Tony Attwood's Blog

I had an email from Drayton Bird recently which really had me worried    Here is the opening

Do you recall an old TV campaign for Barclays? It must have cost millions, and featured Samuel L. Jackson walking though the country accompanied by a most appealing pig.

Being a bit thick, I didn’t see what this had to do with banking.

So I asked an audience of 1,500 salespeople if they thought it would persuade a single person to switch to Barclays. One person did. Most of the rest thought it would do nothing – or actually lose customers.

Then I asked a class of marketing students what they thought. Not one could even understand it – and even if they had, the most lucrative customers for any bank are middle-aged or older.

Now I remember seeing the ads, and particularly remember the first time I saw final one in that series, in the cinema.  Samuel L Jackson says to his wife, “Honey its your birthday.  What do you want.  Name it you can have it.  Do you want a diamond ring?”  She says no.  “Do you want a gold necklace?”  She says, no.  “Well how about a world cruise?”  She says, no.  “So what do you want?”   She says, “A Divorce.”  He says, “Hell I wasn’t thinking of spending that much.”

Half the cinema audience collapsed on the floor - hoots of laughter.  Cheers, clapping.   the other half sat stony faced. 

So what does that tell us?   That Drayton Bird and I have a different sense of humour?   Yes, but more than that.  No advert appeals to everyone.  Although Drayton Bird and the other gurus love to give long chats and analogies about ads, it always seems to come down  to the same thing – “these are the golden rules of marketing”.

I admit I have done the same on the site www.theory.bz – but the first rule that we came up with was that you have to get inside the head of the audience you want to communicate with.   Barclays clearly has customers from all walks of life, and those cinema / TV adverts were aimed at one group.  Maybe they had done some work and found that they were under-reaching people with a sense of humour.   Or people who had been divorced.  Or even people with quite a bit of money.  Whatever it was, they made those ads to reach one group, and that means that other groups would not get the ad.

It’s an area I feel quite strongly about because I use a direct mail technique which does make some people send me anonymous letters saying that they will never ever use my company, and that I am a total idiot, and that no one will ever buy anything from me because I don’t know how to sell.    Fortunately for me I have not aimed my adverts at people who would send anonymous letters.

I don’t think Barclays are the idiots Drayton Bird thinks they are.   I would suggest no ad appeals to everyone, and the prime rule of advertising is, know what your audience wants to see and read.  You have to get inside the head of your intended audience.

Which leads me back to the most worrying thing in Drayton Bird’s piece: Then I asked a class of marketing students what they thought. Not one could even understand it – and even if they had, the most lucrative customers for any bank are middle-aged or older.

What the hell does that mean?  The middle aged or older people don’t have a sense of humour?  Or that we don’t have the intellect to understand a piece of surreal advertising?

I am starting to get very insulted here.

If you’d like to discuss the point, call me on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

There’s a funny thing that goes on when people create adverts. They start to think in clichés. Want to show you are green? Put up a pic of a polar bear. And don’t worry if everyone else is using polar bears (Ariel, EDF Energy, HSBC, Philips and Ben & Jerry’s) – people will know with us its real.

But no, we want to show we care about the future. I know, let’s use children. I know Philips, B&Q, EDF, and Earthwatch do it, but still. Children is good.

Exotic animals (HSBC, Eon and GE) or green fields (Eon, EDF, B&Q and Anchor Butter). Must do it because environment is good.

So what is the thinking? Simple – its that old game, “let’s do what the other guy does.” We see it in direct marketing all the time – and I mean all the time. Want to sell to teachers? Let’s have a nice image of happy children (in case teachers don’t know what children are) or maybe a cartoon of a Will Hay type figure in a mortar board in front of a blackboard.

Does repeating tired old images work? No, I don’t think so. Better to risk getting it wrong than to hit the same old buttons over and over.

When I started writing nonsense statements on envelopes (“This package is not microwavable” was last week’s piece) the phone rang and rang with customers and potential customers commenting on the campaign. I haven’t seen it done before (although I am sure someone somewhere did it – but the point is it is not common.)

Thinking outside the box is one of the most awful phrases that is overused, but it does convey what needs to be done. Better still throw the box away.

Normally I can smell a mistake at 100 paces – goodness knows I have made a few during my spell in direct mail. But the new Experian promotion has me stumped. Is it a disaster area, or a bit of post-modern irony or the cleverest campaign of all time?

If you’ve had a promotion from them – please do let me know. Here’s the details.

It is a big postcard. It reads…
——————————————

First impressions count.

Make a truly powerful impact every time.

As part of a successful agency, you understand the importance of checking the accuracy of your marketing data before committing valuable client budget….

Our FREE, no obligation Data Healthcheck will compare your marketing records with Experian’s expert business data sources… to give you a valuable view of your client’s data cleansing and enriching needs…

——————————-

All fine, except that we received 9 of these this morning. There were minor errors in the company name and address, but the most telling point was who these items were addressed to. Six of the nine people were no longer with us. One left in 1994, one in 1995, one in 1996, one in 1998 – the other two left in the early years of this century.

How could such a strategy make sense (given what is being sold)? And if it is a total utter mess, how come they kept on their database a person who left us 14 years ago? When someone leaves, surely they are deleted from the database? Because if not, well, then you could have a disaster.

But please do remember, I am not sniggering at Experian’s error, if so it is, and in a forthcoming mailing I’ll confess my greatest mistake. It is just the nature of the error that bemuses me.

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Tony

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