So it’s not much of a surprise to picture him as the airline passenger a little too important to follow the same rules as the “little people” and refusing to turn off his electronic device when requested by the cabin crew and fli
But the great part of all this is that, in his condescending disparagement of American Airlines, he happened to describe flying on the company’s planes as a “Greyhound Bus experience.”  As if he would know.ght deck. After all, HE knows better.  (And it’s even LESS of a surprise when he appears on Saturday Night Live the next day attempting to further ridicule the airline for calling him on his sense of celebrity entitlement.)

But in a brilliant PR move, Greyhound seized the opportunity to publish an open letter to Baldwin as a result. The letter humbly admitted to some past hassles in bus travel, but invited Baldwin to come sample today’s Greyhound experience. Cleverly enough, the company pointed out he would never have had to STOP playing his “Words with Friends” game on Greyhound.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Baldwin accepts the invitation; I’m sure in his mind that would somehow make him even “cooler” and really look like the winner in all this.

But he’s not, at least in my book. Greyhound is. Good job. Way to turn Baldwin’s chicken bleep into chicken salad!

In one example, a London bakery owner was really, well, frosted when she was forced to hire extra help to bake 102,000 cupcakes to satisfy the Groupon demand, and wiped out her year’s profit in the process. Some surveys cited in the story claim that 70% of small businesses “hate” Groupons!

One has to make all kinds of wild assumptions to draw conclusions on this, of course, but I have seen claims (even by business owners themselves) that had they invested the same money in advertising instead, they could have drawn enough new customers at full or nearly full price to deliver more incremental profit, and have a better chance of converting new customers into loyal, long-term ones.

I find this a fascinating discussion. It seems intuitive that Groupon users (and I’m not talking down here – I have used them and will continue to do so) are looking for deals. And unless you really present some incredible experience during their visit, they are likely to go somewhere else to use another deal rather than come back to your establishment and pay full price next time.   On the other hand, as some point out, it is your job as a business owner to provide them an experience special enough to change that equation.

I agree with both positions. (I KNEW I should have gone into politics.) I do know that, as a consumer, I feel a bit awkward when using Groupons, although I know it was the merchant’s decision to offer them. As an advertising professional, I feel as though the discussion is a bit “apples and oranges.”  A well-strategized ad campaign (based on a real point of difference that matters to the consumer, of course) is the best way to attract the kinds of customers you are most likely to keep. A Groupon-type promotion is likely to generate larger numbers of customers in the first place, but most of them will continue to ignore your business as they did before once they’ve gotten their “deal.”

It’s just a very intriguing discussion. What do you think?  Is the answer a Groupon “Light” service that offers a bit less of a deal so business don’t risk bankruptcy when they try it? Would a different type of promotion – or advertising – attract the customers who are willing and able to spend the money your product or service is worth in the first place, for a better chance at long-term success or survival?

Let me know what YOU think about the whole thing – I’d really like to know!  And for the next 14 days, I will allow you to post two comments for the price of one!

But often, the blame is heaped on a client, for not recognizing a good creative concept, or for failing to have the courage to embrace advertising that does what ALL advertising SHOULD do – stand out. This year, I’d like to pay homage to one client that, for as long as I can remember, has not only tolerated, but apparently insisted on, memorable advertising; campaigns that not only carry the right strategic message, but also present it in a way that gets noticed.  Thanks, FedEx, and credit to you, BBDO – the agency of record for 20 years or more.

When I first entered the business, FedEx and agency Ally and Gargano were doing great commercials, some with a director named Joe Sedelmaier who was known for ‘over the top” productions, most often humorous. (You’ve laughed at many of them, trust me.) For FedEx, fast-talker John Moschitta starred in an early spot you may recall.

Ever since, FedEx  has kept the bar high, with many commercials you would remember and laugh at today!  In one of the latest, FedEx Office promotes its printing and copying services by making it simple for a guy in the witness protection program to become a very visible  icon for his hardware store. He’s a bit unclear on the concept, of course, but it’s very funny stuff.

A lot happens at a company in 20 or 30 years, including many changes of the guard, new CMOs and  other transitions. But in the case of FedEx, the company has never lost its commitment to unique, watchable advertising campaigns.  Oh, the tag lines haven’t always been much to write home about. But the quality is consistently high, with very few turkeys.

Thanks, FedEx (and your agencies) – keep up the good work.

But since I “liked” Petsmart on Facebook or something like that, I am on their email list. And today it came -an exciting message about their “Veterans Day Sale.”

Sorry to be overly sensitive, but in this day and age, shouldn’t there be some connection – no matter how strained or tenuous? A 10% discount for veterans? A small part of your ad devoted to thanking them? SOMETHING?

In our town, we are completing a Military Appreciation Week leading up to Veterans Day. Many  merchants are arranging discounts or other forms of “thank you” for service members and veterans. So Veterans Day means a little more than a closed Post Office and a lame, tiresome sales theme for car dealers and other retailers.

Presidents Day? Okay, fine, be superficial. I’m sure George Washington or Abe Lincoln won’t mind you moving a few Monte Carlos on their annual celebration. Or even a few catnip mice or pooper-scoopers. But Veterans Day should be different. Lots of real living and breathing heroes out there worth remembering and thanking for what they’ve done for us, in past wars and enduring the unique stresses of our current conflicts.

Remember that today, one percent of our citizens volunteer to put their lives on the line for the rest of us. And to paraphrase a quote I recently heard, no one who deploys to a war zone comes back unwounded.

Can I just ask all retailers out there to think of Veterans Day a little differently?  It’s not an opportunity to get people into our stores. It’s a reason to take people into our hearts.

(Personally, I was always surprised he survived the early televisiospot in which a guy wakes up to find the King in his bed. That’s BEYOND creepy.)

The article points out that everybody is promoting their “fresh” food these day – not only competitive fast-fooders, but even the likes of Target and 7-Eleven, so Burger King finally had to step up the plate (or scale) to keep up.

So instead of watching the most awkward royal since Prince Charles lumbering around annoying people, we get to see those fresh ingredients chopped and diced to pulsating music.  Like, I’m afraid, those boring slow-pour beer spots that brewers throw in every now and then to make their real commercials look a lot more interesting!

This is a tough one for BK, though. Subway has a long head start in this “freshness” business, with those veggies sitting out there in plain site, looking pretty appetizing. And hey – what harm can a little healthy stuff do to a Sub Club anyway? Go ahead, toss it on.

But burgers are a different story. Sure, fresh is better than NOT fresh. But when there’s a burger in that bun, that’s what I’m going to judge you by. By comparison, everything else in that sandwich is small tomatoes. And a BK burger is different than a McDonald’s, is different than a Wendy’s, and…you get the idea. THAT’S what matters.

My favorite quote from the article is from the chief creative officer of McGarry/Bowen – the new agency that was the inevitable result of the new Burger King CEO and  marketing director. He said “We’re re-igniting the latent feeling that people have about Burger King.”  Wow. I’m not sure, but I think that might mean “reminding” them.

I have a nasty feeling, however, that the “latent feeling people have” doesn’t much involve lettuce. It probably is more like, “you know, those Whoppers were pretty good -we ought to do that instead of Mac’s for a change.”  For my creative tastes, the “Whopper Freakout” web stuff done by Crispin Porter + Bogusky was closer to that point, and great fun – made me want a Whopper again.

But that stuff never made it to mainstream TV much, if at all. They left traditional media totally in the hands of that creepy king, and sales down 6% suggest that was a mistake.

Somehow, I’m gonna miss the big fella. Yup, he was creepy, and they didn’t use him very well in their TV spots. But when your name is Burger King, there just has to be some branding and separation value in using a “king” as your symbol. Now,  I certainly don’t want to wake up to find him in my bed. But in all honesty, I’m not sure I’d want to find crisp lettuce or juicy tomatoes there, either.

And that quirky Burger King spokes-lurker definitely isn’t the “Worst King Ever.”  That’s one title a certain other departed king will carry forever (the one title he DID manage to win in Cleveland).  Hey, I’m a  Cavaliers fan.   

Sorry to vent there. I guess all this “king” talk  just re-ignited some latent feelings I had.

For weeks, I’ve been hearing a radio commercial on Chicago stations for the new Four Winds Casino opening soon in New Buffalo, Michigan. It’s pretty typical casino advertising, but it does include one reference that drives me crazy. The female voiceover says,, as nearly as I can remember it….. “the stakes you can play for are almost as large as the steaks you’ll enjoy in our restaurant.”  Now, think about that one a second. (That ‘s more than the writer did, I’m guessing.)

Photo from: hcgweightloss.com

Oh, of course I understand the writer is trying to make a point of big, delicious steaks, and using the “stakes” wordplay to make it memorable. And any run-of-the-mill writer could have competently related the two. “Big stakes await you in the casino AND in our beautiful restaurant” or something like that. But the way it’s phrased here, it doesn’t work. It’s just dumb and doesn’t make sense to the listener’s ear.

“So, you’re saying the stakes I’ll PLAY for are almost as large as the steak I’ll eat for dinner. Um….let’s say the dinner steak is roughly as large as, say, a hardcover book. Therefore, my wagers on the gambling floor can be almost (but not quite) as large as a book. WHAT THE   @ #$*)@DOES THAT MEAN?

It’s just lazy. If you’re a writer, care what you write and read it for sense before you produce anything.  And if you’re a creative director or, God forbid, a client, care enough to FIX dumb little things like this. If you’re going to use words to try to influence a consumer, it is not too much to ask that they make sense and perhaps even a point! I know you’re out there rolling your eyes and thinking “Come on, nobody listens to it that closely.”

Well, you might be right. But it is sloppily-written copy like this that has trained our audiences NOT to listen closely. If the writer and advertiser don’t think the words really matter much, why should the listener?

Hudsonville has mastered the art of keeping customers (and bystanders) smiling. Looking into what they had done lately, I noticed that they had given new Michigan governor Rick Snyder a tour, and named a couple new Michigan-themed flavors in honor of the occasion, including Michigan Mitten Sundae.

The governor and "Chief Flavor Developer" Ken Filippini

I continue to enjoy the spirit Hudsonville Ice Cream manages to display consistently throughout its marketing and promotional activities. Sure, it’s a business, and it’s a logical way for them to behave, given their product category. But lots of companies could take a lesson from them in identifying the appropriate personality, and striving to live up to it.

Passing those brightly-decorated vehicles this morning perked up my mood, even without benefit of the product  (which would have come in handy even at 7 a.m on such a hot day). As I passed, I did look into one of the vehicles, and the driver was a nice young woman who was, of course, smiling. Now, maybe it was from something she had just heard on the radio, or some random thought.

But somehow, since it was a vehicle from Hudsonville, it seemed right. It’s what I would have expected. And that fact is not a bad indicator of a company building a brand and living it.

Keep up the good (and cool) work!

The positives? For consumers, it offers a little extra dough, though not much and only after a LONG while – just for choosing one brand of oil consistently, which probably doesn’t matter very much to them. For  Quaker State,  it reinforces the perception that the product helps your car last longer, so it’s “on strategy.” And it doesn’t risk much, since  very few people will keep one car that long, and 300,000-mile cars tend not to be worth much anyway. People who DO are the dedicated car buffs, and if it helps them choose Quaker State each time, that’s great.

The negatives? Well, for one thing, most people realize all the things I just said. And they just might roll their eyes and say,gee, my reward for driving this hunk of junk that long is whatever pittance someone says it’s worth at that point? BIG DEAL.

So I can’t decide. It makes strategic sense, but it is so low-risk for the company, how exciting can it be for customers? I suspect they could have offered a new car (okay, up to $20k) for anyone who made it.  Or why not make it 400,000 and give them an exciting new sports car, or vintage Corvette or something.

Bottom line is, I like things that are different enough to be interesting, and somehow relate to the selling premise. Both those apply here. But somehow it just aims so low…..

What do YOU think? Let me know. Hey, if we make it to 10 comments, I’ll give the poster of comment # 30 a great prize!  (A quart of Quaker State. And a plastic funnel I’ll guarantee for, oh  your next 100 oil changes!))

But it seems to me Allstate and State Farm are both are trying to tackle the “younger customer” with what they consider edgier or hipper campaigns. Allstate’s “mayhem” is growing on me. And the other night, I saw Dennis Haysbert use that word in an attempt, at least, to tie their two very different campaigns together.

State Farm, however, is a little lost. They continue to run their traditional “adult’ campaign that, while not exciting, at least rings true, tugs at the right strings, and provides a pretty straight ahead “demo” of the company’s famous tag line.

Not so in their “youth” campaigns. It appears their only strategy here was “let’s put some young people and millenial story lines in our spots, then they’ll think we’re cool and buy from us.” Sorry, but I am not convinced that some slacker saying “State Farm is there” in order to get the girl from  the apartment upstairs or a new hot tub to materialize says anything meaningful about your product. Nor does the mean-spirited boyfriend/girlfriend tiff featured in another execution.

Yes, you need to appeal to a younger demographic. But does someone who is  finally accepting the responsibility to purchase insurance really willing to buy it from a big name company that is suddenly trying to look like the life of the toga party? (An even newer campaign appears to depict State Farm customers as deranged goofs who would squander the money they supposedly saved on things like falcons. Another knee-slapper.)

State Farm, I know you need to appeal to a younger demo. But a closer look at what those people really think and feel would do far more for the brand than lobbing superficial executions in the general direction of the caricatured image you apparently have of them.

Insurance may not be fun. But it is most assuredly not silly, either. And a campy Bob Barker appearance is no substitute for a real point of difference.

I just read a wonderful post on the subject by Amber Naslund over at her Brass Tack Thinking blog. She talks about the need to build all your networks before you “need” them. Create and grow your relationships when the only payback is the relationship itself, not a virtual filing cabinet with the many ways the other party can help you get money, business, a job or whatever-  preferably soon.  ROI doesn’t stand for Return on Insensitivity.

Clearly, this discussion is relevant given the attention and special status so many of us marketers are conferring on social media as a marketing channel. We smugly congratulate one another on recognizing the need for two-way dialogue and claim to be comfortable with the fact that we don’t lead many of the discussions any longer. Then someone gets impatient with all that warm, fuzzy stuff and talks about “monetizing” the process. Sigh.

I don’t really think this is about social media at all. Remember the marketing people whose obvious self-absorption and thirst for profit drove you crazy pre-Twitter and even pre-Internet? Those are the same people who are now either driving potential customers away with transparent  efforts in “new media” or staying out of the social media discussion entirely since they don’t have the mindset to accept a payback that isn’t guaranteed to happen at all, let alone quickly. (That doesn’t make it a bad investment – just one they can’t understand.)

Yes, I’m very aware that businesses must manage their resources efficiently and don’t like the idea of paying people to “schmooze” or cyber-surf with no apparent end game. But unless you’re the low-price leader and can get all the business you need by sending out price lists, you’d better learn to deal with it. Whether it’s a potential client, employer, strategic business partner or a potential customer, they’re only human – and if they weren’t important back when you didn’t need them, they won’t have much  use for you when you do.  Marketing is suddenly very human. And I find that a very good thing.