Anne’s Mohawk Lakes Blog

Awhile ago, I wrote a blog about a company that has a jingle that I thought was somewhat insulting to people and I wondered about its success for the company.  I wrote part of the jingle in my blog and said I could remember the jingle but not the company. 

Well, apparently I’m not the only one.  And, I’m fairly certain they’ve begun running the ad a lot lately.  How do I know? 

Like any good small business person who wears many hats and manages their own website, I sit down every now and then and scour my website metrics.  On August 2, something started to happen that I hadn’t seen before.  My web metrics allow me to track what search phrases people use to find my site.  Beginning on August 2, I started getting people to my site who were searching for the jingle.

With the misspellings and wrong words, there are roughly 5 different versions of the jingle that people are searching for. And quite a few people ended up on my blog instead of the website of the company they were searching.

To me, this just reconfirms my point from earlier.  They have a catchy jingle.  But, maybe they should have put more effort into making their name more memorable (repeat it more often, put it at the beginning and the end of the ad) and then all of the people searching for the jingle and finding me would instead be on their website. 

So that I don’t compound the situation even more, I am purposely not repeating the company name or the jingle here.  If you’re curious, you can look through my previous blogs (including the comment someone left with the company name).  But, in the meantime, if you need help with your advertising, let me know (www.mohawklakes.com). 

I’ll help you get customers to your website, not to someone’s blog. 

Since I’ve talked about some advertising I thought was less than stellar, I thought I would give a little time to ads I think are great. 

One of my recent favorites is Sprint’s “The Man”.  Why is it one of my favorites, because of humor. I like humor.  It makes me pay attention. And, if it’s funny, I’ll probably remember it.  

The cell phone companies seem to have a lot going for them right now because another of my favorite campaigns is the AT&T ads where the conversation stops in mid sentence leaving the other party to wonder what is going on.  It proves a point:  you don’t want your calls dropped. What I don’t like is that AT&T can’t seem to figure out if they are AT&T or Cingular so they keep changing their name.  Part of the point of advertising is brand building and name recognition.  Don’t defeat that by changing your name multiple times.

Because of the humor factor, I like Capital One’s “Kissing the Frog to get the Prince” ad. But, like a real fairy tale, I also like the message.  Everyone signs up for rewards cards thinking they are getting “rewarded” like the princess who kisses a frog and finds a prince.  In reality, often times, that’s not the case with reward cards, you simply get to kiss a lot of animals.  This commercial points that out in a very funny way. 

In Colorado Springs there was a car dealership that did a lot of funny ads on the radio (the guilty shall remain unnamed even though several years later I still remember the ads and who ran them).  One of the best was a standard car commercial and at the end where you have “rapid talker” detailing all of the fine print so fast no one could understand, they had a “rapid talker” talking about his favorite rock songs and why he liked them.  It was hysterical. And, again, it proved a point. They didn’t have any “fine print” with their promotions. 

Another old favorite of mine is a Monster.com ad from a Super Bowl several years ago.  It featured little kids talking about wanting to be stuck in middle managment hell.  It was funny because of the dichotomy.  I relish dichotomy and when it is used well, it gets everyone’s attention.  And, after all, attention is what you want.  If you get enough people remembering your ads and your name, your business will increase. 

When you think of advertising for your company, think of your favorite ads. Then, think of how you can apply what you like about that ad to your company.  If you like an ad, someone else probably does as well. So, if you can use elements of an ad to make your own, people will probably like it as well.  If you need any help with this, or ideas for a campaign you have coming up, check out my website www.mohawklakes.com.

In the meantime, let me know:  What are some of your favorite ads and why?

I was listening to the radio the other day and an ad come on for a furniture store.

For the most part, I tune ads out.  I know that’s bad to say, but, I do.  If something happens to get my attention, then I make note of it.  Otherwise, garbage in, garbage out.  Unless of course it’s the Super Bowl. Then, I watch the ads more closely than the football.

I tune it out because the truth is most advertising (print, TV and radio) is garbage.  It may cost a lot of money.  It might be done by people with fancy degrees and great resumes, but it’s still garbage. 

This ad caught my attention.  But, only at the end. I can’t tell you who the company is but I know they are selling furniture.  I know this because at the end of the ad, a chorus sings, “The only way to buy furniture for less is to import it yourself and you don’t know how.”  This made me laugh.  And then it made me wonder.  It made me laugh because it’s funny. It made me wonder because most companies would be happy with “The only way to buy furniture for less is to import it yourself.” That says pretty much all you need to know.  Few people are going to attempt to import furntiure on their own even if they knew how.  And, most people are very well aware that they have no idea how to import furniture. 

So, why add the last part?  To rub it in?  “Nah nah nah, you don’t know how to import!”  It really seems a pointless waste of words and time to me.  Unless they want to insult their customers.  In which case, they succeeded.  But, in radio, you pay for time.  What could they have done with those few extra seconds that the chorus was cheerfully singing “and you don’t know how” - twice.  Maybe “sale through Sunday”, or “see our specially priced dining sets” or something that would actually sell instead of offend.

But, it also makes me think of other advertising slogans that make me scratch my head.  When traveling recently, I walked out of a hotel and saw three plumbing vans parked outside.  Most people probably would have thought, “Wow!  The hotel is having plumbing problems.”  But, my first thought was, “What kind of a tagline is that?”  Because, on each van was the name, phone number and “Across from Walmart”.  Now, I have to say that if the best thing they can say about themselves is “Across from Walmart”, I probably don’t need to do business with them.  You don’t generally visit a plumber.  They come to you.  So, unless they charge mileage (which the plumbers I’ve dealt with don’t) then where they are located means nothing to me.  When my plumbing is going nutso on Thanksgiving with all of my relatives in town, I don’t really care where they are located as long as they can get to my house – fast.  It seems like a waste of paint to even bother putting “across from Walmart” on a plumbing van.  Maybe use the paint for “24 hour service”, “we are fast”, “we fix all plumbing problems” or something along those lines.

I bring this up because both companies are small.  Both probably spent a lot of time or money (or both) to advertise.  I would love to ask them what they were thinking.  And, I would love to find out if their business has increased as much as they thought it would.  Small businesses can do advertising just as well as big businesses.  Sometimes they do it better.  But, these two didn’t and they serve as a lesson.  If you’re doing your own campaign, run it by friends.  Get their HONEST opinion and really listen to it.  If you hire someone to do it for you, go with your gut feeling. And, then run it by friends and get their honest opinion.  Don’t be afraid to tell the person/company you hired that you don’t like what they’ve come up with.  Otherwise, it could be money down the drain. 

And, keep in mind the basics.  On a different trip, I saw my all-time favorite do-it-yourself advertising.  Picture a beat-up 70’s-era shag carpet van.  A ladder tied to the roof.  On the side and back someone spray painted, “I do windows” and a phone number.  I bet his phone never stopped ringing.

Anne – freelance writing for your marketing and website needs www.MohawkLakes.com