Let’s start here: read the article linked to this line, then return to the lecture. Watch the ads and look for what this article has to say about the rhetoric of drug sales. The author doesn’t use the word “rhetoric,” but she does deal with the issue. Keep the window open so we can deal with these ads.

This article brings up some issues that need scrutiny in the pharmaceutical industry marketing push: direct-to-consumer advertising (which we are going to dig into in more detail), targeting doctors, and changing the rhetoric of medicine.

Of the three, I fear that the third is the most frightening–for the future of all advertising. Allowing direct-to-consumer advertising has opened the door for the pharmaceutical companies to do exactly what this article warns: turn patients into consumers and drugs into commodities. Are we destined to be the new drug culture, telling our doctors which designer pharmaceutical we want rather than allowing our doctors to do the prescribing–or allowing them to choose not to prescribe drugs? Are we already there?

What Big Pharma is supposed to do

The FDA, which seems to be failing in its diligence, has nearly 30 pages of requirements that drug companies must follow in their advertising. When these requirements were written, they seemed to cover all avenues of marketing and advertising available. But as the article points out, the move to consumerize the rhetoric of the industry has been advanced through the “free” marketing they get on shows like Oprah and in the news. And the FDA cannot control those programs.

So what can they control? Here are some of the basic regulations.

Prominent Naming.

The name of the drug must be prominent…but so must the names of the active ingredients. This regulation should help prevent the kind of loophole Pfizer found for remarketing Prozac under a new name. But who really knows what the active ingredient in Prozac is? Pfizer was never required to reveal that this “new” disease was being treated by an antidepressant.

Look at this antidepressant ad:

Can you identify the active ingredients? Are they mentioned? I’m sure you know the name of the product. But I want you to notice the list of side affects. We’ll come back to it, but we’re talking about a drug that is similar to Prozac–which has the same side affects! Ladies, would you want your doctor giving you this kind of drug to deal with your PMS? It seems to me that over the counter (OTC) Motrin deals with all the same symptoms with none of the terrifying side affects.

Dosage information.

According to the FDA, the dosage must be included in some manner. Many ads try to be subtle (“if taken once a day”) while others, like some birth control methods, feature less frequent doses as part of the benefit list. Here’s a great example: if I say Sally Field and osteoporosis drug Boniva in the same sentence, I imagine that, if you have been in the US any time in the last 12 months, you can tell me the dosage of the pill. The entire campaign focuses on the dose–it is the drug’s major selling point.

But what about that Cymbalta ad? Watch it again. Is it hidden in the gentle, creepy voice over? Is it prominently placed on the screen? How do they get around it? Well, there are some loopholes and one is to stress that this available only by prescription and that “only your doctor” can determine if you need it. This tells me that there is no set dosage.

Warnings.

All contraindications, side effects, warnings, precautions, etc. must be mentioned in the ad. The only exemption–reminder advertising–is still rife with a list of necessary inclusions: drug name, ingredient names, dosage form, pack quantity, name, address and phone number of company, price, etc., and can NOT include information about what the drug does. Occasionally you will see a reminder ad, but mostly you see this:

This ad won a ton of awards! And, from an artistic point of view, it’s a fairly clever way to follow the rules. But they created this two-minute monstrosity in response to a 2005 sanction from the FDA. I’m curious to know why this is the only NSAID that got slapped down…except that the others are getting around the FDA by a)avoiding direct-to-consumer advertising altogether or b)building a following with their OTC varieties.

Most NSAIDs fall in to the second category: Advil, Tylenol and Aleve all beat the FDA rap by advertising only their OTC products. They can say anything in those ads. The regulations ONLY APPLY TO PRESCRIPTION DRUGS!

But regarding the warning list: I often wonder, upon seeing these ads, why someone would knowingly place themselves in such danger. It’s one thing for a doctor to prescribe a drug and explain the possible side affects. But why would you ASK for something after hearing how dangerous it is? It seems to me that these decisions should be left to the prescribing doctor, not dictated by patient whim.

True vs. untrue.

This seems like a no-brainer, but one of the restrictions clearly spelled out by the FDA is that an untrue statement or implication may not later be “corrected” by a true statement. Lots of non-drug products make untrue statements or imply that their products are able to do much more than they really do. Think about the Enzyte “natural male enhancement” ads. I realize it may be too small to see on the screen, but see if you can’t find the “does not treat erectile dysfunction” disclaimer (that’s the “truth” behind the untruth):

I promise you it is there. The other part of that disclaimer says that Enzyte has not been approved by the FDA. So how do they get away with advertising it? Well, its ingredient list reads like the herbal supplement section at Wal-Mart, including niacin, ginseng and gingko biloba. Herbals are not under FDA jurisdiction.

I think some ads do get around this by telling only partial truths. The article talked about Restylane, the cosmetic filler. I would submit that using a young woman who likely has not had such a procedure to advertise the product verges on untruth.

But isn’t that what advertising does? Create an image that is not necessarily true, but perception of truth? By turning patients into consumers, drug companies are creating a perception that we have control over our health care, when in fact there are many options beyond the chemical ones.

This is where we have to stop in order to keep this lecture from lasting for several days! You might want to consider this information as you analyze other ads–what other products are limited in their advertising scope? What other products should be? Would our world be a different place if all advertising labored under restrictions of some sort? How would we possibly enforce that in a free republic?

The campaign analysis project is a research project. Because this is an online class, I recommend that you write the paper as a blog or series of blogs, but you may present it as you like. Why don’t we discuss the assignment itself?

Final Project: Campaign Analysis

By now you should have chosen a set of three to five ads that are all part of one campaign. This can either be a set of ads from one medium (such as print or television), or ads that cover a broader number of media (such as two TV ads, a print ad and a web site).

Audience. Just who is the audience for this analysis? I often find that the best writing is done when the student expects someone else (beside the teacher) to read the final work. You should think about this audience before you ever write a single word. Would you like your audience to be the readers of Slate? Believe me, most of you can write better “Ad Report Cards” than their writer. Perhaps you want to try your hand at a series of “Ad Report Cards” as your final project.

Maybe you are a marketing, business or advertising student. You may want to write this analysis as if you were presenting it to the company it represents. Since you will be looking for evidence that the campaign works (or doesn’t work) this audience is very valid. You will write a slightly more formal paper in the form of a business report with the proper headings. Choosing an audience such as this will also help direct your research.

Perhaps you really enjoyed blogging and want your audience to be the larger “blogosphere.” In this case I highly recommend that your final draft be written as a series of blog posts, each building upon the next. As you research, you want to blog. In order to keep the new posts from gumming up your Ad Journal until you are ready for them to be public, simply click “Save.” You may have to copy and paste into a document for me to read your rough draft, then when you make your changes you can begin posting each blog.

Whatever type of audience you choose (and these are not your only choices–I simply wanted you to understand that the audience is not limited to me), research THAT AUDIENCE and WRITE TO THEM! Your successful audience choice (which is reflected by an appropriate writing style) is worth 10% of the final grade.

And remember this–whoever that audience is, they have not read the same articles and listened to/read the same lectures. Write as if they know nothing about the class materials.

Corporate Rhetoric. Every paper must include an analysis of the corporate rhetoric. This can take many forms. You may want (or need) to learn about the history of the company, you may want to look at a specific aspect of their rhetoric (as we did last week) that impacts on the specific campaign you have chosen, or you may want a more scatter-shot approach that looks at what they say publicly vs. what they say privately (that is, to their own employees).

This analysis can include monetary information, consumer reports, good and bad publicity, personal reports from employees, etc. I expect everyone to spend considerable time delving deeply into their chosen company’s web site, as well as researching beyond that web site for information. As you work, remember to ask yourself the questions from last week’s lecture–as well as additional questions you raise as you work.

The presentation of the material, then, is up to you. Does your research bear directly on the ads? Then perhaps you will be weaving the analysis of the corporate rhetoric into your analysis of each ad. Does it need to stand alone? If you choose a blog-style narrative, perhaps the corporate rhetoric analysis receives a single post. Ultimately, the analysis of the corporate rhetoric will comprise 20% of the final grade, so it should make up approximately 20% of the paper.

Does the ad work? One aspect of your research must include a survey of the success (or lack thereof) of your chosen campaign. Many ad agencies track the success of their ads, as do many watchdog groups. You can also learn a lot from the “buzz” on the web. Whether or not an ad works in and of itself is not YOUR call! You are encouraged to share your opinion from the point of view of our class, but you are required to dig deeper to determine whether an ad/campaign you like is really performing…or one you hate (I always think of the “truth” campaign) is riotously successful with its target audience. This element of the paper is worth 10% of the final grade.

Main Analysis Point. The ads themselves must be analyzed using one major point of analysis. You must choose between Aristotle’s Four Causes, Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, the section on Visual Rhetoric, William’s “Six Tugs of War,” or Ogilvy’s expression of “What’s Wrong With Advertising” and his predictions for the future. This choice will set up a framework for your analysis from which you can produce your own theories for why an ad is working or failing.

Honestly, the best work is going to happen in cases where you do not intuitively understand the effectiveness of an ad. I have had to really think about the “truth” campaign. I hate those ads. But they are the first anti-smoking or -drug ads in the history of the genre to have a measurable success rate. Why?

I would probably choose to frame such an inquiry through the lens of Visual Rhetoric. Each of these ads claim to show the viewer (or the imaginary tobacco-industry-executive) a representation of one point of “fact” related to the use of tobacco products. Working through the questions in the Visual Rhetoric section, I would look at their use of color, gritty film, and the set-up of each ad itself–such as the melting ice sculptures of pregnant women or the 1200 body bags. I believe the visual rhetoric of these ads gives added credibility to what I find to be a questionable campaign. I would have to stop writing at some point–that analysis alone could fill a paper

Secondary analyses. Choosing a main point of analysis isn’t the end! You must supplement your ideas with other information from the class. There are numerous articles, as well as my lectures, from which you may draw additional, supporting material. You might also look at those Ad Journals you have written in the last few weeks which focused on different aspects of the campaign you’ve chosen.

You should know, from English 101 and 102, that the idea of “support” does not always mean “agreement.” You may support your ideas with conflicting ideas, or by bringing up an element of the ad that you absolutely must talk about, but which has nothing to do with the main point of analysis you have chosen. For example, if you want to do a compare your chosen campaign and the company it represents to Green Eggs and Ham, you are likely also interested in talking about the Visual Rhetoric of the campaign. However, bringing up Visual Rhetoric will likely not “support” the material in a traditional sense, but rather will give you a more complete analysis of the campaign.

Be very careful, however, that you do not have two competing main points. The basic framework from which you work must be consistent for the entire paper! Since the analysis is the bulk of the paper, it is worth 50% of the final grade.

Length, grammar and style. The final paper should be from 2,000 to 2,500 words. You should choose appropriate language for the style and audience, and use excellent grammar. Don’t rely on “Spell and Grammar Check.” They will often let you down. Finally, you must choose a documentation style. This may be MLA, APA, Chicago or any other appropriate style.

Check it out! Many blogs use something akin to Chicago style, and while few magazines (such as Slate) include documentation, you have to! You will remember from your earlier English courses that every bit of information in a research paper has to be documented! I’ll provide the copyright page for each book from which I provided articles–you are responsible for everything else, including web sites.

If you didn’t keep your college handbook from your earlier courses, you can find lots of information on the documentation styles online. If you need help let me know. The length, grammar and proper documentation style are worth 10% of the final grade.

Grade Breakdown

Here’s how you will be graded:

• Audience analysis and choice of appropriate format 10%
• Corporate rhetoric analysis 20%
• Research into ad effectiveness 10%
• Campaign analysis using one main and several secondary class sources 50%
• Length, grammar, style 10%
• TOTAL POINTS – 200

Get started! The sooner you begin the better your paper will be. Over the next two weeks, you may submit any part of your rough draft for critique. A full rough draft of the paper will be due next Saturday (at the end of week 14).

When I say Walmart, what comes to mind? Please make a list of both sensory (sight, sound, smell, etc) and intuitive (opinion, perception, etc) thoughts that come to mind. It’s important that you do this before you continue, as we would normally do this in class conversation.

Once your list is finished, click on the Walmart link in the “Pages” heading to the right for the rest of this week’s lecture.

We’re now at the place where sound and sight must come together.

Watch (and listen to) this Suzuki ad (sorry, it can’t be embedded).

Do interesting computer graphics and exciting music ramp up the excitement one might feel for…a car warranty? As strange as it sounds, I think this is a fairly successful idea for Suzuki. If you are buying a used car it’s nice to know you’re getting a warranty–but it seems a strange thing to use as the main subject of an ad.

What is the first thing you notice about the narrator? For me, it is a combination of his inflection and his accent. He sounds like the actor who plays Mohinder Suresh on Heroes. Because I’m a fan of the show, I want to listen to what this voice has to say.

The 2nd thing I notice: he is able to infuse excitement into very boring wording. Listen to the words and tell me if there is anything exciting about them. Clearly, I will argue that there is not, but the writers have employed some rhetorical tools, such as the true rhetorical question which is asked and answered.

What else have they done with sound? They have backed this warm, effective voice with a techno dance beat which adds to the speed/rhythm of spot. And it highlights the great production of the spot.

It’s hard to see online, but the CGI of throwing the keys from vehicle to vehicle is really exceptional. Add to this closed-track driving techniques, excellent shots, etc., and this looks (on the TV screen) more like the trailer of a movie such as the Italian Job and less like an ad! The film-like quality adds to the atmosphere the ad is trying to create.

So why did Subaru go to so much trouble to promote a warranty? I don’t have an answer to this question! But it is the kind of question that might make for some interesting analysis.

Bringing together sound and image is the great challenge of television advertising. To make them work perfectly together takes more thought and planning than you might think. Even a local commercial can be convincing if some thought is put in to it.

A few years ago, I directed a TV spot for a charity fundraiser called “A Night in Havana.” A few of the charity members dressed in formal attire and we filmed them in black and white playing poker. Then we filmed still or blurring shots of cards, a smoking cigar in a crystal ash tray, poker chips, etc., and cut them together. It looked amazing! I voiced a very simple invitational voice-over in my sexiest radio voice. It cost less than $500 to produce. The ad was a hit and the event was a huge success!

This week we will look at and analyze several ads for effectiveness. We’ll consider how voice, music, and sound effects (including jingles) work with or against the images the producers have chosen.

Responses.

I believe there are four ways in which we respond to ads:

Intellectually
Intuitively
Through recognition
Emotionally

All but intuition can, I believe, be analyzed at some level of objectivity. For an ad to which you respond intuitively, either positively or negatively, you will have to make up your own mind. I think I do this naturally through my experience–and I share frequently with you whether I think an ad is successful in its rhetoric or not. I don’t always respond intuitively to an ad that is successful with its audience. For example, the ad series I use in the “recognition” section is one that I passionately hate. I think they are terrible in every respect. But they are effective in a way no other ads like them have ever been.

Before I get into individual responses, however, I want to throw out this question: can you (and should you) have more than one response to an ad? I don’t think it is really possible to completely separate any one response from another. In fact, I believe that each of the three ads I analyze below combine all three forms of response. But I am going to focus on one aspect for each ad and let you fill in the blanks.

Intellectual

These ads are among my favorites, and not just because I am a Mac user! They are very clever in every detail. Let’s take a closer look.

First, they take advantage of both master tropes and lesser tropes. If you need a refresher, reread the chapter on tropes before continuing.

Metaphor.
What is the base metaphor here? It’s actually our use of the word “virus”–a word that has come from RL (real life) and been imbued with new meaning in cyberspace. A virus is really a program, but we don’t really understand it as such–what we do understand is the idea that a virus can make our computer “sick.”

Synechdochy.
Next, the actors themselves serve as synechdochal representations of computers. This works really well for people like me who talk to their computers. Come on, admit it–you do it too! When you’re mad, I bet you rant and rail at your computer! Well, I treat my little Mac as if it were my child.

Irony.
Many of the ads in this series (you can watch through them at youtube) use irony. There is a wonderful little ironic exchange at the end of this ad–when PC says “I need to crash” and Mac responds, with a hitch in his voice, “OK, if you feel like that’ll help.” Of course he is not only implying that it probably WON’T help, but that he (Mac) doesn’t crash as a result of viruses.

Humor.
As a “lesser” trope, humor often gets a bad rap. And well it should–it’s very difficult to do humor well. But this ad series is very funny. I disagree with most teachers about humor. I believe it appeals to an intellectual response rather than an emotional one. But this is because I usually only find intelligence to be truly funny. Last week’s “Dude” commercial is a rare exception, and that one is actually smarter than it appears on the surface.

This PC vs. Mac ad shows a perfect marriage of conception with delivery. And no detail is unimportant. Look at the way the two characters dress. This is explained several times throughout the series: PCs are found at work; Macs are used for fun, creative endeavors. This opens the door for a great spoof in which Mac shows up for an ad in a suit, explaining to PC that he, in fact, goes to work as well. (I find that particularly funny, since I’ve worked in an industry that is almost 100% Mac dominated for most of my working life–the media industry.)

Additionally, the music is important–they are developing a recognizable pattern with it. This is a very smart series, and should evoke a strong intellectual response.

Recognition

When I was a teenager, this is the kind of anti-drug ads we saw (at the time, there weren’t any serious anti-smoking ads, but they all fall in the same category):

Take one guess how many young people chose not to do drugs because of these ads. (That, by the way, is irony!)

The next series is one I find extremely annoying. In fact, I am shocked that this series of ads has had any success at all. And yet, in the history of this form of ad, the “truth” anti-smoking campaign is the first to claim any measurable success in reducing initial smoking in young people.

I’ve placed this series in the “recognition” category because they worked very hard to develop a recognizable product in the ads themselves. (By the way, this is an example of an selling an “idea.”) I see two ways in which the agency which produced the first series (someone else did the ridiculous and failed Whudafxup campaign) worked to produce a recognition response.

Color.
What comes to mind in the spring when small, pink ribbons, the color of Sweet ‘N Low packages, begin to appear in every store window, on women’s clothing, on food packaging? You would have to have lived under a rock for the past 20 years to not immediately identify the annual “breast cancer awareness” campaign.

The truth campaign, although on a smaller scale, also used color to identify itself. In fact, by the second or third ad in the series, when I saw the orange screen, I knew I could switch channels immediately because one of my least favorite commercials was coming on.

Of interest to me–the multiple sclerosis folks are now using the same shade of orange for their awareness campaign. I only know this by accident–they have not done much to promote recognition.

Visual analogy.
Have you ever had an economics class (or heard a political speech) in which an amount of money is compared to some physical representation? For example (and this is completely made up–so don’t repeat it!), the war has cost $600 billion dollars. If you stacked silver dollars over an area the size of Texas, 600 billion of them would reach halfway to the moon! Analogies are very recognizable “lesser” tropes.

And my example is the sort of analogy the truth campaign epitomized. Every single one used a visual analogy like the body bags. What DOES a stack of 1200 body bags (assuming a body is inside) look like? How effectively did they illustrate it?

In these visually recognizable ads, what part does sound play? I think the ambient sound and “unrehearsed” feel to the dialogue is what actually makes them work. They sound like truth.

Emotional

One of our greatest poets was Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and I’m certain you are all familiar with this poem to some extent:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Now watch this (again, it’s in a site and can’t be embedded–but I recommend that you listen to it at least once with this window open to compare the wording).

So much is right about this commercial. Let’s begin with audience. This ad would have been played during race season on ESPN and similar channels. It would have had a very narrow audience–race enthusiasts. Within that audience, there is a broad range of demographics, and this ad provided something for almost everyone.

First, it cleverly rewords the well-known poem, which is then delivered by a warm, midwestern/southern voice. The voice seems familiar, perhaps a celebrity such as John Cullum, who would be known to this audience. I especially like the line about “our checkered past” and the way that is interwoven with video.

Next, it combines new film with stock footage of historic races. Included in the background are the sounds–ambient noise from the track and the crowd, voices of the sportscasters; noises the audience will resonate with. Every element has been chosen, whether visual or aural, to evoke a response.

The ending tells us what is being promoted…sort of. We find out that this is a Firestone commercial, and, after all, Firestone sells tires. But this ad is doing two more things–it is image building and it is selling an idea: “Innovation.” How odd that an ad which incorporates old film is selling an idea that means “new.”

Finally, the ad uses music which is deliberately emotional in nature. It stands in stark contrast to the subject matter, but gives value to the words, delivery and production. Wow. This one gets everything right!

Looking back for a brief analysis

In the last two lessons, I have had you watch a couple of ads I want to analyze quickly before I end. Watch and listen again:

Now for some questions:
Who is the audience for these two ads? Do you believe there is some overlap? A lot of overlap?!
What do you notice immediately that these two ads have in common?
Did the same agency produce these ads?

Here are my answers:

The audience for these ads is largely the same–young men.

When I first saw the “Dude” commercial, I immediately wondered if the music was by the same composer as that used in the Halo trailer. Imagine my lack of surprise to discover that the Halo music is Chopin’s Prelude No. 15, and the “Dude” music is Chopin’s Prelude No. 8. That is some pretty heavy-duty serious classical music. What is up with that?

Here’s the thing I find truly fascinating. The Halo trailers were created by McCann Erickson and the “Dude” commercials by DBB Chicago–both great ad agencies, but completely unrelated to one another. So there is something going on here. Why would two different ad agencies choose the same kind and style (and composer–most shocking) of music for ads aimed at a very young, very “cool” audience? It’s a risk I’m not sure I would have taken, but it is brilliant.

The music–this serious, intelligent music–adds something that another more “relevant” form would never provide–legitimacy with a wider audience.

Final note: every bit of info in this brief analysis was found on Google. This is the minimum of information that I expect you to find in your research as you work during the last weeks of the semester on your major project.

*Content
*Emotional Impact
*Cultural and Personal Memory
*Relevance/Timeliness
*Repetitiveness

Content.

Much of what we have discussed to date has dealt in some manner with content. But for this week, I want to focus more clearly on how content is provided via sound. This can happen in a number of ways–some overt and some extremely subtle! And I believe each of the succeeding sections of the chapter relate to how we receive content.

Read the following chapter from Secrets of the Wizard of Ads by Roy H. Williams.

Wernicke and Broca

You should be able to download the pdf from here–if not, go back to WebCT and download it from the Learning Module.

The tie I want to make to content is the use of action words and the generation of the mental images through description. I can tell you “The new Mustang GT is the fastest car in its class.” Or I can say, “The road is calling. I pick up speed. Wind whips around me, through your hair, and away. The wind can’t catch us today. I leave the wind in my dust.” If I have the right delivery (that’s coming up!), you will be in that driver’s seat mentally.

Our world is full of great examples of the use of content to persuade. Have you heard the speech Obama’s preacher got in so much trouble over? There are now so many examples of his hatred from the pulpit on the internet, it’s hard to find the original–hatred seems to be the regular content of his sermons, by the sheer number that have appeared on that topic. Their coming to light may have single-handedly killed Obaman’s campaign. And he does not use many action words, but he certainly paints a picture.

One phrase jumped out at me–he said that Hilary had never been a poor black boy raised by a single parent, but Obama had. Hey, wait a minute. Obama’s single parent was a white lady! That bit of content didn’t work for me, in part because I don’t buy in to hate and racism and in part because I know more of the facts than the preacher cared to divulge. You can’t assume your audience is stupid, or will remain so indefinitely. Provide “true” content, give it a polish with some of the master tropes, and then send it out into the world. Otherwise, you are bound to get into trouble.

The example I want you to listen to will illustrate what I mean when I put the word true above in quotes. What does your audience know and believe? That is what you must consider to be “true.” You can’t say a Suburban gets good gas mileage. The fact is, large SUVs get crappy gas mileage. But you might say it gets the best gas mileage of any large SUV. Now you have expressed a “truth.” That may be factually based. Good sermons are the same. In honor of Easter and this section of the topic, I have included a bit of a sermon. Listen more than you watch. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, this preacher is expressing a real “truth” of Christianity. And he is doing it using a great many descriptors and action words. (You don’t have to listen to the whole thing, but I would recommend that you get at least a couple minutes in)

Emotional Impact.

What you say can only go so far. How you say it (and often other elements, such as sound effects and music) will add to the emotional impact of and ad. Delivery of your content should induce some sort of emotional response in your listener. You already know what makes you respond to a message, a song, even a spoken lecture–so let’s make a list:

Intonation. Ever spent a long weekend alone with your mom after living on your own for several months? Believe me, tone of voice can make or break that weekend!

The example I had you listen to in the last section makes use of intonation in spades. For the drama of the content, the preacher uses dramatic, excited, sad, and even indignant tones of voice throughout the piece.

But any emotion can be informed through the use of intonation. Here is one of my favorite examples of intonation in a humorous setting:

Sincerity.  Although this may be linked to tone of voice, the sincerity of the voice you hear is a judgement you, the hearer, make. You know how much I love the Echo commercials from Pedigree. But for this one, I want you to listen to a different commercial.

Besides the fact that David Duchovny, who voices these commercials, has a comfortable voice, what else makes this ad seem sincere? I think the production quality of the commercial and the reputation of the company and its products complement that voice.

Suspension of disbelief. As I attempt to dramatize the information I need to present, I must use every tool I possess to “suspend disbelief”–that is, to make the listener enter my world and believe what I am saying. As with any element of sound, content and elements of the later sections can impact the suspension of disbelief. But making an appeal to emotion can often help the listener suspend their disbelief–cynicism, lack of information–long enough to hear your message.

For more on this, read the second of the two chapters in this file. Echoic Memory-2 Chapters 

Then you can read the first chapter before moving on.

Cultural and Personal Memory.

What is memorable? Well, let’s take a little quiz. Below are a couple of ads that use the same music. What is it?

If you said “Ode to Joy” and you know who wrote it, you get lots of brownie points. Another good answer is “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” which is the name of the hymn sung in many churches to the tune by Beethoven. But most of you probably thought (and this is equally valid) “It’s that song from Sister Act II.”

Our real and cultural memories are strong persuaders when it comes to sound. And ads are deeply embedded in our culture. So what tools do advertisers use to trigger your memory? Music is one of the most powerful, but there are others.

Celebrity voiceovers. Celebrity endorsements have always been popular but in the last few years I have seen a surge in celebrity voiceovers. The Pedigree commercials are a good example. We never see David Duchovny. Others include Appleby’s new “Neighbor” commercials voiced by John Corbett and the AOL ads Julia Roberts made while she was pregnant.

But just having a celebrity doesn’t make these ads persuasive. The AOL ads were panned, not because Julia Roberts did anything wrong–she was a hit!–but the ads were just poorly conceived, written and produced. No one could figure out exactly what Julia’s distinctive voice was selling!

Art imitating life. Or is it life imitating art? Referral to a sub-culture can be really useful in an ad. The recent series by Alltel is brilliant in this regard! Here are some examples:

Almost every Alltel commercial enters an established subculture in some way. In one, the guys are playing Dungeons and Dragons. In another, they are eating at a mall food court.  The best, by far, are the “claymation” ads that spoof the great old Christmas shows of the 50s and 60s that we all grew up watching.

In other cases, though, commercials bring something to the culture. Can you think of an ad that has been so popular it has led to its own cultural memory? Here’s one from my generation:

This one worked in two ways–not only did everyone say “Where’s the beef?” for the next several years to refer to anything that came up wanting, but the phrase worked to position Wendy’s as well. We never forgot where we got the idea, and that had to help their business.

But is that always true? Can you think of examples when the cultural memory of an ad has completely lost its connection to the company or product?

Relevance and Timeliness.

These commercials get me:

Childhood is Calling (sorry, this one can’t be embedded)

Why? Because for once, the person getting the kids up and feeding them isn’t stereotyped as mom. My dad was very involved in my childhood, as are many dads. In middle to lower income homes, men report that they believe in more traditional roles for men and women, but in practice they are much more likely to get the kids out of bed and/or dressed for school, to cook meals, to drive kids to practices, etc.

Are you even aware of the stereotyped people in many ads? They drive me crazy. I, personally, don’t know very many people who fit into any stereotype. So why aren’t more advertisers doing what Rice Krispies and Appleby’s are doing–using video of real people or following real situations?

Well, for one thing, stereotyping seems easier. For those who don’t actually want to do their research, popping in a stereotyped character allows them to follow a stereotyping form of research (go back and check that lecture if you don’t understand what I’m talking about).

But following trends, embedding in the pop culture–these are not the only ways in which ads need to be relevant or timely in order to persuade. Production values change over time…and the quality of ads up until just a few years ago degraded because they were stored on VHS tape rather than DVD. Celebrities that will sell–David Beckham comes to mind right now–come and go. In ten years, we’ll be asking “David who?” And what about fashions? I watched an old episode of Charmed this morning and, while those women never wear anything that women in the real world would wear, I could tell that the episode was from several seasons ago by the fashions. That is a subtle difference, but our minds will notice an ad that stands out.

Repetitiveness.

Finally, our brains are going to remember something we hear more often. Repetition makes for a really strong echoic memory. Remember those awful “Head On” commercials? “Head on, apply directly to the forehead” was repeated something like 5 times. Now they are making commercials that pan their own commercials! But here’s the key–if you saw one of their commercials once, you remember.

Here’s why: research tells us that the brain won’t remember something until it has been repeated a minimum of 5 times. The Head On folks took that literally. And it worked–I know what the name of the product is, how to use it and what it does. The question is, did anyone here every try Head On? I couldn’t. Being irritated just didn’t persuade me to a purchase!

Here’s another example of a way in which a company employs repetitiveness (watch all three):

These ads do several things well. They enter the culture, they help us find ourselves in the story (although, seriously, if you had married your dream girl don’t you think you would have found out in advance about her credit? Come on), and they use some really great jingles.

These jingles are successful because in and of themselves they are repetitive–listen to the melodies to hear that–then they are meta-repetitive, meaning they all give the same information. And what is that information? Go to freecreditreport.com to find out if you can buy a house, buy a car, afford a better life. Keeping the same three guys has repetitive value as well–like the Geico gecko these guys have stuck with us for a while. There is something really comforting to our memories about that.

Alltel is getting a lot of grief right now because they suddenly replaced one of their guys with a new actor who doesn’t even resemble the old one. And while the final reading of the week talks about shaking things up, that kind of shakeup can’t help with repetitive memory building.

Finish with this chapter.  Nitroglycerin  Have a great week!

Have you seen these?

This argument has been taking place on the bumpers of vehicles for over a decade. For some reason, the evolution camp was threatened enough by the Christian ichthus to have to make up a “fish” of their own. It has devolved into an insult throwing contest via car art. I’m sure you have seen many more varieties (I downloaded at least four more!) in the ongoing argument.

This is a simple example of visual rhetoric–although how persuasive either side in the argument has become is open for debate! But visuals, usually combined with words or sound, can be extremely compelling.

Last year, Halo released its latest game. Now, I’m a pretty serious gamer (my home away from home is a little spot called jayisgames.com and you can find me there as a regular player and poster just about every day of the week), but I don’t get anything out of the Halo games. Not enough happens to hold my interest–they are far too repetitious for my taste. But every time I see this ad, I want to check out the new release:

There are three versions of this ad. This is far and away the best–it is also the shortest. So what makes it so fabulous? I think it’s genius in many ways. This ad touches gamers on a lot of different levels. Parents (dads, mostly) who are my age or a little older, see something akin to the old Army toys of the 70s. Young gamers automatically recognize Halo imagery. The set up is something like a collector’s battlefield and the music is a Prelude by Chopin.

And amid the plasticized scenes of defeat, one defender, even in the grips of his enemy, is not ready to give up. The only words seen (as none are heard) are “Believe in a Hero.”

The reading from the textbook Beyond Words provides us with the tools we need to analyze why this ad is so outstanding. Read it carefully and then let’s work our way through the five questions it asks.

What do you see?
One of our main theorists in the subject of rhetoric, Richard Lanham, writes and teaches about style. Much of what he says about words can also be applied to images, in particular his ideas about looking at vs. looking through.

When you first see an ad or TV commercial, the literal images that are burned on your retinas answer this first question–and the Lanham idea of “looking at.” What you see can include a great many things: photographic images of people, places and things (most ads include these), drawings and other graphics such as logos, fonts, colors. At its base level, what you see has no immediate symbolic value beyond the words your brain generates for the images themselves.

Look back at my descriptive paragraph about the Halo ad. What I see when I watch that ad is a kind of toy literalism: Army Men-style plastic figures placed in some sort of fantastic battlefield scenario. I see certain colors–the ones they want to appear most clearly: orangy-gold, yellow-red–as almost separate from the rest of the scene.

If we look back at the print rhetoric lecture, I would choose this one for a quick “what do you see” analysis. I see a face–a scary face.

But even with the word “scary” I have made a judgment that has moved me beyond “what I see” into what I perceive about what I see. Stay with me!

What is it about?
Our brains immediately begin making connections. When I watch the Halo commercial, am I really seeing toys? Not even close! They are completely computer-generated images. My mind has supplied a story, it has told me what the content of the ad is. Story, content and topic are elements of rhetoric that we apply to the images we see.

Sociologist Jean Baudrillard says that ads are the proof that we live in a simulated world. Before media bombardment, Baudriallard says, we lived in a very simple place. Words had exact meanings, and content was straightforward. Over time, we have pulled the world over our own eyes (I apologize for the subtitles):

I always invoke The Matrix when I read Baudrillard, because the ideas in this classic approach some of the ideas that you should use when you analyze ads. The mediated world is in front of us all the time–you’re in it right this moment as you read this blog. Analyzing what an image or set of images is about helps to remove that veil.

Analysis (critical thinking) is the red pill.

So this sociologist, Jean Baudrillard, and a whole slew of other theorists, say that words and images we use are just symbols for what we really mean, that they hide our true intentions, or declare those intentions in surprising ways. How true of advertising!

When you first saw the print ad above last week, before you could read the small print, what did you think? The freaky picture and the large wording “Nicco Teen” seems to give clear clues to its intent–but I’ve been in this business for a lot of years! At any rate, I immediately made a connection–this poster advertises a non-smoking campaign aimed at teens. Indeed.

But what about this one:

Even after clicking in to the page to read the copy, I didn’t notice what it was advertising until I had finished (and did you notice their slogan? Morbid!). In this case the story is buried (yes) beneath several layers of symbol. First you have the font, then the actual words (which don’t seem to make any sense), then that parchment background, and finally the logo very small at the bottom with the “punchline.” What you see doesn’t tell an immediate story, but you are still looking at the image itself to discern the content.

To what does it relate?
Now we are beginning to add new layers of perception–we stop looking at the images and begin looking through them. In general, we think of this step as the application of cultural rhetoric. This will begin to bring in issues such as values, judgements and secondary stories. Back to Halo.

I grew up with a cultural rhetoric of model battlefields. I had friends whose fathers built them. My dad loved them, and so we went to such exhibits at museums. That is what I see, that is the story I tell, and that is the rhetorical memory to which I relate those ads. But there’s more. Since I don’t play Halo but I do read a considerable amount of high fantasy (Tolkien) and sci-fi, I watch that ad and label the “creatures” as orcs. I’m certain that is not what they are called inside the game, but it doesn’t matter.

What I’m doing is giving you a glimpse into the workings of my brain in that split instance of recognition. I relate what I see to something I already know. What was your initial thought? How does that differ from how a classmate might see it? Do the men in the class have a different response than the women?

These questions represent the crux of what makes this ad work in my analysis of its visual rhetoric. The folks who wrote the ad copy were aware of a multiplicity of audiences. The original ad, which is a minute and a half long is great, but whoever made the decisions for the short version–both visual and aural–got it right.

Here’s another visual treat:

This one tickles me. The entire Toyota Yaris campaign is heavy on visual rhetoric. In each, the car acts in its own interest to smash or capture a “critter” of some kind. In each case, the interaction leads to a single point about the car that will make it attractive to a different set (or perhaps different but overlapping sets) of buyers.

My dad likes the one where a “spider” made out of gas tank nozzles approaches the car and gets squished! The Yaris gets 40 mpg. Target market aquired. I like the iPod extra. But I also want to get good gas mileage, so my group overlaps with my dad’s group. Because of our cultural rhetorics, we share some values and not others.

And this ad is a good place to bring in the secondary story. Like the Halo ad, there is no voiceover, so I must tell myself the story. I see a CG ad of an iPod made to look like a fly, and a Yaris made to react like a frog. The content is informing me of a popular feature on this model. My secondary story may come from the image of the car rocking at the end of the spot–I picture myself driving this car, rocking out to my personal tunes.

Good advertising will do that without your notice, unless you have trained your brain to notice. It will put you “in the driver’s seat,” make you imagine biting in to that cheesecake bite or pull you deeply enough in to the world of the game that you are already playing it in your head.

How is it composed?
Why do local ads rarely make it in my analyses? I’m not saying I will never use a local ad as an example, but for the most part they are poorly composed. The writing is usually bad, the acting is bad, the film is bad, the editing is bad, the CG work is bad. For example:

This is creepy! And stupid! And way too busy! And nonsensical! ACK! Who would ever shop there? When I was a kid, one of the local car dealers had a nephew who would dress up as some arbitrary celebrity–for example, at Christmas he might be Abe Lincoln–and screech out every word in a high-pitched voice. He ended each commercial with a sing-song line: “Open Sunday after church!” I can imitate him like a pro…but I can also tell you that an old, family business went under because of these low-quality ads.

Are you sick of Halo yet? I don’t care! Watch it again. Can you identify any production values?

First, high quality film will always look high quality, even at a low-resolution. The colors are richer and more saturated, the dimension is deeper. Second, the art direction on this spot is impeccable. We are looking at video game characters rendered in 3D. Watch the sweep of the camera angles and the movement juxtaposed against the stationary figures.

Now watch this for live-action camera movement:

A good camera crew makes all the difference in the world. But cameras are expensive and good operators are scarce. This is why you find such a disparity in quality between national and local ad production.

Of course there is more to ad composition than film and camera angles. The image has to work with what is being said. And still images (which is what we are working on first) have to be planned for the most impact.

About ten years ago I directed a print ad campaign for a chemical production company in Texas. The art director wanted to take the photographer in to the lab to get a shot of scientists working on research. Yawn. The photographer took the desired shots, then ran everyone out, set up his lights with some colored filters and took closeup shots of beakers, test tubes and jars of chemicals. They were out of this world. One of those shots was in all of my client’s national advertising for a year, as they went head to head with Dow Chemical in their industry publications.

Using good judgment is part of the artistic process. You know what works for you, what might work for your audience. Your final project does not have to be “designed,” but you should be able to articulate what the image in your print ad will be.

What details matter?
Quick, you have 30 seconds! What details of your commercial matter?

If you didn’t say “all of them” then you haven’t been paying attention! We are only halfway through the semester and so far we have covered a wealth of details. But when it comes to your images, even the smallest thing can make or break your picture.

If you are working with people in a photo or video shoot, you often have to stop action to fix garments and hair. Lighting can affect shadow, color, even facial expression. The wrong background can make a product look classy, or completely cheesy.

On a recent product shoot, the client insisted that their oil field products be shot on a clean white background. I thought I was going to die! My photographer was nearly in revolt, and in order to eliminate shadows we had to rig up a special tripod for the camera with lights underneath. The result? None of the shadowless photos were worth a fig. They showed every flaw, oily spot and paint chip. They were washed out and had no dimension at all. The picture we ended up using (shown in a mockup of their brochure here) had shadows and required considerably less light, and it still managed to blend beautifully with a full white background:

This is not a beautiful shot, nor is it an exciting product. But I use it as an example of never taking anything for granted. I am bothered by inconsistencies in ads (we have a doozy coming up when we get to the section on Sound!). I notice attention to detail and, whether you realize it or not, so do you. Something off, something not quite right will give you a bad impression of a product or the company that sells it.

Does that mean that a perfectly detailed ad will always sell you? Not necessarily. All of my girlfriends and I are offended by this spot, which is perfect in every detail:

This has one of the most gorgeous production values of any ad I’ve ever seen. It tells a story, the people are beautiful, they don’t show the product in a way that seems fake or “planted,” and they even have the physical details of arousal right, such as the woman’s extra-pouty lips in one closeup. Sheesh. The last detail–an absolutely perfect detail–is what puts it over the top for every woman I know. It’s like watching porn on network television! Embarrassing.

So, what details matter? What images, fonts, colors, graphics will you need to convey the story you want to tell; to invite your audience in to that story; to provide just the right amount of information and the right quality for your needs?

This week I’ll post the lecture again, simply because my voice is so scratchy, I am not in the mood to use it very much. Can you believe we’ve reached week 7?!

You probably want to take a look at the Ogilvy reading this week before jumping in to the lecture–don’t feel as though you need to give it a close reading, just skim. You can go back to it later for the quiz. But I think it’s important to have a look at some of the things Ogilvy had to say about print ads nearly 30 years ago in order to compare his ideas to what you see today. What can you agree with? What is completely outdated? And do you find it funny that he seems to argue both for and against long copy? Do #11 and #12 say opposite things?

I want to highlight a few of the issues Ogilvy wrote about with some ads from around the world, and introduce you to several forms of print advertising.

Headlines Grab Attention

A good headline will make or break your ad. But it’s amazingly hard to find a good print ad these days with a headline of any sort. By Ogilvy’s standards, this means 90%+of the advertising out there in the world is crap…and, I can’t disagree. But not all ads without headlines are bad.

Headlines are tricky. If you are really clever in using either the “news” or “benefits” directions from Ogilvy, you might do well. This first ad is an example of news being used to produce a crazy good headline. But it is only good when paired with the image and the rest of the information. Although we are not going to get deeply into the visual aspects today, you can’t leave out visuals when planning your ad.

This ad has no headline. And it doesn’t exactly include an image, but the visual representation was taken in to great consideration. I would call this a very good ad.

When writing or analyzing an ad, you must approach each new subject completely fresh. There are lots of things that make this ad good. The blue color of the font is likely very close to the actual color. That is an example of showing the product! The font choice, sizing, and even the strange blocky paragraph are all deliberate. This isn’t easy to read, but it is an entertaining read. This guy is going to surprise his wife with a blue bedroom. It invites you in to his “guy world” and also allows you to speculate about his wife’s reaction. I personally think she is gonna kill him!

Getting Specific
Another area in which I mostly agree with Ogilvy is his insistence upon details. The more specific you are, the more you generate an image in the consumer’s eye. Here is what I mean–below you will see an ad that is very colorful, busy, seemingly not leaving much to the imagination. And yet, if you read the copy you will find yourself picturing even more than is shown here:

Specifics don’t have to be as regimented as Ogilvy claims! They can be, as in the example above, somewhat disjointed from the product. What are you trying to accomplish? What perception do you hope your audience carries with them after viewing your ad? Write specifics which engage your purpose: product specifics for image building, price/quality specifics for deep (think car company ads), and character or scene specifics for emotional connections.

Check this out:

This ad is a poster-child for the next section on copy length, but you can’t argue with its effectiveness. This is specificity to the nth degree!

As you work on a print ad, you will find that it is easier to get lost in the specifics of some forms than others. For example–if you have chosen to create an event, you can get bogged down in dates and times and names. Instead, you want to look and listen for those buzzwords that are going to make your audience sit up and take notice. Does an ad that lists 20 bands and gives the date and location get someone excited? Maybe, but YUCK! And as Ogilvy points out, being vague and over-impressive doesn’t help either: “The BEST BANDS in the WORLD are coming to Albuquerque!” No one believes it.

Sometimes, though, the specifics are hard to understand without the underlying information: in this case, an ad run in the middle east and possibly India. What we aren’t told in the ad is that American movies in those countries are cut beyond recognition to pass the censors. That is what we call an enthymeme in rhetoric–the underlying assumptions. Now that you know the assumption the ad-makers have made, do you get this?

Be very careful that you don’t make the wrong kinds of assumptions. At the same time, insider information can allow you to be specific in ways that only your target group will understand.

Longer copy is better?
David Ogilvy just looovvvesss the long ad. And I can’t completely disagree. Look at the great “endangered species” ad on page 84. What makes that work? Well, to me it looks more like an article than an ad. It has a relevant and important topic. It is not selling a product. All of those combine to produce something readable.

You will be hard pressed to find a 6,000 word ad in modern commercial production. Some exceptions will be found in the New York Times and other similar papers, where advertisers pay $10,000 for one page for one printing and so often want to “have their say.” I had a client who did this on a hunch. It didn’t pay off in the way he had hoped–membership in his non-profit organization–but it made a huge splash in Washington where he had hoped to catch the attention of several cabinet members, senators and representatives.

But a long-copy ad, such as the breast cancer risk ad above, can still have impact. And while only 1 out of every 10 people may read your copy, that one who reads it is likely to care about your product, service, event or idea.

Ads have gone the other way. Some have no copy whatsoever. Take a look at this:

Did you read the comments as well? No one got these ads (and there were a slew of them). Do Clorets taste like onion? Why would I give myself bad breath? This is an example of a good concept getting completely lost by the lack of copy. Can you think of a clever headline that might have clarified this, even without more explanation? It’s worth a couple of extra credit points if you can.

Ogilvy says a good ad is like a personal letter to the consumer (and then he disses analogies…go figure!). This may be true. But in our media overloaded world, clever use of tropes is more important and acceptable (and expected) today. Analogies, metaphor, irony–any of the master tropes discussed earlier–may make for very memorable copy. What is the one thing you must avoid? Cliche.

Respect The Reader.
You can certainly take this away from Ogilvy, and I think you can extrapolate it from what I have said, but I do agree that the reader must be respected. However, I think you must be on guard for condescension as well. Ogilvy says “housewives” didn’t understand the word “obsolete.” There are not many housewives in America today, so you should think rationally about your reasons for your word choices.

Here’s what I mean: it is condescending to say a certain group doesn’t understand a particular word, or to assume a particular word must be used in order for the target to “relate.” For example, most farmers and ranchers I know are college-educated. They read expansively, they are up-to-date on current affairs, many of them serve in public office. I grew up in that world, so I would never use a word such as “ain’t” in an ad targeted to a rural audience. Instead, I would look for ways to use buzzwords such as agrarian, conservation, or row-width.

So is there a gendered, racial or cultural bent to your product? That’s great! That is going to inform your word choice as you write your first ad for the writing project. But you won’t win any friends or influence any people by making choices from a prejudicial point of view. If you are not a woman, you can still write an ad for women. Watch this. Even though this is a fake ad in a movie (What Women Want with Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt) it makes the point for me beautifully. If you approach your intended audience with the greatest of respect, you will “hit a home run”:

Kinds of Print Ads
Now let’s get in to some more practical applications. The assignment you are working towards requires that you write a full paragraph of copy for either a magazine or newspaper ad. But those are just the beginning of what can we mean when we say “print advertising.”

Magazine ads. Each type has certain issues that must be considered. Magazine printing is the highest resolution, meaning the quality of the graphics must be extremely high. Most magazines require 600 dots per inch or more–which lead to HUGE files. Only in the last few years have computers caught up to the production needs of magazines. But this has led to a dearth of good copy–the image has become all important.

Magazine ads are usually printed in color. Open a magazine you have lying around. What are your reactions to the glossy color ads and how do they compare to the black and white ads? You probably have a lower opinion of the black and white ads. They tend to be taken out by companies with smaller ad budgets.

Below are links to several really good examples of magazine articles. Ogilvy suggests using the successful ideas of current agencies to generate new ideas–that is what this grouping of ads is here for:

Spend time figuring out what these are about. Some will surprise you!

Newspapers. We now have high-resolution (300 dpi) newspapers, full-color printings, and pop-culture layouts. Older newspapers and smaller papers still print at 150 dpi and only in black and white, but for the most part anything that will print in a magazine will work in a newspaper. There are two major differences: the layout size is much larger and a different height to width ratio, and the lower resolution will sometimes cause fuzziness.

But most big companies still use newspaper ads! They are ridiculously expensive and have a one-day or shorter shelf life. Yet, advertisers shell out millions to reach that specialized audience. These ads are often very large, meaning lots of copy. But I think you can still get ideas for word and image choice from these selections:

You can plan for a smaller ad, and as I have time I will post examples of newspaper ads from my own portfolio for you to check out.

Billboards, signs and posters. While not appropriate for our project, I wanted to draw your attention to the wonderful world of advertising signage! Billboards must be brief and to the point. We say no more than 11 words! Well, think about it–you are rushing down the interstate at 75 miles an hour. At an average reading speed, you can only read 11-12 words. So the billboards with impact are those that give you time to see the entire idea. But they can also be graphically interesting:

Posters and subway signs give the copywriter more scope. And posters are a popular advertising vehicle on campus. Use all of the examples for ideas. I don’t intend to imply that all of these are excellent. Use your own judgement on that call! But they can certainly point you in the direction of ideas that will work.

This week, we’re dealing with marketing research, and we’ll take a rabbit trail off of the marketing path before moving on. In addition, I’m giving you a pass on the quiz in exchange for beginning the research for your ad copy project.

So. Research. When a company produces a new product, develops advertising, or decides on pricing, they often do research. Market research takes many different forms.

Is it needed/is there room for it?
The first step in market research is often simply answering the question “Is there room in the market for this product or service?” Can our economy support another burger chain? The answer to that one seems to be “Yes.” Will a new Coke product break in to the market? If it’s New Coke, the answer is probably “No.” But Coca Cola brings out new flavored sodas on a regular basis. Some stick around and others disappear in a short period of time. The company knows it can add to its product line without much trouble. Consumer taste will tell them whether they have a winner or not.

But if your product is going to cost a lot to produce, you may want to spend more time on the question of whether it is needed or supportable. And as you begin the research phase of your ad copy project, you will want to think about how your product, service, event or idea will enter the market.

Your assignment in lieu of the quiz is to do a bit of research in this area. You should do some online research looking for similar products (whatever you choose to do, I will use the term “product” to be all encompassing). What are some specifics that will need to be changed to make yours better in some way? What do they cost, what are they made of–get in to details. Begin making notes about these issues so that you know what needs to be included in your product, and what will set it apart.

Then, ask questions. Use your group as a focus group (more on focus groups later in the lecture) or send an email out to your friends and family members (more on surveys as well). Would anyone out there be as interested in your product as you are? Can the market you are imagining support it? Perhaps your consumer research should include people who share your passion, but it’s not mandatory.

Checking out the competition.
“Shopping” a competitor’s store for pricing information, or buying a competing product and taking it apart for analysis, is one example of research. Some products are easy. Think about our McDonald’s discussion last week. You can open up a burger and determine what it includes fairly easily. And a good chef can taste the “special sauce” on a Big Mac and guess at all or most of the ingredients.

But what about something more complex, say a vacuum cleaner? Well, some high tech companies employ reverse engineers who can take a mechanical or technical product apart and see what makes it work better, more efficiently or cheaper than other similar products. Others simply look at the package, or work to decrease the amount or cost of the raw materials used. All of these constitute different areas of research.

But does it work?
One of the best known forms of marketing research is the taste test. Have you ever seen a commercial like the one below?

For years, soda companies used the taste test advertising formula to show that their brand was preferred by more people. These were not very successful, but they opened the door for some great spoofs. If you search “taste test ad” on YouTube, you will find dozens! This series which ran in the fall and early winter is one of the best:

While the commercial makes fun of product research, the really interesting story behind those ads would be the actual research done by the company. We can extrapolate what they discovered by how they aired their ads: Most of the ads they ran featured men and were run on “men’s stations”–SciFi, Spike. About two weeks after these 15 second spots started running, several other cough syrups started running “taste good” commercials on channels such as Lifetime!

Product testing doesn’t only include taste tests. Drug companies offer free samples, detergent manufacturers give away tiny bottles of Tide and car dealerships invite you in for a test drive. Product testing can happen at any point in the production process, but once it reaches consumers for testing, there are benefits for both the company and the consumer!

Getting the word out.
Once a company has a product to advertise, companies spend a lot of time and money figuring out what will work. This research can take many forms. In some cases, it is as simplistic as a bunch of “ad men” sitting around talking about their “target market.” I’ve been in those meetings.

The client says, “We have this new product. The people who are going to buy it are managers in computer production firms.”

Then the ad man says, “Most of those managers are men between the ages of 35 and 50, wouldn’t you say?” (This is usually a guess)

The client says, “Yes.” This is considered to be demographic research.

Real demographic research is sort of a crap shoot. On one hand, a skin care product designed specifically for women will likely be advertised to and purchased by women. However, you can’t always make that assumption. After all, who is jewelry advertising targeted toward? By Tuesday, I’ll have posted a chapter from Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads about the people who really make buying decisions. Read it and you will have an idea as to why demographic research and targeting is sort of a waste of money.

So what does work? Well, I promised more on focus groups and surveys. Asking questions of real consumers is a powerful way to generate information.

Focus Groups.
Focus groups serve many purposes. They may help at any point in the marketing circle–from new product development to ad testing. A focus group is usually composed of 5 to 12 people. They meet together, share an experience, and then report their observations immediately.

If the focus group is testing a product, they may touch, taste or use the product. In these cases, the focus group leader asks few questions, but watches and listens to the honest conversation that happens naturally. Reality TV uses the “focus group” approach in much of its judging mechanism–although a smaller group (typically 3 people), these judges give immediate feedback with little prompting. A good focus group does the same for a new product.

In the case of advertising, however, focus groups are used very differently. In some cases, a focus group is shown audition tapes from several actors and asked who seems most honest, sincere or believable. They may listen to voices, music and sound effects and give their impressions. In some cases they are asked to approach the product in the same way they would if they were product testing, and the advertiser listens for “buzzwords.” The idea is that focus groups will give them the language to reach a wider audience.

From time to time you may hear me say something like “Did this company even DO any research?” This is often the issue I’m complaining about! Too many advertisers want to push their own ideas without ever once wondering if consumers think for themselves.

Finally, focus groups occasionally screen entire commercials or ad campaigns before they hit the TV screen, magazine, or web site. Few companies can afford to scrap entire commercials–some ads cost millions of dollars to produce!–however, focus group feedback can tell them where to place such ads. Are the men more responsive? Place the ad on Spike. Does every focus group member comment that the ad looks like something on late night TV? That may be the exact marketplace for the ad.

Surveys.
Like focus groups, surveys are a great way to get information straight from the consumer. These can be very easy to produce and inexpensive to run, however it is often difficult to entice people to complete and return them. And asking the right questions is very important.

Having been in the industry, I have to admit that I almost always fill out online surveys. I do it more out of curiosity than anything else. Recently, I was directed to a survey that promised to pair me with the Presidential candidate I had the most in common with. Initially, it told me I should vote for Ron Paul. Well, I could live with that (even though he had already left the campaign) because every high IQ person I know is a Ron Paul supporter.

But for fun I tried again. I changed half of my answers and was paired this time with John McCain. Hmmm. Once again I changed answers. This time I had a tie between John McCain and Huckabee. What?! I tried three more times and was paired with a Republican candidate or candidates each time. Even though the answers showed how I “compared” with the frontrunners in the Democratic campaign, I could not ever find a combination of answers that paired me with a Democrat.

Why not? Upon deeper analysis, I realized that the questions were skewed conservative. Each one had multiple choice answers, and each answer had a conservative twist.

Unfortunately, this sort of skewing doesn’t help product research or advertising research at all. But it is the nature of all political surveys, including exit polls and campaign polling.

The best marketing research surveys must look for two things–a) a comparison with a host of other products, none of which are ever listed in the same order twice on the same survey instrument (questionnaire) and b) a way for consumers to provide exact or word-for-word feedback. This means having both questions that allow for boxes to be checked and questions that allow the consumer to write out their thoughts in detail.

But, seriously, how do you get someone to answer the questionnaire? Well, you could try what the Neilsen rating company does when it wants you to participate in its television survey–include a gift. Neilsen sends cash in every survey document. Other companies promise coupons, others that they will simply not waste very much of your time!

A more effective, but more expensive, way to obtain real results is to hire people to conduct the survey “in person.” These often take place via phone or on college campuses or in malls or at gas stations. You have likely been accosted by someone holding a clipboard who wants to question you about something. These folks can be annoying, but remember–they are just doing their jobs.

The rabbit hole.
Or perhaps it’s the Whoville hole. At any rate, this week you are going to read Green Eggs and Ham. This is going to provide you with an extra credit opportunity. But it will also provide you with some fun analysis ideas. You can’t possibly read this lecture and fail to see the connections when you re-read Green Eggs and Ham as an adult!

The woman is, in fact, a marketing consultant and her “audience” is a focus group. But that’s where the real world ends and something weird begins. From here on out, this commercial is like watching the Muppets on a bad acid trip.

Why does a shiny new SUV, which should have a high safety rating and inspire oohs and ahhs cause this “focus group” such fear? I should hope my vehicle, which is designed to keep me safe on the road is “neither cuddly nor wuddly” indeed.

The point, of course, is the punchline at the end–this thing ain’t “cute.” A man renders this decision. Duh. Men have a notion that this moniker is the kiss of death.

But what does the commercial really tell us? Well, I get three things out of it: 1) the men in development of this vehicle are more concerned with “cuteness” than safety; 2) focus groups are not taken seriously; and, 3) if a child’s stuffed animal hates it, 51% of my market just tuned out. Alright, that number is a bit large–not all women are tuning out, but women do make up a majority of the market.

Someone needed to do some real research.