[Marketing] Reflections on advertising

[Sean DALY]

Dear Marketers,

The day may come, this year or next, that a government or corporation
will be willing to fund us generously.

After the champagne corks are popped, the realization will set in that
we can go much further in spreading our message.

David kindly suggested to me I share some thoughts about advertising with you.

Television ad spend is sort of like brute-force search: the more
power, the more reach, up to the point where people groan "oh no, not
*that* commercial again". The original spam!

Rest assured I would never suggest we get to that point... we will
have a duty to carefully measure ad spend against results and only the
biggest spenders (car companies, consumer goods) ever hit that
saturation.

As a nonprofit, however, some avenues will be open to us:

http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=319

In the USA, the Ad Council provides a framework for nonprofits to get
a "good" message out.

Today, YouTube etc. has made it ridiculously easy to get a TV
commercial (or "TVC") in front of people. But that reach is multiplied
when the ad is shown - even sparingly - on network television.

And, TVC is a very effective way to communicate a URL, where all the
information is and where we can shape our presentation as we see fit.

Print ads in magazines and newspapers are a very cost-effective way to
reach a target market. I say target because smart marketing means
going to where your prospects are. If we want to reach teachers in the
USA, it might be Teacher magazine (http://www.teachermagazine.org). If
you want to speak to US government IT buyers, Government Computer News
(http://www.gcn.com) would be a better bet.

The next traditional alternative is "OOH" or "Out-of-home", a term
which covers billboards, public transport, that little plane that
flies over the beach trailing a flag.

Often, nonprofits can arrange for an ad agency to donate time to make
"creative". It's often a good way for an agency to enhance its image,
support something they believe in, and pehaps help junior staff get
experience on a noncritical account.

The way it works is, the marketer sits down with the agency and
outlines the goals: the product, the target market, short-term goals
(increased sales), long-term goals (brand building). And, problems to
be overcome ("we're getting clobbered in marketshare", "we need to
look more modern", "people are upset with us but we can't fix the
product quickly, what do we do?"). After the goals, the marketer
mentions non-negotiables: "the product has to appear fullscreen in TVC
for at least 3 seconds, and a quarter of the page in a print ad." Or,
"we need our logo in overlay for at least 5 seconds during the spot,
and 3 seconds at the end, taking care to avoid the corners where the
TV station bug (logo) lives, and mentioned at least twice in the VO
(voiceover)". Or even "we have a contract with a celebrity and we can
do a shoot with him 4 days per year and he is filming in the Bahamas 3
weeks from now, so we need to set the day quick before he leaves."

A good agency will understand the marketer's problems and goals... and
come up with an idea which will hopefully attract attention, generate
buzz, build the brand values and awareness, and so on.

That said... even good agencies can mess up. I am astonished at how
bad Microsoft's ads have been as they burn through 300 million USD
(!). It's easy to see why: nobody at Microsoft has a handle at what
good advertising is, and the agency got overcreative, completely
skipping over the products in a bid to seem "relevant".

Here's a thoughtful guide which shows how nonprofits can waste
precious Ad Council grants on ineffective advertising:

http://www.agoodmanonline.com/pdf/bad_ads_high_res/BadAdsHi.pdf

The guide outlines an excellent methodology for measuring the
effectiveness of print ads, which of course have to fight against
cars, beverages and meds for mindshare.


Big-budget advertisers do lots of market studies and usually rely on a
key metric: brand recognition, either aided or unaided.

here's an example I am making up:
****************
1) Can you name three or more types of computers which are distributed
to children for education?

2) Of these, can you name three or more software systems or interfaces
which run on them?

3) Which of these education computers for children do you recognize?
* Everex Cloudbook
* One Laptop per Child XO-1
* Intel Classmate
* Apple Macbook
* PC

4) Of these, can you name which system or systems run on which computer?
* Windows XP
* GNU/Linux
* Sugar Learning Platform
* OSX
* gOS Rocket
****************

Any of you will see problems in the way these questions are phrased.
Yet, a marketer knowing nothing about computers or software would
learn a lot about the "unaided" versus "aided" brand awareness, and by
sifting the answers would learn how to better phrase the questions.

A typical media campaign starts with a market study likes this, runs
the campaign to improve brand awareness or positioning, then does the
market study again to see if there has been a measurable impact.

Our goal as marketers could be resumed as the following answer, when
asked of teachers:
4. "Sugar runs on all of them".

:-)

thanks
Sean
Marketing Coordinator