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How to talk persuasively about topical and tactical advertising in a book? A medium more about shelf life than it is about plugging into the zeitgeist of whatever exact moment you happen to be reading these words.

Being topical isn’t so easy when the advertising process itself is so killing to freshness and immediacy.

An average ad is worked over an average of 30 times in meetings from concept to dispatch. No wonder so many end up so average.

Really, that any idea at all survives this proctology with integrity intact is remarkable. And in truth, only a handful of ads each year do manage to overcome the process and successfully go out into the real world and mix with the mainstream of life.

It’s worth the effort. Successful topical ads enjoy tremendous effectiveness compared to the spending behind them.

So even though the things I’m going to talk about in this article will break a few comfortable systems, the ROI is AOK.

However, let me start my saying that it’s a tough task. Hard for advertising ideas to compete with everyday news on the street; harder still, then, to be the news.

However, that’s precisely what I’m recommending your advertising strive to do. At least, occasionally.

Because, just as nothing’s as old as yesterday’s news, there’s most likely nothing is as fusty as your current advertising strategy.

Sorry, but it was, after all, based on yesterday’s perspective. It’s the age old, driving-with-the-rear-vision-mirror problem.

There’s so much process, time and effort involved in the preliminaries to running most every advertising campaigns today, that nearly everyone else in your category has had the same period so digest, and react to, the marketing situation as you.

In the meantime, they’ve read the same books, believed the same research, subscribed to the same journals and dealt with the same ever-shrinking choice of globalized, systematized agency networks.

On the other hand, nothing’s as powerful for a brand as an immediate, lively, topical idea that captures a collective moment and blossom around the water coolers and coffee tables of the world.

Passion the water coolers test’ (by now this is probably becoming the ‘SMS test’ in many young markets around the globe) should be compulsory on every brief.

Aim for fame.
“You can’t underestimate the water cooler factor” said Pepsi’s Dave DeCecco in the New York Times, in February 2004, when talking about the power of big events, “… to unveil new advertising.”

There’s no time like the present. Because, that’s what your customer is talking about; and thinking about; and coping with, the present.

If your campaign is good enough, it might become part of this constant flux of present-tense consciousness and, hopefully, even enter the vernacular.

If your starting point is what is actually happening today and, more importantly, if your advertising department has the necessary speed to market, then your brand will be in a world of your own.

A class of one. Out in the clear. On people’s lips. On the button. Of the ‘now’. Usually such ads are one-offs; a brilliant comment on the times that sparkles and resonates with the former Saatchi & Saatchi creative director, Kim Thorp.

He means better to have something savvy and scrappy than a tired and solid campaign that has the stakeholders all nodding their heads; while the consumers are nodding off.
Whilst Consistency is a Law, Predictability can be a Crime.

Great topical ads take a ‘newsworthy’ snippet of popular culture, and use it as proof of the brand’s campaign or promise, or claim.

This may sound more like jazz improvisation than careful campaign orchestration, but providing that good strategies are in place as a platform this is a more spirited approach than rigidly sticking to well-worn patterns. The sheer energy of an occasional Topical ad breathes life into a brand.

This is because people are more interested in the attitudes of a brand than its features these days. Features are table stakes. Show us where your heart lies.

We want the ground truth. The world over, in every category, we’re talking to an increasingly ad literate and media savvy consumer.

So a solid, plodding reinterpretation of last year’s execution isn’t always the most pungent way to build brand equity.

Yes, it is about planning spontaneity. Unfortunately, few organizations respond fast enough to take advantage of moments of shared culture.

There are exceptions, of course. A few have built their bran’s fortunes on an authentic dialogue with the world, conducted through media advertising.

Bennetton was one, Branson’s Virgin another, I guess. They outmaneuvered the big, slow guys; and that’s why every regional and domestic market has an example or two to talk about.

In the beginning was word of mouth
From international events to suburban book launches, from global sports involving millions of people right down to your a friend’s friend’s flat-Warming, ‘partied communication’ is integral to our lives.

Humans, more than any animal, have invented events and social gatherings – rocks concerts, religious celebrations, birthday parities, engagements, weddings, seminars, football matches, rallies, graduations, hen parties, buck’s nights and the rest; it is all about shared experience.

Social circuit breakers; opportunities to flaunt status, to pool knowledge and opinion.
Shared experience is one of the essential values we enjoy about relationships with fiends relatives and marriage partners for generations.

According to the Danish linguist, Otto Jesperson, there are five theories on the origin of language.

The Bow-wow Theory, that speech arose through people copying the sounds of their environment.

The Pooh-pooh Theory, that people started emitting instinctive sounds caused by emotions like pain, anger, frustration or similar.

The Ding-dong Theory, that people reacted to external stimuli to produce sounds that were harmonious with the environment – arguably ‘mama’ is the sound made when the lips approach the breast.

Then there’s the Yo-yo Theory, that argues speech arose as a collaborative effort as people worked together communally, their physical effort producing rhythmic runts that became in time, chants and eventually language.

The La-la Theory suggests the romantic side of life was the primary agency for the development of language. The love, play, feeling, need for song, soaring emotion and poetry.

You won’t be surprised that, in 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris resolved that, because of the noisy, vehement and disorderly meetings, any further formal discussion of the origin of language was to be banned.

Word of mouth has been making people feel more comfortable with their environment for about 100,000 years – nowadays, by talking about and recommending brands.

According to The Anatomy of Buzz by US marketer Emanuel Rosen, Recent surveys show that 58% of young people rely to some extent on others when selecting a car, 53% of moviegoers follow the recommendations of friends and 65% of the people who bought a palm organizer wee inspired by the enthusiasm of others.

Everyone knows word of mouth adds fame and currency to the brand when ordinary people say, “Did you see that ad last night where … ?”

The new cleaner in my city apartment was quite interested when he heard that I was a partner in an advertising agency. “Really,” he said, as he swept the floor, “I know all about advertising.”

“Really?” I responded, thinking of the many clients who’d also said that.
“Yeah,” said the cleaner, “it’s all about getting people to talk about your product.”

He was right, I said immediately. Then I thought how many marketers should be sweeping floors. And there it was in a nutshell: The significance of Topicality.

Just as “new” is the most powerful word in advertising, so “news” is the ultimate aim of advertising.

Because if you’re newsworthy, you’ve got the most powerful advertising technique in the world working for your brand.

Look at it like this. What do people talk about? The weather. What they have to do later in the day.

What somebody said about what they’ve been doing. Current things. Contemporary, ordinary things. Things that texture the ebb and flow of the times. Flotsam and jetsam.

‘The now’, in short. So, as Shakespeare’s Edgar said to Gloucesor, “Ripeness is all. Come on!”

In the middle was the process
A certain pretentiousness, it’s been noted, overtakes marketing people when writing about their product.

Maybe this jargonized frame of reference has somehow led to advertising’s own clichéd language, and its limited set of category-imagery.

Advertising is using fewer and fewer words and images, of less and less variety. To worse and worse effect.

We arrange words and images about so-called real aspects of people’s lives, and shallowly and cheese ily tangle tangle and abuse them.

The same old thing regurgitated with less imagination than last time. We take the lively soil of real life and sanitize it until it is heavy as a cold. Yet as Samuel Johnson Wrote, “Words are the daughters of the earth.”

Too many advertisements lack dexterity and lifeblood. They lack a wide enough brand vocabulary to do any thing other.

Most brands attempts at tapping into popular culture are as insightful as turning a baseball cap around backwards and thinking that’s cool.

Heavy handed, method acting. Undemanding, hollow, with all eccentricity and quirky liveliness eradicated. Originality as anathema.

This contributes to the wall of advertising sameness, and the audience sees only the usual comfortable, expected patterns. So it notices little.

Similarities merge into formula. Like in Hollywood. As someone once asked: “Those “Rocky” movies, how can you tell them apart?”

The answer came. “It’s easy: they’re numbered”. Ironically, consumer choice and worldliness has expanded in inverse proportion, as the marketing vocabulary has shrunk.

And it’s getting worse, with a breed of myopic brand –nazis now rising, who are rigidly keeping new life from campaigns in the guise of being so called ‘brand guardians’ Both agencies and clients have them.

They exert relentless daily pressure over every nervous aspect of their charge. Yet, there’s no prize for mere uniformity. A mere C.L. (Corporate Identity) is not a strategy or an idea.

Brands die of stasis. Legal departments also deserve a heavy sentence here. With more lawyers than art directors involved I advertising, many companies are askance at the notion of actually being in the news.

That usually means shaping to deny something bad that’s happened. No, no … you see we try and avoid publicity.

As one Compliance Advisor recently said to me: “Of course, we don’t expect our marketers to be lawyers.”

“Why then,” I couldn’t help asking, “do you let your lawyers to be marketers?” Legal fees are now very important items in marketing budgets, and so many want to be seen as having their existence justified. So, for one reason or another, many wheels are spun but little forward progress is made.

Brand language should be creative and rigorous. Not sullenly predictable and impoverished of spirit.

After the CBS broadcast from Superbowl XXXV111 in 2004 (in many ways, a spiraitual home for the wonderful one-off topical ad since Apple’s ‘1984’), there were complaints that ads for Bud Light, Charmin, Cialis, Lay’s, Levitra, Sierra Mist were almost as tasteless as the antics of the performers, Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake and Nelly, in the halftime show.

This uproar led to calls that the big event TV programs, like the Grammy Awards and future Super Bowls, be more controlled.

The ABC network, which broadcast the Academy Awards in the US, already had a system in place to scrutinize every TV commercial scheduled to run during the show.

Commercials have to undergo two separate screenings for ABC, from script stage and storyboards right through to finished ‘tapes’. This is Spontaneity Hell. And it may be your future.

In the End, You’re Either Famous or Just Making up the Numbers
William Goldman, the illustrious US film maker. Once commented on those trying to analyse the success of his Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: “They tried all kinds of ways to analyse why it was so successful; but I’ll tell you why.

The only reason some movies are successful is that people like them. If they’re not successful, it’s because people didn’t like them. The rest is pathology.”

Famous can also be infamous. All in equal under The Law of Topicality. The Church of England in Birmingham recently ran a campaign with poster headlines like: “Body piercing? Jesus had his done 2,000 years ago.”

Blasphemous? Probably. But the Anglican High Church answered criticism by saying: “Anything which makes an impact on the secular society is of value.”

American actress, Demi Moore, had just done her striking Vanity Fair cover while heavily pregnant, but that didn’t stop this Toyota Camry ad becoming the most complained about print advertisement in Australian history, at the time.

And it only ran once. However, the new concept of a “wide-body car” was successfully introduced, both economically and quickly, before a cent of the main campaign budget had been spent.

Everyone involved on an advertising account – the creative, suits, clients – should scour every newspaper, every morning, with a mind to finding some buried ammunition that might be turned into a topical or tactical ad.

Of course, topical ads can be used q1uite aggressively. For example, we once bought an outdoor poster site for Toyota that was positioned opposite the entrance to the ford factory, and could be seen by every one of their executives as they drove into work each morning.

Deliciously competitive tactics. You can contrive the moment, as with the Cannes winning “Bugger” commercial for Toyota Hiluz: to avoid over-exposing the famously popular ad, the agency took the TVC off air; then spiked interest in it again and again with a series of topical and tactical reminders in other media.

For example, after the huge fireworks on the spans of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at midnight on New Year’s Eve, we ran a full-page ad the following morning showing a retouched shot of the bridge in cinders, and the caption: “Bugger.”

That’s an example of a topical ad you might be able to plan for. It’s not hard. Every Valentines Day, my local florist has a chalk sign that promises: “Flowers today, fireworks tonight” The richness of eventful life should be celebrated by advertising brands.

Other examples, like for Land cruiser, sometimes fall into your lap. The brand’s indestructible image was far from dented when a Landcruiser was destroyed by the Australian Air Force.

They accidentally dropped an unarmed bomb on it. The photo was on the front page of every newspaper.

Next day, we ran a topical ad admitting that, yes, perhaps there is one way to destroy a Landcruiser.

In 2004, a campaign for coffee in Australia, by M&C Saatchi, was launched using hotly debated social issues, like the refugee question, as the platform.

In December 20-03, a brand new advertising agency network called DNA opened its doors.

Happily for everyone, quite soon after this, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was found and identified … by his DNA. You may have seen it on the news?

Anyway, two days later, this ad was on the newspaper and suddenly everyone was talking more about the new agency than the old dictator.

Topical P.S. – In today’s newspaper (my today, not yours) is an interview with Sun Microsystems vice president of global communications and marketing, Andy Lark, Who suggests advertisers and their agents have for too long toiled at making marketing buttoned up and perfect.

He asserts that fear of failure clogs the system like cholesterol filled artery that ultimately and drastically reduces the company’s performance.

He advises us to develop a ‘Kill it fast’ mentality. “We grew up in a culture of let’s get the brochure perfect, the ad has to be perfect –that you can’t fail as a marketer.

“It needs to change to fail it fast.” This theory might sound drastic, but who can argue that Campaigns need to deliver quickly these days? Attention spans are shrinking, magazine readership is falling and TV viewing is fading.

Maybe the future is not about sustained, low level activity. But something far fresher and energetic. You tell me. After all, you’re already there.

Keywords: topicality, advertising, advertisers, topical advertising, tactical advertising, ad, ads, customer, marketing, topical ad, brand, La-la Theory, Yo-yo Theory, Ding-dong Theory, Pooh-pooh, Bow-wow Theory, word of mouth,

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The customer is king. Except in many agency creative departments, where winning awards turns you into royalty.

The customer is king. Except in many agency network boardrooms, where winning new business rules.

The customer is king. Except in many client hierarchies, where advertising standards reflect what junior mangers believe will get the nod of approval later when they present the work to their senior people.

So, perhaps the customer has bee dethroned. In fact, maybe the customer’s interests are more often king-hit.

I recall a senior FMCG marketer once rejecting a TVC script by explaining: “the problem is, that idea is only made for the market!”

I recall another large manufacturer admitting that he ran national TV campaigns to “educate the sales force.”

The customer is about third in line, at best. And what’s the result? Hobbled marketing.
Advertising as a dull and blunted instrument.

Oh yes, and customers in a right royal fug. Whatever else, surely the focus of the marketing effort must be on the person that the ads are talking to?

Too many campaigns are pretending to address the market, but are continually looking over their shoulder and around the room for nods of approval.

There are even award winning campaigns that are simple, humorous and fascinating, obeying any number of the Laws in this book, but these ads may still be unsuccessful in the marketplace.

Because, for one reason or the other, many campaigns are not truly aimed at the end user; whether they’re directed at furthering the careers of their creators, or not damaging the promotion prospects of the marketing people, or are simply based on lazy thinking.

Ads are often forced to bend to many differing agendas; so they collect mandatory inclusions that aren’t really about effective communication.

Like the standard liquid metal’ beauty shot in car ads, the refreshed and delighted little shake of the drinker’s head in beer ads, and the vacanat, contented smile of mothers in practically all others ads.

The only mandatory on a creative brief should be “make it famous”. Steve Hadyn, one of the creative team behind Apple Computer’s legendary ‘1984’, is quoted as saying: “If you want to be a successful copywriter, write for the client; if you want to be an award winning copywriter, write for yourself; if you want to be an effective copywriter, write for the consumer.”

Another thing that’s come between the customer and a lot of great ideas is that advertising agencies make the mistake of styling themselves as a service industry. Far better the business should be considered a manufacturing business.

The product: Ideas.
Carefully assembled, tangible, muscular, artful and transforming ideas.
Admittedly, the manufacture process is somewhat elaborate and fraught at the moment.

Finding a way to guarantee that the idea will overcome the process in the marketer’s real challenge today.

A complicating aspect of this problem is that advertising agencies no longer seem to have the relationship with, or indeed command the respect of, senior company people.

And without a champion at the highest level of the client company, a great idea deteriorates with each and every meeting. Layers of indecision breed abominable no-men.

There’s a legendary story from the halcyon days of British advertising in the 1970s, when things were quite different – the MD of the client company invited a particular agency principal, who was pitching for his account, to ask a few relevant questions of him regarding the business.

The client MD had a bell on his desk he explained, that the would ring in precisely 30 minutes, and the meeting would be over.

“How many layers of people have to approve the final campaign?” was the agency principal’s first question. “Seven,” answered the client. “Then ring the bell.”

What’s all this got to do with The Law of Taste? Well, as you’ll see, “taste” is one example of the hollow virtues that clients so fondly and automatically mandate in their category.

‘Taste’ is frequently a piece of baggage that an idea is forced to carry in order to progress through the food chain toward the actual consumer.

Whether for good, lazy or political reasons, such category mandates are frequently misguided.

There is long-standing phenomenon regarding “taste” in food and beverage advertising. And by that, I do not mean “taste” in the sense of style or tome or production values. I mean “taste” in the literal sense of the taste of the product as an advertised claim.

It is simply that “taste” as a consumer benefit in food and beverage advertising is an almost always used claim, but very infrequently is it a persuasive claim, but very infrequently is it a persuasive claim in establishing a competitive brand position. That is, motivating the consumer to select one brand over another.

If this is so, the more time and effort that goes into communicating good or great taste in advertising the brand, the more “taste makes waster.”

Of course, as with any rule, there are exceptions. And we’ll get to them. But first, let’s examine the premise.

From the standpoint of the consumer, is taste a legitimate benefit? Certainly it is. I cannot imagine research on a food or beverage brand that would not prove conclusively that consumers give high priority to taste satisfaction as a brand attribute.

Ask consumers what they want from a particular food or beverage and the consistent response is, not surprisingly, taste.

The real question is, if consumers keep telling us they want taste, does that mean they’re not getting it?

I think there are very few if any food and /or beverage categories that are characterized by tasting bad.

The reason consumers are always telling us in benefit/attribute or focus group research that they wanted “great taste” is because it’s the natural focus of the eating and drinking experience.

So taste is the most important thing we want in our food and drink to the point that it is generic, and we should expect that research would consistently produce that conclusion.

Another reason we can bet on this is the fact that consumers are not usually creative in their answer to marketing and advertising research.

They tend to play back essentially what the category’s advertising has told tem is important.

It is not that they can’t think for themselves. Far from it, the consumer is very shrewd and discerning when it come to deciding what they want or don’t to by.

If they were dumb and easily manipulated, as may critics of advertising would have it, why do the vast majority of new products fail?

It is rather that consumers don’t spontaneously play back their often impulsive and emotional reasons for brand selection. What they do tell us is the most obvious rational answer that comes to mind.

And that turns out to be what they’ve seen in the advertising and experienced themselves. When it comes to food and beverages, the top-of-mind issue is taste.

One of the unfortunate results of food marketing research is that consumers say they want taste, so we advertise taste, so that they say they want taste.

With this circular reasoning, it is not surprising that the history of food advertising is marked by so much that is indistinguishable, undifferentiating and therefore wasteful Rather, we should concentrate on research that uncovers unfulfilled wants and needs – in other words, problems.

Ask the very same consumers who told us they wanted “great taste” in a food or beverage to respond to potential problems with that product and we will be surprised to learn that “it doesn’t taste good” is very rarely, if every, a high ranking problem.

Rather, we may learn that “it takes too long to prepare” or “it’s fattening” or “it can’t be eaten on the run” or “it’s too messy for kids” or a multitude of other considerations all of which are, in reality, bigger concerns, bigger want and bigger problems than “taste.”

A good example comes from research done some years ago in the category of canned dog food. As “our best friends,” I think they qualify for this discussion.

The results were that the purchasers (not the consumers, of course) wanted dog food that provided complete, well-balanced nutrition and a food the dog will like.

Is it any wonder we’ve seen so much dog food advertising that basically says, “It’s good for them and they’ll love it”?

The same dog owners were concurrently asked to evaluate their problems with canned dog food. The highest-ranking complaints were that (1) it’s too messy and (2) it smells awful.

In fact, all canned dog foods offer total balanced nutrition and dogs will eat every bit of just about any brand. But a lot of dry dog food get sold by solving the mess and smell problems.

Yes, the purchaser was of course assured their dog would like the taste (which they probably assumed anyway) but that wasn’t the point, or the point of difference of the advertising.

Even when we have a testable, provable statistical advantage in taste over competition, very rarely is that an effective strategy.

“Our chocolate pudding tastes better than their chocolate pudding” is of questionable motivating power because the consumer really doesn’t think the chocolate pudding they’re eating tastes bad to begin with.

They wouldn’t be eating if it did. Since the only reason, rational or otherwise, to eat chocolate pudding is because it tastes good. It’s just not a problem.

You may get the sales force standing and cheering at a sales meeting with some we’re-better-than-they-are advertising but the consumer is very likely unmoved by it.

I once asked our research department to review all the food and beverage advertising we had studied to establish any correlation between positive taste playback and the scores of the commercials in terms of memorability and/or motivation to purchase. The answerer was no correlation.

A high positive taste playback did not mean a high memorability or persuasion score. In fact, it is quite understandable for advertising that does not impart anything new or interesting to be totally forgettable.

But while I advocate that we avoid the knee-jerk reaction of building food and beverage creative strategies that first and foremost demand communication of “great taste,” I also want to suggest examples in which “taste” should be a major concern.

Despite the tremendous growth of health-oriented foods over the past couple of decades and given the well-publicised obesity problems in the US, there still seems to be a built-in resistance to the logic of eating what is good for you in favour of the pure emotional enjoyment of sugar, salt and fat.

In most categories, there is a “ceiling” effect that health-oriented foods and beverages come up against.

What seems to happen is that the health segment of a category develops in response to advertised “breakthroughs” but eventually growth grinds to a halt regardless of media weight.

In effect, we reach and persuade the psychologically attuned segment which is willing to trade off “taste” for “health”.

But beyond segment, there is little willingness to give up the pleasures of taste for the benefits of health.

It is a very complex psychology at work, because the health-oriented segment will expect a lower level of taste gratification and indeed will almost no trust the health claim if the product tastes too good.

On the other hand, you can’t grow the brand beyond the limitations of that segment unless you promise and deliver good taste.

An ongoing example of this is the diet cola category. Advertising invariably delivers the constant assurance that the latest diet cola new product delivers taste as good as full-calorie colas.

Even if blind taste tests show otherwise, most diet cola drinkers ultimately convince themselves of good taste in their diet colas to the point where they in fact no loner like the taste of the regular version.

I think this is because (1) they logically determined that they would drink the diet cola because of the weight control benefit and (2) they need to believe that the taste is just as good if not better than regular colas, so that they can get the satisfaction they want from their cola consumption.

An example of growth beyond the “ceiling” is Life Cereal, which was positioned when introduced as a high-protein, good-for-you brand.

It had a foothold share but not a profitable business. Too much media money had to be spent to maintain that share against the “ceiling” effect of health versus taste.

In fact, contrary to the natural assumption for a healthy food, it actually tasted quite good. But it was not until a commercial showed a little kid named Mikey blessing Life Cereal’s taste in spite of his brother’s negativism about the cereal being good for them that Life Cereal sales took off and became the only cereal introduced in a span of two decades that was among the Top 10 in sales.

The critical insight in this case was that the advertising convinced mothers that their kids would like the taste and indeed they did. The actual consumers – the kids – were oblivious to the health claim and therefore the dynamic of the “ceiling” effect did not apply to them.

In the beer category, good taste is an assumed given unless, as with health claims for other food or beverages, something suggests that the taste might be compromised.

More important is what I will call the “consumption milieu or mentality” that governs the beer – drinking experience to the point that a literal offering of fewer calories was impossible in establishing the “light beer” category.

Gablinger’s, one of the first low-calorie beers, also promised real beer taste. But red-blooded beer drinkers, at the bar or the ballgame with their buddies or at home watching TV, don’t want to be seen as worried about calories.

And they naturally assumed that low-calorie beer had to have a watered-down taste. Gablinger’s failed.

Light Beer from Miller came at the lower-calorie content a whole new way. They didn’t say “fewer calories” but rather “less filling” which meant that you could drink more of it.

That was the real claim and the real news. Sure, they said “great taste” but they showed bar rooms full of America’s most masculine popular heroes enjoying the beer exactly as they’d enjoy any beer, with the breakthrough benefit being that they could enjoy any beer, with the breakthrough benefit being that they could enjoy more of it.

The brilliant insight that launched Life Beer was that it had nothing to do with the “great taste” they constantly proclaimed.

It was all about being “less filling.” And it established an entire category of beer that was not so much seen as better for your waistline but rather beer you could drink more of.

In all these cases, taste in the traditional sense would have been pure waste. In each case, taste was indeed an important issue but it had to be dealt with in a unique way based on insightful understanding of the role that taste actually played in positioning the brand’s other characteristics.

But, you might be thinking, what about one of the most blatant taste superiority claims ever made a category for which we’ve already observed that taste is practically generic?

What about “The Pepsi Challenge” in which Pepsi blatantly advertised that it tastes better than coke and showed consumer taste test to prove it?

Didn’t that build Pepsi sales and in fact drive the Coca-Cola Company to introduce New Coke, positioned as tasting better?

In fact, the markets in which Pepsi sales improved significantly were markets in which they had only a very minor share of market compared to Coke, and in those markets, Coke sales actually grew as well.

In other words, “The Pepsi Challenge” energized these markets, producing increased sales for both Pepsi and coke by taking market share from the marginal brands.

It was good for Pepsi, of course, but not in the way you would have expected. And coke’s eventual reaction, the introduction of a better tasting New Coke, was the emotional result of selling their brand attacked. Remember, they weren’t losing share.

Worse yet, in responding, they unbelievable misunderstood the heritage and the role of taste in their own brand. People drink Coke because they like it but even more because they like what the brand stands for as an American icon.

That was, and still is, the competitive foundation for the coke brand. It was not the taste, as Coke management learned when Middle America greeted New coke with all the enthusiasm of a newly discovered act in a Wagnerian opera.

The ultimate irony of this cosmic marketing blunder is that the failure of New Coke bred a new appreciation for the existing product that was renamed and re-energised as Coke Classic.

While they averted disaster, taste nearly “wasted” one of the most successful brands in the history of marketing.

I’ll add one more concern to the food and beverage advertising recipe. The problem again stems from the treatment of taste as a primary product claim. It is the way in which we test taste perceptions in our advertising.

I alluded earlier to the fact that there is often no correlation between taste playback in advertising and the memorability or motivation of that advertising.

However, there is the very real possibility that this is a flaw in the testing systems not a blanket condemnation of taste communication in food and beverage advertising.

The fact is, most of our frequently used testing systems measure only literal playback. They are not equipped to measure impressions or perceptions.

There are more advanced testing protocols that can indeed get closer to what advertising actually communicates no-literally and how it really works in affecting consumer attitudes and behaviors.

Nevertheless, most such systems are expensive and time consuming, and are therefore not attuned to most marketers’ needs for positive sales and profit results every quarter of their fiscal years.

Because people are not equipped to verbalize their feelings very well and no non-verbal stimulus or response mechanism is usually supplied to recognize and evaluate emotions evoked by advertising, taste, which is not top-of mind as a concern or problem, is not necessarily played back, even if it has been built into the advertising very prominently and literally.

On the other hand, it may be very much a part of the consumer’s perception of the brand but when asked “what does the commercial or ad say or show,’ the answer is literally only what they remember, which is keyed only to whatever is responsive to their concerns and problems.

Thus, even when taste is indeed an important part of the communication, as we have seen it can be, we are confounded by testing that does not properly measure its impact.

Perhaps the most memorable advertising for Burger King was a campaign created in the early to mid-70s called “Have it Your Way.”

The commercials were stuffed with tasty, mouthwatering shots of sizzling meat, juicy tomatoes, crisp lettuce, onions, pickles, the works, but the differentiating competitive claim was a hamburger the way you want it, without the waiting.

Choice and speed were the consumer concerns so that addressing them produced motivating, effective advertising.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit it was done by my agency, as was “The Pepsi Challenge,” but that’s ancient history.

The taste playback in Burger King advertising might have been minimal, but that didn’t mean we didn’t communicate it. If “great taste” had been a part of the strategy for most food and Beverages, it is – we could have fallen into the trap of downgrading the advertising because the research didn’t play it back even though it was there. This happens all too often.

The strategy says taste, we build in literal taste claims in words and pictures, but it doesn’t play back because it’s not top-of-mind for the consumer, and it isn’t the brand position we are advertising for people to remember and act on.

Had decisions been made primarily on the communication of taste, a very successful marketing strategy would have gone to waste.

The conclusion is not to treat taste as the reason-for-being, when in fact it is an expected characteristic of the product, but rather to treat it as a reassurance and not expect to have research play it back on a literal basis.

Beer Marketers have learned to do this as a way of life. After all, how can you communicate taste if you’re not allowed to show the product being tasted (it is in fact illegal to show beer actually being drunk in commercials airing in the US)?

You do it by creating a not-verbal, non-literal imagery that defines taste enjoyment and you don’t make “great taste” the determining criterion in the research. After all is said and done, the big, leading beer brands are built on attitude, not product specifics.

So, am I suggesting that taste should not be a significant factor in food and beverage advertising?

No. I am suggesting that there are valid and important reason for taste claims but they are far fewer than our tendency to automatically assume that taste must be a primary part of communication.

What I am suggesting is that taste, when it is a strategic communication need – usually relegated to an assurance role subordinate to some other claim – should not be the concern it too often is.

It ought only to be seen in she context of how the consumer sees it, which is often something taken for granted.

At the end of the day, advertising should:
(1) Provide a positive, enjoyable, entertaining experience with the brand, or
(2) Communicate how the brand is particularly relevant to the prospect’s lifestyle or way of thinking, or
(3) Offer something new for the category or
(4) All of the above.

Making “taste” the primary claim for most food and beverages will rarely meet any of these criteria and will usually result in the advertising being a waste.

Keywords: taste, advertisement, advertising, customer, marketer, marketing, ads, campaign, copywriter, ceiling effect, brand.

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First things first. How on earth do you get your message through? There’s so much rival noise already distracting your prospect in such a cluttered world.

How do you rise above the daily ruckus, not just the static coming from other advertisers, but the clamorous information explosion we’re all living in?

Nature understands that in a cluttered world, you must find a way to get yourself into clear space if you’re going to communicate successfully. The question is: how do you get your ad into clear space?

Un-clutter, if you want to be noticed in a jumbled world, be ruthlessly simple. Simplicity is the only foolproof advertising technique.

Indeed, the original lateral thinker, Edward De Bono, believes that simplicity is so precious in today’s business world that he has called for an Institute of simplicity to be established.

Advertising is communication, and if the right person does not really hear your ad, having heard, does not clearly understand what you are saying, then you’ve failed.

Put plainly, we’re living in the over-information age; this means the more information you put into your advertising, the less people will take out.

The Law of Simplicity exists to curb the Crime of Add-vertising. Remember, even though it’s called an “ad,” the most effective way to communicate a message is actually to subtract secondary information.

All great messages are profoundly simple: Don’t go; Just do it; I love you; You shall not kill.

The enduring philosophical tool, Ockham’s Razor, states that when there are two correct answers which solve a problem equally will, the more correct answer is the simpler one.

Work for a compression of a persuasive idea into a hard nut core – a profound simplicity; a haiku – like intensity.

Ah, but “how difficult it is to be simple,” as Van Gogh said. The art, of course, is not how short you make it.

But rather, how to make it short. For Marcello Serpa, the Brazilian advertising superstar and a former chairman of judges at Cannes, simplicity has never been an option for successful advertising.

It is much easier to be complex than to be simple. Simplicity is one of the most definite characteristics in advertising and may be one of the most forgotten.

This may be due to the fact that the “simple” has a dual personality: What is simple may have a genius synthesis or simply a primary obviousness.

To be simple require much more self-confidence than to be complex. The simple may be embarrassing.

After all, each of us wants to be seen as a person with refined thoughts. Complexity of rationale may be easily confused with intelligence by the incautious.

Meeting rooms around the world are packed with people who, to justify their salaries, issue super-complex opinions regarding the simplest of subjects. Complicating what is simple seems to be a good career stimulator.

Nevertheless, the simple is only sophisticated, only valued, when it is discovered before it becomes obvious.

Until it is revealed, is somewhere, close by, but very well disguised. It is necessary for someone to think about it first, to discover it first to that someone else could then say, “Wow, why didn’t I think of that before?”

Only after this phrase, repeated by many people, is a simple idea transformed into something obvious.

I imagine that it must have been something like this with the wheel, the paper clip, the headline “Think small” for VW or the picture of a piece of purple cut silk for the cigarette silk Cut.

Whoever discovers the obvious first becomes a genius, and those who only repeat it remain mediocre.

Being simple is also leaving an objective and trying to reach it with minimum resources, getting there by the shortest energy in this search, everything that does not contribute to simplicity, its purity, must be removed.

Being simple is communicating a new idea using the least possible number of elements, creating something so strong and powerful in its simplicity that it ends up generating a fabulous reaction in whoever is exposed to it, what is a simple moves person.

It is the revelation, almost sacred, of the obvious: “Gee, why didn’t I think of that before?”
 
Advertising is communication. “The result of advertising is measured not by what is said, but by what people understand.

A campaign starts to work when whatever is being sold – it may be an institutional message, a promotional price, or a new car – is noticed by those who are exposed to it.

But simply being aware that there is a new car in the market is not enough. It is necessary to notice what makes this car different from the others, why it is better.

But even this is not enough. It is necessary for this difference to be truly relevant for those who are looking for a car.

It’s simple really. You just have to answer two questions: “What am I going to say about this product?” And

“Is what I am going to say, truly what is going to motivate people?” The answers to these two questions are the most important part of the most important part of the creative process for any campaign, TV film or press ad.

Being simple is also being objective before creating.
A European country, such as England, for instance, is used to a level of complexity directly related to its capacity of observation of more elaborate messages.

In countries such as Brazil, young and still under development, this capacity is much smaller, being simple and objective is not an option; it is a necessity.

Here, in Brazil, the benefit of a product must be communicated in a clear, straightforward manner so that it may be wholly understood by the greatest number of people.
However, being simple is not enough. One must be simple and surprising.

Shank the spectator from the lethargy that a commercial break with clichés and artificial images, by smelling and offering itself to whoever reads it, dilating the pupils of its target audience, and thereby conveying its message with the greatest ease.

This is perhaps one of the keys to Brazilian advertising: simple without being simple-minded; objective, yet creating an impact at the same time; popular without being mediocre.

Advertisements such as Guarana Antrctica, with a minimum of elements, communicate the synthesis of a benefit: No calories, no belly.

Winning the print media Grand prix at the 1993 Cannes festival, the ad opened a path that has been followed by many Brazilian agencies since.

Another example of simplicity is the advertisement that announces the Botero explosion at the sao Paulo Modern Art Museum.

It defines, with humour, the most striking characteristic of this Colombian artist, who only portrays enormous and obese characters.

Sparing joints and articulation is one of the most important benefits of a tennis shoe for those who run every day.

The Mizuno band is acknowledged by the Brazilian Orthopedic Society as having the most efficient impact- absorption system in the market.

Therefore, imagining a tennis shoe between bones seems to be the simplest solution for the ad.

That is how it was with VW as well. Discovering a double check and using it to reinforce the German brand’s commitment to the total quality of its products seemed extremely obvious to us.

Keywords: advertising, ad, simplicity, communication, webcopyblog.com

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Spanish Nobel Literature Laureate and poet, Juan Ramon Jimenez, said: “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”

Differentiation is the reason for a brand’s existence. Differentiation is, therefore, the basic responsibility of a brand’s advertising.

So why do so many ads look the same? Especially, as Jim Aitchison says: “The less an ad looks like an ad, the more likely it is to get noticed.”

If everyone is zigging, and following certain prescribed rules, then the only sensible thing to do is to zag. Be a contrarian. An outlaw.

“I have no use for rules, they rule out the brilliant exception,” said the great Ed McCabe, himself the most disciplined of copywriters.

Like any workmanlike craft, you have to learn the rules before you know how to bend them; but the Outlaw is not about mere rebellion.

Every category has its own set of unwritten advertising conventions on how it should look. It takes a brave client to break out, but that’s what you have to do to stand out.

But who in their right mind would want to violate The Law of selling? Well sometimes it is not or “pure” brand issues; but, surely, there must always be a direct causal connection between those strategies and selling something in the immediate, foreseeable instance, even if it is only a notion or an emotion?

Can you violate The Law of Simplicity and still succeed? Perhaps, would be the honest answer, but it costs big money and a relentless disregard for basic professionalism. It’s one Law I would never break intentionally, and still expect a good ROI.

How about The Law of Positioning? Violate it at your utmost peril I think. What about The Law of Relevance?

Borrowed interest in a valid creative technique, but unless the ultimate “pointy” of the ad is relevant to the market or massages their feelings, well, what is the point? You can do it, but you won’t succeed.

The Law of Humour? If being funny makes your product more interesting, empathetic, cool or memorable, then don’t be scared of being light-hearted.

Even in heavy-hearted categories, like funeral parlors, humour can be appropriately disarming and down-to earthily human. It used to be said that nobody buys from a clown; these days, nobody buys from a bore.

The Law of disruption? Break it and blend in: hardly sensible. The 19th-century English artist and thinker, John Ruskin, used to encourage people to draw the world around them. Not to teach them how to draw, rather to teach them about the world.

To paraphrase the late great peter Cook, everything we’ve just told you is a lie, including this.

Sods Law in advertising is that which says: When you have just come up with a brilliant idea, sold it to the client and are about to go into production.

A competitor well immediately publish the said idea an exceptional form far inferior to that which you bad envisaged, causing you to go back to the drawing board from which you came, with the deadline from hell.

Being the tight-ass pedant that I am, I was not wont to submit to generalizations like humour, emotion or simplicity in the pursuit of a “law” of advertising, and indeed others here have sensibly, usefully and certainly much better than I could have, outlined the wisdom of those great truths of advertising, among others.

But I, dear reader, opted out, copped out and frankly chickened out and suggested the title of this article.

This article will not be long. In many ways the point is made by the title. It is naturally about the folly of formulas, the rejection of rules and the shame of the shame of the same.

It has of course to do with the requirement to. “think different,” the necessity to “break the rules” and the desirability of “disruption,” Advertising has always employed the rhetoric of the outlaw and its greatest practitioners and proselytizers, from Ray Rubicam through Bill Bernbach to Jean Marie Dru, have always preached a form of subversion.

Much as we may love the clint Eastwood imagery, the Outlaw is of course not a person. It’s not the mad genius with The Tindersticks CDs in the corner office of the creative department.

Neither is it simply a process, though there are legitimate processes which may arise from it.

And it is definitely not a positioning, a posture or a pose available only to a few preternaturally trendy agencies for a finite period of time (though in the absence of serious completion in the US throughout the 1980s, Chiat/Day flew the Pirate flag for a very long time).

It’s not just something that every agency should have or every agency should do. As a blueprint for creative thinking, “The Outlaw” is a mentality and a belief system that should permeate our industry and inspire everyone in it, if we are to continue to be valuable and valued.

Because of course, as ED McCabe said, creativity remains the last competitive weapon, the last legal means by which one company may gain unfair advantage over another.

Information technology, the globalization of the market economy, the liberalization of markets, the fragmentation of media, and the shift of Western consumerism towards experience – and desire-based drivers and away from needs-based drivers, all contribute to the rise in importance of “intangibles” and the primacy of creativity, coupled of course with the ability to apply it as a primary asset of businesses and organizations today.

When I worked in the States in the eighties, I was struck by the open acknowledgement, even by some practitioners, that there were two kinds of advertising.

Creative advertising and “advertising that sells,” whereas in Britain the creative imperative was widely accepted at the time.

I think that since than things have changed for the better in the States, but in these recent straitened times in all of our markets, in which some companies clearly still see creativity as a luxury, the reality is that more than ever The Outlaw mentality is not an option – it is a mandate.

In fact arguably, there is no other industry in which creativity in its broadest sense (which would encompass innovation and even boldness) is such an absolute prerequisite as it is in advertising.

In many other industries which employ creative skills, innovation and creativity are only a part of the product mix. The film industry, while producing highly creative and innovative new films, is also openly enslaved by a successfully formula.

Likewise, the music industry churns out endless “best off” and compilations alongside the genuinely new bands and albums.

Architects, software developers, game designers – have a leading edge and a bleeding edge, but all also have genuine “markets” for the familiar and the tried and trusted.

In other aspects of culture, I many appreciate and thrive on the new and the different (or I may not), but I will certainly at least some of a the time be comforted, reassured and entertained by the familiar, in fact often by the identical. This self evidently can’t be said of advertising at least in principle.

I think it’s less about “in principle” and more about “in theory.” People consume music, film, games, etc. in an open and active marketplace.

They exchange money for them and exert choices and preferences for them. They do not “consume” advertising in the same way – although it exists in the same cultural space – and of course we use this term (to consume) to describe what people do with advertising.

This, while being the bleeding obvious, is at the heart of the creative imperative for advertising and is often overlooked.

Like other aspects of culture, advertising of course operates in the public sphere, but unlike other aspects of culture it is compelled to intrude and will only effectively be “consumed” if it succeeds in doing so in some way.

It makes sense then that the singe qua non of any advertising is to get noticed. Now here’s the science part.

In purely neurological terms, the brain notices what’s different and relegates or files away the familiar.

Suddenly, “resist the usual” becomes less of a folksy slogan than an astonishingly compelling summary of pattern Recognition and Signal Detection Theory, and at least two important and established scientific fields are clearly seen to support The Outlaw mentality for Advertising.

But will this model of advertising survive much longer? Is it surviving now in the cold climate of the early 20th century recession, in the multichannel digital world? When does The Outlaw become The Outcast?

One of the most gleeful and persistent predictions of the last 10 years has been that of the death of mass media and of advertising.

In fact in the firmament of marketing services as a whole, advertising is now pretty much the business that dares not speak its name.

It is deeply unfashionable these days to be optimistic about advertising but I’m afraid I really am.

I once made a speech at a creative awards show in Australia in the zenith of the dotcom boom, which I called Crystal Bollocks.

It was basically a humanistically based rant against the ridiculous, unrealistic predictions of what was going to happen to consumer behaviour and therefore to mass media and advertising as a result of the interner.

It seemed to me and others (though not many of them were vocal at the time) that the market was being completely inflated by confusing the possible with the probable, and assuming that the essential nature of consumers was to be highly rational and highly individualistic.

The consumer was basically a value-seeking missile operating alone. In spite of the frenzy of optimism and excitement it created at the time, the imagery conjured of the future was actually highly dystopian.

Taken to its logical conclusion, it was positively “Vulcanic.” Billions of individuals tapping interminably away at their PCs, reading The Daily Me, ordering more of the same of everything, giving brands they knew and liked occasional permission to send them a new brochure.

Having perfect information at their fingertips, people would endlessly and tirelessly use it to make comparisons and would, therefore, make highly rational “perfect” choices.

Stuck in a turn-of-the-century time warp in which novelty, serendipity and discovery had no place, they would never do anything as quotidian as visit shops or read books or watch TV.

There would be no such thing as mass media, no such thing as broadcast and little occasion for shared media experiences as people endlessly “interacted” with programming or entertainment in real time.

Certainly they would not be passive consumer or even receivers of advertising, as they would naturally want to edit that out. Their world would be entirely on-demand and customized. And boring, and predictable, and isolated, and of course as it turns out, deeply unlikely.

This vision of the future consistently ignored the social nature of being human and the herd or tribal instinct of the individual human being.

It also completely underestimated the hedonics of the physical browsing and shopping experience and underestimated the ability of conventional retailers to innovate towards this.

It dismissed the entire foundation of the entertainment industry, i.e. that the vast majority of entertainment is lean back not lean forward, because people like it that way.

It ignored one of the driving features of the market economy as defined by Adam Smith, that one of the primary functions of wealth is the display of wealth, and that one of the primary functions of wealth is the display of wealth, and that therefore we must have a shared understanding of what the signifiers of wealth are, i.e. brands and brand values and images.

And it also forgot why brands evolved in the firs place – to make choice more simple in an oversupplied, overcooked world.

Five yeas later, the bubble burst and while many of the frantically predicted effects of he internet are now happening more slowly but for real, they are largely creating shifts in the balance and mix of people’s behaviour rather than changing it completely.

While mass market ratings have declined as a percentage of the whole, TV advertising both here in the UK and in the UK is more in demand and sold for more of a premium than ever.

There are still many shared media experiences and we still have water cooler (or pub or chat room) conversations about ads and programs because of course they are part of our shared culture.

The power of good television advertising, in particular to work broadly over a population and quickly in time, is still dramatically demonstrated everyday by tracking study results.

There are, however, also wonderful new opportunities in other media and in using media and the mix of media differently that are now available which, when The Outlaw mentality is applied, give us even more chances to innovate, add value and have fun doing it.

Creativity and The Outlaw mentality are still essential for the science of advertising to work as moat of it still works on the push model and much of it always will.

Creativity is even more necessary than ever now though as complexity increases as networks of connections, influences and channels multiply, as people’s experience dissects their image of things in more and more ways at more and more points.

Being creative in how you communicate is a much, much more weighty responsibility when “everything communicates.” People’s experience of thing in general and brads in particular is highly imp0ressionistic rather than highly opinionated.

It is also constantly changing and evolving relative to other brands in contexts which we cannot know or control.

Jeremy Bellmore uses the lovely image of a bird building a nest from twigs and found objects to describe this.

A similar argument runs through the work of Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell, which, in this interconnected world, the most important and powerful communication about a brand is that between customers and other customers, rather than that which happens between a brand and its customers.

Communication and specifically advertising has never simply been about the paint job at the end of the production line, but these days that way of the production line, but these days that way of thinking, that way of using creativity is positively dangerous.

In fact, there is one law that I think may be worth codifying at this point and that’s the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” It is no longer possible to simply measure the effects to our intended messages on our intended target, and trade off “conversion” against” wastage.”

We need to understand that any action will have an impact on all recipients and that the negative impact may be as powerful an influence on the many as the positive is on the few.

Why is it still OK for the direct marketing industry to response that a 3% response rate is a good thing if it can be proved to be cost effective? When about the 97% you bored, insulted, misunderstood, inconvenienced or angered in order to achieve it?

A similar argument might be made about advertising which seeks to shock or pander, or indeed advertising which clearly creates a promise which bears no relations to people’s actual experience of the brand.

So the challenges for marketing are far more complex now and therefore the requirement to harness creativity throughout the process is clearly there.

Our industry understands creativity better than most because it has been an imperative for us for so long. We know how to foster, use, manage and reward creativity.

We accommodate The Outlaw mentality, whereas many client cultures would find it alien and the organism would tend to expel it.

The way of thinking that might be termed The Outlaw Mentality, so prized in our culture, should then be even more valued by our clients.

And yet there is a sense in which we are our own worst enemy in this industry; by seeking to become more like them by being seen to be more driven by rationality and accountability when in fact we should be helping them to be more like us.

The two are not incompatible at all. They are just different parts of the whole. As Bob Dylan once said, “Only an honest man can live outside the law.”

Keywords: brand, ads, ad, advertising, outlaw, simplicity, positioning, relevance, humour, disruption, media, TV advertising, customer, marketing.

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