Tag Archive for 'commercials'

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The Advantages of Personalized Advertising

If you’ve been paying attention to advertising lately, you’ve probably noticed that ads are getting a lot more personalized.  This is a good thing.  It means companies are spending some time thinking about their customers as individuals with specific perspectives and interests.

Seems like an obvious insight, right?  After all, I haven’t met anyone who prefers to be treated like a stereotype or a generic number that is very much like other generic numbers within a statistical collective.  Yet, there are still companies out there who try to sell you a product or service using Henry Ford’s old maxim:  “You can have it any color you like, as long as it’s black.”

Sometimes mass-production concerns limit variation, so it’s an understandable limitation, but it’s nice, and uncorporate, when companies give you choice.  Sure it may take more effort to produce choices that cater to an individual’s preferences, but it can lead to a stronger connection with the brand, and that’s rarely bad for sales. That’s why you can customize your Google homepage, buy an iPod or car that approximates your favorite color, and special-order your Dell machine to include just the components you want.

Efforts to custom-tailor advertising campaigns to the individual rather than to a broad demographic are relatively new, but the idea is slowly catching on.   Let’s look at three interesting examples:

AMERICAN EXPRESS

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azFDDd2rDSk]

Ever since American Express started running their “My Life. My Card” campaign, I’ve been intrigued by the number of respectable celebrities who got involved.  Tina Fey, M. Night Shyamalan, Ellen DeGeneres, and Robert DeNiro are a few of the names who participated.  I’m sure American Express paid them all handsomely, but even so, high-profile figures are  generally concerned to some degree about the appearance of selling out.

How then did American Express land so many big names?  I’m guessing part of their success came from the freedom they gave their participants to express themselves.  In the above commercial notice how the people involved talk about their unique contributions to the world, their projects.  There’s no corporate, generic discussion about how American Express exceeds expectations or how  it puts customers first. Instead we get specific examples of interesting people sharing their passions with us in a personal way.

When I see that commercial, I don’t think, “hey look at all those sell outs.”   I see new sides of people I admire, and I’m left wondering what my special contribution  to this world might be and how American Express could help me share it.    Not a bad message to convey, yes?  I don’t know about you, but the message’s appeal to me is a big reason why I have an American Express card.

EPSON

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85HYsFPhGVk]

Most of us with computers use printers to get important things done, but how often do you hear someone begging for geek cred by bragging on his printer instead of his cell phone, or stereo system, or game console?  Not often I think.   I definitely don’t lose sleep waiting for tech specs on the season’s upcoming printers.  Epson understands this.  That’s probably why they came up with epsonalities.

If you go to their site at epsonality.com you can go through several tests to find out which printer is exactly right for your personality.   You don’t get thrown into a broad group based on your age, sex, or occupation, because, after all, you are an individual, and your needs and wants are different by definition from  those of others,  perhaps a little or perhaps a lot. Why shouldn’t that also be true about the printer you use?

The print ads and tv spots used to promote the epsonality site, like the one above, emphasize the particular ways that particular people want to use printers.    Specific examples in the advertising help us imagine how we might use an Epson for our own specific purposes.  And when you think about it like that, it does make printers seem more fun, almost like a beloved cell phone.

ADIDAS

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXjOZE9R4BQ]

Adidas has run a series of Impossible is Nothing ads that feature more famous people talking about their struggles.  Those are interesting enough for their emphasis on the individual and his specific struggles in achieving success.  The ads don’t generalize about how Adidas helps you win just like (fill in name of famous athlete here).   They look at the particulars and inspire us in the process.

But, what really strikes me about the commercial above is that it celebrates a team that doesn’t achieve undisputed success. To most observers, the featured Saint Margarets team isn’t a triumphant one, but to the team itself that one goal they scored is a colossal victory. 

It’s such a great, uncorporate thing that Adidas is willing to rejoice even with a team that loses the game but still achieves something unprecedented. We can’t all win the big games, but we can all aim to do our very best as we play with our own unique skills and perspectives, and Adidas salutes us for that.  That’s a pretty compelling reason to buy Adidas stuff, don’t you think?

Remember these ads when dealing with friends and employees and clients.  No one wants to be treated like just another number, but treating someone like an individual takes time and effort.  It means taking an interest in someone, not for the sake of getting the sale but for the sake of a appreciating a fellow human being created in the image of God, just like you and me. It means taking the time to understand what motivates, intrigues, and repulses a person and spending more time adapting a specific approach to him or her.

You do it, to some extent, when you’re trying to sell to someone, so why not do it for the rest of the people in your life?  It is, after all, your chance and mine to make the world just a little less corporate.

Why Target Doesn’t Feel Corporate

I cringe when I enter some places.  Certain homes, businesses, and community establishments have this hard-to-describe, but easy-to-perceive corporate quality to them that makes me want to leave as quickly as possible. Target isn’t one of those places.

I go to Target sometimes even when I am not planning to buy anything. Unlike other stores, no one tries to pressure me into buying something as soon as I walk into the door.  As long as I don’t linger after closing time, I can stay as long as I want without getting the stink eye from one.  When I do have to make big purchases, I think of Target.

So why exactly do I go to Target when I’m not making a purchase?  Well, the delightful variations of good design on display inspire me. Seriously.  I love how Target makes design a priority without being snobbish about it.  They hire top notch designers like Sami Hayek to create fun and fashionable stuff, but the prices make practical-minded people smile.  (I would say practical-minded people like myself, but then I am only practical-minded about fifty percent of the time.  Maybe less.  Still it’s a good thing to practice.)

The corporate thing to do these days in the worlds of fashion and design is to posture like a rock star and mark up the prices accordingly. Fortunately for us, Target doesn’t do the corporate thing … at least not here.

Target’s dedication to design is evident in almost every one of their commercials.  Here’s one of my favorites:

The commercial shows us a playful and deliberately designed world that includes samples of the gadgets you can buy at Target.  As we watch, we’re reminded that Target cares about accessible design. Plus the Target logo is incorporated into the beginning and the end of the commercial, which helps us remember what the commercial is about. Most of the time, it takes only one viewing for me to remember a Target commercial.  There are so many other ads that I’ve seen 7-8 times, and I still can’t remember what product is being advertised.  And I study advertisements, people, so someone out there isn’t doing his job very well.

But enough of a digression.  One reason Target’s ads work so well is because of  the company’s clearly defined reason for existence. If you go to their site about themselves (found here), you’ll note that they have an entire heading dedicated to design.  Even more impressive to me was their 64 page PDF on Corporate Responsibility.  It’s a document that’s easy to look at and one full of beautiful pictures and informative text.  Among other things, the PDF explains how Target gives back 5 percent of profit to the local communities where they operate, how they promote safety in and around their stores, and what they’re doing to protect the environment and promote sustainability.

Does that mean they’re a perfect company?  Of course not.  Like any organization, I’m sure there’s room for improvement.  But, when you spend the time and money to put together a polished, 64-page document about how your company tries to make the world better, it shows that you care about more than just making money.

What can you learn from Target? Make your reason for being more important than your pursuit of profit or measurable results, and create environments where people enjoy lingering by meeting their needs and being hesitant about the hard sell. I need to be inspired, and I’ll reward places that inspire me with my time, money, and participation.  Other people need to be informed, to have internet access, to feel comfortable, secure, or appreciated.  Serve the need and you’ll get your reward eventually, whether it’s a financial, social, or spiritual reward that you seek.

Of course, this doesn’t apply just to places selling things. When I first started working for Canon, I would leave the office as soon as I could.  But that’s changed now that I’ve developed good relationships with my coworkers and my supervisors.   When I’m off the clock, I can get other stuff done in the office, so I linger sometimes, and I avoid rush-hour traffic in the process.   That adds values to my life, and so I’m more likely to stay with Canon as an employer.

My church has an artistic, friendly sensibility so I sometimes go a few minutes early and linger for a few minutes after the service ends.  But, you can bet an entire collection of in-your-face Jesus stickers that I’d get the hell out of a corporate church as fast as possible,  and I do mean hell in the most literal of ways.

Whatever you do, don’t do everything just to gain money or popularity or measurable results.  That’s corporate thinking and that kind of thinking isn’t welcome here.