Reviewing Good and Bad Advertising

Oct 12, 2005

I've been taking more notice of ads I see on the streets of Manhattan. Spending on customer experience and advertising is a zero-sum game, so every dollar companies spend on ads is a dollar not spent on improving the actual customer experience of the service or product.

As I see the ads, I keep thinking: Were these ads better investments than improving the customer experience?

Here are some examples:

1. An ad for the Palm Treo - a good product, by the way, which I've
recommended in Uncle Mark - promises: "We will talk less but say more."

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889974/

A reasonable interpretation is that phone minutes are more expensive on the Treo, so users will want to talk less. The ad says nothing about the Treo experience (the simple interface, the strong feature set) being superior to competing products... just that you'll want to talk less. Not much of a promise.

Conclusion: Money would be better spent on ads that emphasize the experience (and to improve the palm.com website).

2. An ad for Chase and Duane Reade (a drugstore chain) shows a twenty-dollar bill folded onto a cheap dispenser of generic hand-soap, and promises, "Your Choice. Your Chase."

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889040/

Uhhh... what? In other words, use a Chase ATM to pay twenty dollars for some cheap Duane Reade hand soap...? Hey, it's your choice.

Conclusion: Kill the ads and make the in-store experience a little less irritating.

3. A great ad for the ASPCA shows three images - a roll of duct tape, a can of gasoline, and a cat - and as you immediately begin to think of a scenario joining all three, you see the tag line: "Whatever you can imagine, we've seen worse."

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889038/

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889039/

Conclusion: Good investment. Here's an ad based on the actual service being offered - guarding animals against abuse. It's clever and visually impressive - but not unclear (like the Palm ad) or downright harmful to the brand (like the Duane Reade ad).

My challenge to companies with big ad budgets is to consider:

- would this money be better spent on the customer experience?

- if we must spend on ads, can we at least focus the ad to communicate about the customer experience?

(If you're interested in more detailed thinking on this topic, read below; otherwise, skip the rest of this column :)

- - -

My recent column, Defining Branding, got one of the larger responses in recent memory.

If you click the Comments link at the bottom, you'll see over a dozen thoughtful responses from readers... like this comment from Kerry Thompson:

I am wary of calling brand components such as visuals, narratives, advertising campaigns "secondary" to customer experience. These things are actually part of the early customer experience.

I would define brand as being the customer's perception of your company, which early on is shaped by commercials, web sites, ad campaigns, stories told by friends and associates, etc. That perception is later (hopefully) shaped by their customer experience, which is ultimately, as you said, more influential than any conceptual incarnation of the brand a company can dream up.

As I considered this and other feedback, I thought back to another past column, on a similar topic, which also got a large response: Budgeting for Advertising and Customer Experience.

In this column from July 2004, I compared a typical budget for a customer experience project - tens of thousands of dollars - with a standard advertising budget: tens of millions of dollars.

Obviously, these numbers are way out of proportion at a time when customers tune out most of the thousands of ads they see a day; and at a time when the customer experience is so vital to a company's survival and success. When are companies going to follow Jeff Bezos's suggestion to invest more in the experience than in shouting about the company?

- - -

P.S. Am I the only person who thinks Amtrak and Sprint hired the same designer for their new oh-so-cool logos? Seems that swooshes are now in fashion again:

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889037/

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889036/

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