ADS ON CARS

Cutting through advertising clutter is a perennial problem for marketers. Most people avoid adverts unless they are looking for something specific: people switch channels during TV adverts, flip the pages of magazines to get past the ads, and talk through advertising breaks on the radio.

There are many ideas for getting past this process, some of which work well and others that simply irritate the paying customers—but some of the best ones involve putting the message exactly where the interested customers will see it.


Most people find driving an expensive necessity. There is little one can do while driving except look at the other cars—which is not usually all that interesting either. This does raise an opportunity, though. Recently, several firms have appeared that can arrange to have private cars liveried (decorated with advertising messages). The motorists are paid a small amount for having their cars liveried, and naturally this helps defray the costs of motoring. Of course, the drivers are allowed to choose the companies—it would hardly be appropriate for a vegetarian to advertise McDonald’s—but in general there are few problems of this nature.

The key advantage for the advertiser is that the cars will be seen in traffic, in parking spaces, at golf clubs, and so forth: sometimes this is a way of reaching people who would otherwise be difficult or impossible to contact any other way.


The ads are applied as a plastic wrap, so they can be changed easily: drivers are chosen on the basis of the cleanliness of their cars and the kind of places they go, so it is perfectly feasible to advertise on golfers’ cars or on frequent flyers’ cars if the company wants to approach that type of audience.


Practice
•Adverts need to be punchy—often observers will only have seconds to see the ad as a car drives past.
•Choosing the type of driver is often crucial, because this will determine the audience for your advertising.
•If possible, recruit drivers who are already fans of your product—this gives them an excuse to talk about you to their friends and acquaintances.

DEVELOP A SEPARATE BRAND FOR EACH MARKET

Brands are the personality of the product. They appeal to a particular segment, and what suits one segment will not suit another. Very few brands are able to cross between segments—people get to like specific brands, and (of course) dislike others.

Sometimes firms will use an overall brand to “wrap” the others—Heinz is a good example—and sometimes firms will use a single brand to cover a wide range of products (as Virgin does, very successfully), but in most cases firms use a separate brand identity for each product-segment match.

Sometimes, though, the product has to function in very much the same way as all the other products if it is to work with those other products.

Nokia is one of the largest manufacturers of cellphones in the world. As such, it has a range of cellphones at various prices to suit various pockets: within each country, and even between most countries, the function of the cellphones has to be compatible with the cellular phone infrastructure, so there can be little variation in 

performance. 

However, as with nearly every other product, there is a segment of wealthy people who are prepared to pay more simply to have a product that is exclusive, i.e., excludes the rest of the population. 

Nokia wanted to tap into this market, but the Nokia brand does not carry the right image for this upper-crust group.

Nokia therefore introduced a new brand, Vertu, to cover its upmarket cellphones. These are, as one might expect, seriously upmarket: although the “works” have to be the same as in any other Nokia cellphone, the exteriors are diamond-encrusted works of art. 

Vertu phones are priced between £4,000 and £15,000, so they are certainly not for the average adolescent text-messager.

Practice

•Consider whether your product or service could appeal to another 

segment if value could be added.

•Always develop a separate brand for each segment—this will 

take investment, but it will be worth it.

•Don’t assume that people will only buy more of something if 

it’s cheaper.

BUILD A NEW DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL

Sometimes distribution channels are so tied up by existing companies it is difficult (even impossible) to get a product to market. Even when retailers can be identified, often part of the chain is contracted to some major supplier who blocks the distribution at the wholesale stage.

For small companies in particular, finding a route to market can present a major challenge: often the big boys are not interested unless there is a fairly substantial financial commitment in terms of renting shelf space or supplying large amounts of product on extended credit.


When Red Bull was first launched in Britain, it was an attempt to create the energy drinks market from scratch. The company was founded in Austria in 1984, but only started selling the drink When Red Bull was first launched in Britain, it was an attempt to create the energy drinks market from scratch. The company was founded in Austria in 1984, but only started selling the drink in 1987.

Breaking into the British market proved difficult. The company wanted to target a young audience, partly because they would have the longest usage life and partly because young people often participate in sports or need to stay up late, either to party or to study. Red Bull therefore began by recruiting students to act as
part-time salespeople, visiting nightclubs and sports centers to promote the drink. Since the nightclub owners were seeking to attract a young audience, the student salespeople represented a powerful influence.

Eventually Red Bull established its own warehousing and distribution, but again ran these using students as part-time workers. Apart from keeping costs down, this ensured that the entire workforce matched the brand values, and (perhaps even more importantly) were able to act as influences, telling their friends
about the product.

Today, Red Bull has reached the point where it sells 3 billion cans of the drink a year. 


Practice
•Decide where you really want to sell your product, and focus on just those outlets.
•Decide who would be your best advocates for the product in those outlets.
•Follow up with a continued commitment to the distribution chain, even when other channels open up.

USE A WEBLOG

The internet has certainly fired people’s imaginations, but the possibilities are far from being fully explored. At first, the internet was seen mainly as a kind of extension of traditional advertising most websites were just presence sites, directing people to telephone or call into an office. The interactive possibilities were 
largely ignored.

However, it is the possibility of online interactions that makes the internet different from anything that has gone before. Consumers have been quick to flock to online forums and weblogs to express their opinions of companies and brands, yet companies have done relatively little to encourage or influence this.


When Toyota launched the new Auris in Greece, they identified a number of regular bloggers (weblog contributors) and gave them each a car to test drive for a week. Needless to say, they posted the results of the test drives on their blogs.

This fitted well with Toyota’s desire to approach a young, affluent market: internet use in Greece is still less than in most European countries, and therefore the Greek internet system is dominated by better-off, educated, usually young people. Getting several reviews of the car onto blogs was a major coup for Toyota: there were 52,000 visits to the websites by 41,000 visitors, leading to over 2,000 requests for test drives.


practice
•This is a risky strategy: if the bloggers don’t like the product, you will have a lot of negative publicity to contend with.
•Make sure you identify the influential bloggers correctly. 
•Give yourself the best chance of a successful outcome by making  sure that the product samples they are given are absolutely perfect.

DEFINE YOUR OPPONENT

Knowing your opponent is one thing—defining them in the minds of your publics is another. Most PR exercises are about defining the organization in the minds of its publics, but this is only half the story, especially when one is confronted with a persistent opponent who cannot be placated.

The problem is made worse by the fact that people often identify with the underdog, which means that direct attacks on opponents are very likely to backfire. Subtlety is needed! The way forward for many organizations is to use wording that conveys a solidly positive image, forcing opponents to take up the negative stance.

By categorizing yourself in a positive way it is easy to imply that your opponents are categorized in a negative way. The topic of abortion is an extremely emotive one, for example: those in favor of it categorize themselves as “pro-choice,” which means that any opponents immediately categorize themselves as “anti-choice.” Those same opponents categorize themselves as “pro-life,” which tends to make opponents categorize themselves as “anti-life” in the public consciousness.

For firms in less emotive industries, there is the possibility of categorizing the firm as “pro-jobs” or “on the side of economic growth in the region.” This immediately wrong-foots opponents, who then need to justify their own positions.

Forcing opponents into a negative position provides you with an immediate advantage in establishing your own credibility in the minds of your publics. Unless your opponents are very slick, you will have gained the high ground.

Practice

• Find the positives.

• Choose the positive that forces your opponents into a negative position.

• Do not muddy the waters—keep plugging the positive term you have decided on.

• Be prepared for retaliation. Your opponents will probably respond in kind.

SET AN AMBUSH

Ambush PR is about riding on the back of someone else’s expenditure, and it happens frequently when companies sponsor events. Although being an official sponsor of a major event such as the football World Cup or the Wimbledon tennis tournament carries a great deal of publicity value, it does cost a lot of money as well, and often the sponsors are lost among a welter of other organizations so that the payoff becomes hard to identify.

During the 1998 soccer World Cup, held in France, Nike and adidas were clear rivals. The major advantage of soccer from a PR viewpoint is its ability to attract world TV audiences, so for global brands such as Nike and adidas the attraction is obvious.

The organizers of the World Cup, FIFA, only allow one main sponsor in each business category, so Nike and adidas could not both sponsor the event. adidas “won the toss” and became the official sponsor, even though some of the competing teams were sponsored by Nike: the sponsorship fee was reputed to be £20 million, but Nike was able to ambush the event for a great deal less.

Nike set up a “football village” among the startling buildings at La Defense, on the northern edge of Paris. Entry was free, and the company laid on a number of “fun” events aimed at young soccer fans. Nike was not allowed to use the World Cup logo, or even refer to the event directly, but most people visiting the Nike village were blissfully unaware of this. The company even set up a “road show” to tour France, giving school children the chance to play against a Nigerian under-17 international team. Nike’s expenditure on the village was only £4.2 million, much less than adidas’s investment, for very similar results.

Ambushing adidas’s efforts not only gave Nike an unearned advantage: it also detracted from the impact of adidas’s PR exercise. adidas were not quick enough off the mark in countering Nike, but it is hard to see what they might have done to prevent Nike’s actions.

Practice

• Find an event that links to your product in a fairly direct way.

• Carry out your own activities in as close a proximity to the main event as you are able.

• Do not make any direct statements linking your firm to the event—let your actions speak for themselves.

• Expect retaliation.

KEEP THEM WAITING

Most PR people like to blow the fanfare when they have something new to promote. After all, it is a great opportunity to show what can be done with an effective PR campaign, and enables them to give the media something really meaty for a change.

Yet it is a truism in PR that the greatest successes come from doing something different from what everyone else is doing. So why not have a non-launch, and keep people waiting for the product?

The Harry Potter books have been a huge success, making their author, J. K. Rowling, a multimillionaire. New Harry Potter books were big news, and the publishers were good at teasing the readers: when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published in 2000, bookstores were prevented from selling the book (although they were allowed to display copies in locked cages). News reports came in that 20 copies had accidentally been sold by a nameless supermarket: TV footage of the books being delivered to bookstores in security vans was shown, and (mysteriously) a copy of the book found its way onto the news desk of the Scottish Daily Record, upon which the journalists (equally mysteriously) returned it to the publishers unopened.

Eventually the official launch took place on July 8th, 2000. Needless to say, there were queues around the block to buy the book.

Practice

• Ensure that you have something that people will find exciting anyway: this idea works best for new products in a series, such as new models of car, book and movie sequels, and new menu items in restaurants.

• Set a date for the release of the product and publicize it.

• Limit the number of outlets or the supply of products—this is more likely to create an initial frenzy.

DO A RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS

Many businesses have strong associations with other businesses that are important to them. For example, estate agents and lawyers have a symbiotic relationship: lawyers rely on estate agents for conveyancing business, and estate agents rely on lawyers for referring people who are (for example) dealing with a deceased relative’s house sale, or looking to value a property.

Likewise, lawyers and accountants often feed work to each other, and doctors and chemists work closely together. All businesses rely on someone else—that’s the nature of business—so why not recognize the importance of these other firms by committing an act of kindness?

An artist named Valentina from California decided to expand interest in her work beyond galleries. She wanted the opportunity to explain her thinking, and show people the process of making the artworks, so she had herself filmed actually painting a new work, and giving a running commentary.

The idea took off, and she now posts a new “episode” every Sunday. Eager YouTube viewers “tune in” each week to watch her paint, and she now has a worldwide following.

Not all of these people will buy a painting, of course, but galleries have certainly picked up on what she is doing: her profile has been raised considerably. And that, as they say, is PR in action.

Practice

• YouTube will edit you out if you are overtly commercial rather than just interesting.

• Have the actual filming done as professionally as possible, but without the “Hollywood” touch. YouTube is about people, not about slick production.

• Keep it personal. Talk about yourself, not the company (although you can, of course, mention the company too).

PULL A STUNT

The history of public relations is littered with publicity stunts. The aim of a stunt is to generate word of mouth—a good stunt can keep people talking for days. The best stunts are ones that relate to the product and that are eye-catching and creative—good street theater, in other words.

Stunts also need to appeal to the target audience, of course. Some stunts might be regarded as offensive or unacceptable—and some even border on the illegal, as happened with one drinks company that engaged graffiti artists to spray the company logo onto buildings in London. Finding a suitable stunt is a matter of balancing good taste with powerful impact. One company found a startling way to do this.

One classic stunt was the fight staged between a well-known bandleader and a bystander, allegedly over the recipe for Pimm’s. The PR man who organized the stunt paid both men to stage a street brawl, with the press on hand: naturally, the stunt made the headlines, and generated a great deal of word of mouth at relatively little cost.

Staging a fight between a celebrity and a bystander works fine if the celebrity agrees that such behavior accords with his or her public image. For the target audience, this event was both shocking and fascinating, and also enhanced the image of the product by making it seem worth fighting for.

Practice

• Ensure that your stunt is legal.

• Remember that the stunt must fi t in with the images of the people involved.

• Be wary of upsetting the journalists—they do not like being fooled, any more than do the rest of us, but they are usually happy to go along with a spoof.

THE “REAL MONEY” MAILING

Mailshots are regarded by most recipients as the dark side of marketing. Direct mail is the most unpopular marketing tool usually characterized as junk mail, it is often thrown away without being read beyond the most cursory glance to check that  it  isn’t “real” mail, and sometimes it is thrown away unopened.

Getting people to read the mailing is the first hurdle to overcome. The advice offered to direct mail companies is often counterproductive—for example, making the envelope look enticing by using color printing, putting a “teaser” question on the envelope, and so forth—because this flags up to the recipient that there is a sales pitch inside.

One of the earliest mailshot promotions, in the 1920s, was for American insurance giant Metropolitan Life. The company sent out a mailing promoting retirement plans, and glued a genuine one cent piece to the letter. The weight of the one-cent piece made the balance of the envelope feel strange, encouraging people to open it: the letter inside explained how one cent per day saved, at compound interest, would produce over $500 after 25 years—all from only one cent, an amount that most people would not notice.

The letter went on to ask how much better it would be if the person could save two cents a day, or five cents—or a dollar. The style was sober, as if writing to an existing customer—no sales-pitch hyperbole or advertising “puff.”

The key issue in the mailshot was the one-cent piece—not an eyecatching, gimmicky piece of envelope design, but a genuine (if small) gift to the recipient of the mailing. Apart from creating an intriguing mailshot, even such a small gift as a penny makes the recipient more inclined to do business with the firm. Allowing for inflation, that penny would be worth close to 50p today, of course, so it may be worth considering sticking a larger-denomination coin to the letter. After all, with the average mailing costing around £2 a time, an extra 10p (or even 50p) for a coin that will perhaps double the response rate has to be worth trying.

Metropolitan Life became one of America’s largest insurance companies, funding the construction of the Empire State Building and later being the largest investor in war bonds for funding World War II.

Practice:

• Make the gift worth while. Real money will always attract more attention than yet another ballpoint pen.

• Don’t be stingy. Send a coin that is worth something.

• Explain the benefits clearly, without rhetoric—you already have their attention if they are reading the mailshot at all.

• Accept that not everybody will respond—but if you get a 15 percent response you are beating the direct-mail averages by a considerable percentage.

• Ensure that you link the message to the coin—Metropolitan Life were pitching for savings accounts, but the money on the letter would work just as well for home insulation, loans, and indeed anything where the main advantage is financial.

RESPECT YOUR CONSUMER

Marketers have a bad habit of talking about “the consumer” as if they are one person. Consumers are in fact all different—they are a lot like people in that respect—and they are in fact us. We all resent being patronized, but many marketers do this with astonishing regularity. People discount advertising statements (in fact in most cases they don’t even read them) and most of us can spot bullshit pretty well. We are all consumers—if we can see through marketers and their cunning ploys, so can everybody else.

The difficulty is always to encapsulate the concept of customer respect in a way that staff can relate to when they are working with people. It’s easy for our staff to get into the habit of seeing our customers as simply cannon fodder, or walking wallets, rather than as human beings with their own needs, wants, and skills. If you need an example, try dealing with the care workers of a friend who is a wheelchair user—or better still, use a chair yourself for a day and see how people treat you.

David Ogilvy was one of the giants of the advertising industry. He was responsible for telling us that the only sound in a Rolls-Royce at 60 mph is the sound of the clock ticking, for example. What he told his staff was equally important—among many Ogilvy-isms, two stand out. The first is: “The consumer is not a moron—she’s your wife!” We have to keep reminding ourselves that our consumers are not stupid, they are people just like us.

The second one is “People do not buy from bad-mannered liars.” Yet so many marketing communications (especially telephone marketing approaches) are both bad-mannered and untrue. Somebody calling from India, claiming to be called Sharon, and immediately asking about how much one has left on one’s mortgage, is clearly badmannered and lying.

These two statements should be up in letters of fire in every marketing department in the country.

Practice

• Remember that your staff may not have the same commitment to the business that you have.

• People often forget that consumers are people too—there is nothing wrong with reminding them.

• Putting up signs to remind people has a long history—IBM’s “Think!” signs, Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid!” sign, and many others have worked well.

• Don’t forget the lesson yourself, especially when dealing with somebody difficult!

ADD SOME VALUE

Whatever business you are in, there is a strong likelihood that you have competitors who offer something similar—and it is a racing certainty that there are alternative solutions out there for customers’ problems, as seen from the customer’s viewpoint. For instance, someone in the restaurant business might feel complacent because there are no other restaurants in town, but not recognize that a local cinema is competition in the “where shall we go for a night out?” category. Adding value means finding something that will mark you out from your competitors in the eyes of the customers you are hoping to attract. What is good value for one person is poor value for another.

When Peter Boizot founded Pizza Express in 1965, pizza was virtually unheard of outside Italy: there were no pizzerias at all in London. Early on, Boizot latched on to the idea of providing something extra—he started by having live jazz bands performing in the restaurants (many well-known jazz musicians got their start by playing at Pizza Express in Soho). Nowadays, the restaurants often have live music, but many host art exhibitions or have other types of live performance. The point is the company is aiming for an “artsy” audience who will enjoy this type of added value.

Pizza Express has a Members’ Club: for a subscription (currently £45 a year) members become entitled to four vouchers a year for free menu items plus a free glass of wine, to free desserts when dining early, free entry to the Pizza Express Jazz Club, and a £10 gift voucher for every ten meals purchased. Offering extra value has enabled Pizza Express to withstand competition, and to keep its brand intact in the face of the “pile ’em high and get ’em out there” approach of American pizza chains. Pizza Express is able to charge more for its pizzas than these big chains, because the added value makes them worth while—the higher prices also deter the kind of downmarket customers Pizza Express wants to discourage.

Practice

• Only offer added value that your target customers will appreciate.

• Price accordingly—people do not mind paying more if they are getting more.

• Ensure that what it costs to add the value is less than the premium your customers will pay.

• Promote the added value—they already know about your product.