the big idea that's made them so big elsewhere. This ad was in the sports section of the SMH yesterday.

Phil Jacques finally gets a shot at opening the batting and makes a ton. Good things come to those who wait.

Mick Fanning becomes the first Aussie to win a world surfing title for 20 odd years. Good things come to those who wait.

Spring Carnival finally kicks into gear in Sydney, despite there being no live horsies running around. We can still get pissed though. Good things come to those who wait.

Instead, let's just sell a stereotype of a bloke in the pub who doesn't want to go home to his in-laws.

Guinness or XXXX or Tooheys. You decide....

Co-branding...the good, the bad and the ugly

There's no doubt that the marketers who embrace the concept of co-branding are giving themselves an advantage in the market.

And the smartest marketers are the ones whose brands get dragged along in the stronger equity and values of the brand they partner with.

McDonalds have done that by linking their products with the Heart Foundation Tick. Great move for Macca's, but not sure that it does too much for the HFT. More and more people are starting to recognise it's not much better than another John Laws Cash for Comment advertorial.

I'm not sure how Prada much is benefiting from their association with LG here...



Then again, some brands do it really well - when two excellent brands combine together to truly enhance each others equity, like Qantas Business Class and Morrisey have done recently.

NRMA and a whole lot more!

"Roadside assistance and a whole lot more"

A whole lot more what??! Boiled lollies??

Is it just me, or is this ad for NRMA just a little bit wrong?

The Advertising Industry

he he....

Spring Ideas

Coles has an idea......spend bucket loads of money on a full page press ad for a Spring Ideas catalogue.

I have an idea.....work on the copy and come up with a better idea.

Is it just me or is this a very difficult ad to read and make any sense of altogether?

And what that picture all about?

Then there's some kind of insight which says you'll save time so you can spend more time in the sun?

I just don't get it.

Get Stuffed

I suppose if animated stuffed animals are the best thing some of the world's leading air fresheners like Glade and Air-O-Zone (or whatever they've called themselves this year) can manage to represent their brands, even though they have absolutely nothing to do with anything, then I suppose they're good enough for a no-name air conditioning gadget.

Shit, that's a long sentence and I couldn't be bothered finding a better version.

Well, at least the animals have something to do with the message. Don't know if a penguin and a hippo would be my obvious choice of hot and cold though. A couple of my previous girlfriends would be much better examples there.

MILF on a Loo

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Second Life is Weird

The other day I checked out Second Life and I reckon it's plain weird.

And it's full of weirdo's. They're probably all normal people in the real world but the whole thing seems a bit too bizarre - all these strange looking things running and flying around the place.

Is it me or is it all just a bit sad?

There's not one part of me that would prefer to converse with a cartoon figure who looks like a cross between Michael Jackson and the tooth fairy over going to a friends place for a glass of wine and a yak or heading to the pub.

I know there's a bunch of advertising agencies and companies and whoever else building a presence in Second Life, and for some brands it probably makes sense.

Now that I'm back in the real world of FMCG business and selling products on the client side rather than on the advertising side, Second Life doesn't get doesn't get much of a look in.

A couple of months ago we had an off site where 3 or 4 agencies presented an online update to all the marketing team. Everyone was talking about the phenomenon that is Second Life.

It's the agencies job to know about that so fair enough.

And maybe one day 38 year old mums with kids will be frittering their day away talking to alien things on Second Life, but right now a $100k investment will get me 2 weeks of advertising to a million people in Adelaide and for now I'll take that thanks.

Nando's Marketing Free Gum

This is what happens when you listen too much to your advertising agency.

Then again, every client has the right to say no to an idea presented to them.

Probably a great ad in the schoolyard - 21,000 hits on YouTube. But surely you can target a male 17-23 demographic without every other target group looking on in amazement and thinking whether they'll ever buy the stuff again.

Nando's - quality food, well designed stores, slutty advertising.

Truth in Advertising

It's amazing what happens when someone tells the truth in advertising. It's seen as a stunt.

From today's SMH...

Sydney's real-estate agents aren't renowned for being dead straight in their descriptions, but faced with selling a complete dump, one of them has decided honesty is the only policy.

In a regular property blurb, 25 Waterloo Street, Rozelle, might be described as "quaint", or a "renovator's delight" - realestatespeak for a screaming disaster-zone.

But its selling agent Paul Cooper has tried a different tack - the two-bedroom cottage is in such a state he decided to reveal the awful truth, cheerfully admitting it's a "dump".

"Situated directly next to a petrol station and metres from the almost stationary peak-hour traffic of Victoria Road, one can imagine they don't come much worse than this," his ad says.

The half-page ad, for Mr Cooper's agency Ray White Balmain, goes on to point out the home's other "features".

It is "particularly popular with talentless graffiti artists", the "holes in the wall provide natural air-conditioning" and its lack of kitchen is "irrelevant as the club does great food".

The property's owner approved Mr Cooper's unusually upfront sales pitch, which the 28-year veteran of the real-estate game says he's successfully used before.

"It was a place in similar condition to this, it was pretty much derelict, and we hadn't had any luck," he said.

"We put out an ad like this one and went from gettting two people to view it, to getting 30 people along."