This turned up in my mail on Saturday. Inside was a shiny brochure about their hybrid vehicles. Don’t you think Toyota should have put off this print campaign until after they fixed their cars?
The concept is great because it strengthens the “I’m a PC” tag that did a good job at humanizing the Microsoft brand. Plus any ad that has people envisioning themselves as hunks makes me smile.
But there’s another reason they work: because Windows 7is user-friendly. It’s the first version of the operating system that seamlessly transfers all your files–and keeps your settings and accounts intact. I know, because I went through setting up my new computer just weeks ago. And best of all: Windows 7 recognizes existing local networks, so that all I needed to do was put in my password (at the prompt) during the initial set-up phase and I was online with no business interruption.
This isn’t going to be a post about dating, relationships, or Valentine’s Day. But when was the last time you heard a guy say he was looking forward to “getting to the communication”?
That’s a key line from an advertisement by online dating service eHarmony that has been running on ESPN News. Apparently eHarmony just held a “free communication weekend,” presumably in honor of Valentine’s Day.
The ad caught my attention because it seemed so out of place on a sports network. (That and the guy uttering a phrase that no real person would actually use.) So here’s the bigger question: who is the target audience? If I’m watching a sporting event, I’m not likely to turn it off and log on to fill out a “29 dimensions of compatibility” questionnaire.
Why do you think eHarmony is advertising on ESPN? Smart move or waste of money?
Sometimes an ad is just an ad, and sometimes you screw up in ways that will resonate for a long time. My mother still talks about one particularly awful promotion: a local department store which, at the height of the 1968 riots, ran ads to alert customers that while their downtown stores had to close, their suburban stores would remain open for business. Every other department store in the region closed down in honor of Martin Luther King.
Even though the company changed ownership, my mother didn’t set foot in their stores for over 35 years.
Now comes Acme Markets, which just ran a promotion under a Black History Month banner that includes discounts on corn bread, collard greens, and grape soda. What were they thinking?
Well, at least this should lay to rest all discussion about whether we still need Black History Month.
What ads have cost companies your business? If a company later regained your support, how did they do it?
What do a feminist author and a soap opera star have in common?
You can do a lot of free association when you’re on cold meds. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about something related to advertising. That got me thinking about a book I once read for a class by a feminist author who premised, in part, that women’s choices were unduly influenced by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. So women who “nested” were doing so because they watched 30 Something, and if we wore sexy lingerie it was because we’d seen a Christian Lacroix or Calvin Klein ad. Yeah, right. I eventually threw the book across the room and never got to the end.
Apropos of that conversation the other day, I wondered: whatever happened to Susan Faludi? So I did a Google search. But I spelled her name wrong and Google asked: Do you mean Susan Lucci? I still got that when I added in the book title. Eventually I went to Amazon, plugged in the book title, and figured it out.
I know very little about search engine optimization, which is why I try to learn from Lee Odden, Matt McGee, and other SEO pros. But I know that if your name can be mistaken for any variation of a soap opera star, you’ve got work to do on your online rankings. (Meanwhile, the irony that a feminist who posited a backlash against women was mistaken for a soap opera star wasn’t lost on me.)
How’s your online ranking? Have you ever been mistaken online for someone else? If so, what did you do to correct your online profile?
Welcome to Steigman Communications and the Independent Thinking blog. Daria Steigman is a business-savvy communications strategist who helps organizations develop and execute communications solutions to help them achieve their business goals. Her blog looks at the business of running a business, entrepreneurship, communications, social media, strategic thinking, and--of course--Independent Thinking.