Monday, 23 May 2011

Make ‘em laugh

That grand old man of advertising, David Ogilvy, used to say ‘People don’t buy from clowns’.

Now in all fairness, I’m tipping that he said that (actually, he was quoting an even earlier guru, Claude Hopkins) before Ronald McDonald did his stuff for world obesity.

Personally, I’m no fan of fright wigs and big shoes either, but there’s a fair bit of evidence that humour can do a lot for advertising. Make someone laugh and the reciprocity effect kicks in – giving them something creates a little sense of obligation to do something for you, even if it’s just listening to your sales spiel.

So why doesn’t everyone do funny ads? Well, it’s risky. Take a moment to think of a few ads you’ve seen recently whose attempts at humour are so leaden that it’s like getting cornered by the drunk relative from hell at a wedding. Loving those brands? Thought not. And I suspect that was Ogilvy’s point: clumsy humour drops a brick on your customer’s foot. Memorable, perhaps. But to what effect?

Even a great joke has to be pretty damn hilarious if you’re going to hear it dozens of times. But let’s say your joke is so good that it becomes a catchphrase. Unless it’s also tightly linked to your message and your brand, you run the risk that all people remember is the laugh at the end. Quick – without looking at it again, what was Bugger! trying to tell you?

Nor does humour allow you to get out of delivering on your promises. A joke might resonate with millions of us, but if your product can’t live up to the punchline, you might have just spent your money reminding people why they are annoyed with you and your competitors.

So hats off to ads that do hit that sweet spot of relevance and funniness. It’s harder than it looks, and I’m grateful every time I see one and smile. There goes that reciprocity again.

Beer

Brats

Boo-boos

Banners

At THE DM GROUP, we love creating advertising that gets a smile for all the right reasons. If you’d like to talk about what we can do for your brand, why not get in touch?

Prue Oxford Senior Copywriter

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Wednesday, 18 May 2011

Blows glass

It seems that recently the most popular thing for a car company to do is to make a TVC with a lot of glass. One that really has me in awe is the commercial by…hmmm I actually can’t remember, perhaps I’ll fast forward to the end…ah yes Toyota.  

The absolutely fascinating art of blowing glass and the soft music has me drawn in completely. The skill and precision to make these wonderful pieces, creating a whole human sculpture with internal organs is amazing! But is this a problem? Does creating such a visually appealing and interesting commercial take away from the focus of the commercial?  Well, I did spend 30 minutes trying to find the clip on youtube before asking around the office. Even that proved to be difficult.

Another glassy act was done by Skoda.

What a magnificent talent this guy has, playing a beautiful piece of music with just water and wine glasses. But again the problem lies with what it’s actually all about. I searched for the ‘musical glass tvc’ to find this clip, not Skoda Auto.

Perhaps they all got so wrapped up in the artistic nature of what seems like an independent film and forgot that they were suppose to talk about a car.

Here at THE DM GROUP, we can bring your brand personality to life through considered and insightful creative executions on and offline. If you’d like to discuss how we might help you make something memorable for your brand, why not give us a call.

John Brunckhorst – The American

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Monday, 16 May 2011

The devil is in the detail

The first major mailing I was involved in was to 2 million customers of the bank I worked for, offering personal loans.  It involved matching a personalised application to a letter and an offer specific flyer, one of 5 test offers, that had to therefore match to the letter as well. In those early days we didn’t have bar codes, so the items were hand matched!

I remember visiting the mailing house in South London to discover a building the size of an aircraft hangar with trestle tables stretching off into the distance.  There was paper everywhere. Tables full of trimmed paper, envelopes in boxes and even big rolls of paper.

And people. It seemed like the entire female population of the area was employed inserting the elements of the pack. And every 250^th inserted in a line would be left sticking up out of the box so that the mail house owner (and an elite crew of checkers) could ensure all of the elements matched. Get one wrong and it was a case of backtracking to the mismatch. Do the math, that’s 8,000 checkpoints.

‘I’m neurotic and obsessive’ the mail house owner declared ‘That’s why my business is a success’

In one simple lesson I learned a lot:

(1)  Near enough is not good enough – one file adrift equals disaster

(2)  Obsession with detail can be a good thing – check, double check and sleep peacefully

(3)  Beware short cuts – there’s usually a reason for all the steps in a process.

(4) What 500 tons of paper looks like – and the impact of getting print wrong!

Of course in today’s online, digitally controlled world we don’t have to worry about this sort of thing – or do we?

At DM Group we are as committed to getting the detail right today as we were when we opened our doors 20 years ago. And that’s not just about getting the data matched or the print delivered on time and in budget. Whether we’re working to define brand strategy, creating a new brand identity, or taking that brand to market we have the same dedication to detail. If you’d like to talk about how we might help you and your brand why not give us a call.

Malcolm Harvey

Client Services Director

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Monday, 9 May 2011

Suit up and sizzle boys, it’s Webby Award time

Last week saw the 15th annual Webby Awards yet again hand out the silverware to some of the world’s most innovative, exciting or just plain weird websites and other digital creations.

Dubbed ‘The Oscars of the Internet’ the Webby Awards are one of the biggest awards ceremonies for digital work, and with a star studded judging panel (provided by The International Acadamy of Digital Arts and Sciences), including David Bowie, Sir Richard Branson, Matt Groening, and Martha Stewart to just name a few, it really is one of the internets night of nights.

The awards have 100 categories across websites, interactive advertising, online film and video and mobile & apps. Entries are open to the entire world, this year seeing entries from over 60 countries.

For anyone familiar with these types of awards nights, there were a lot of the usual suspects, including Coca-Cola, Old Spice, Audi, Pepsi and Nike. But with such a wide breadth of categories, there were also some not-so-usual funny, fantastical, and famous faces amongst the winners and nominees, including DM Group favourite, Zach Galifianakis, The Mythbusters, Snoop Dogg and even Angry Birds. For those of you wondering what’s up with the Bacon Brothers, head over to Awkward Family Photos and see the winner of the Webby Award for Weird site of 2010.

After looking through 100 categories, and hundreds of world beating websites, ads and digital creations, the boys at clickDM have cleared a space on the mantle piece, and are ready to help you and your brand be there in New York next year and pick up a Webby of your own.

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Friday, 6 May 2011

Evidently, the bird is the word.

The shifting of sands in the digital world is nothing new, and rarely does an acquisition of one online powerhouse by another raise an eyebrow – but this one certainly has me befuddled.

News out of the US last night is that Twitter has acquired TweetDeck, the small yet very popular piece of software that makes it so much easier for you power tweeters out there to manage the torrents of tweets flying across your screens on a daily basis.

Ok, so there’s nothing new there right – one software maker buys another – easy. But here’s the rub. Twitter is a free service that’s not funded by advertising. TweekDeck is a free tool that runs on that free service – yet it’s valued at $50 million simply because of its staggering reach? Yikes. That’s a lotta cash for comment.

To my mind though, it’s clear that someone, somewhere is hatching a plan to monetise this thing in a very big way before all the venture capital runs out. One little birdy told me that Twitter might even start delivering the occasional contextual ad into their streams – which means big opportunities – and big questions for brands. Like…how the hell do I make sure my bird gets heard?

Ian Ross – Technical Director

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