Ryan Anderson dot ca

Stuff like this always makes me laugh. Here are two Canadian Christmas campaigns for two mobile phone companies, both running at the same time:

On the left, Bell. On the right, its main competitor, Rogers. Demonstrating how much I actually pay attention to commercials, I had seen both of these campaigns, but every time I saw the slogan, I assumed that it was always associated with whatever commercial I was currently watching. It wasn’t until the other night when my girlfriend asked of the Bell commercial, “wait… isn’t that Roger’s slogan?”

If you’re going to share the joy, you might as well share slogans, too.

Even though I work in the industry, there’s an evil little part of me that loves it when advertisers screw up completely – as long as they’re not my clients. My latest bout of marcom schaudenfreude came from an article in the Daily Register that was sent to me by a friend of mine.

Apparently, the Scottish Tourism Board has just launched a new campaign to rebrand and re-invigorate Scotland to the rest of the world.  So, after six months, and about $250,000 they launched the fruits of their efforts:

Welcome to Scotland.

It’s catchy, right?  Makes you feel welcome, lets you know that you’re in Scotland.  What more could you ask for?

From the Daily Record:

The new artwork was unveiled at Glasgow airport yesterday by culture minister Linda Fabiani. She said: “These images will welcome people arriving in our country and Scots coming home, giving everyone a taste and glimpse of the very best of Scotland.

“This is not about developing flashy slogans.

“This is about showing what a modern, vibrant and successful country Scotland is.”

But Labour MSP Jackie Baillie said: “If ‘Welcome to Scotland’ is the best Alex Salmond’s government can come up with, it shows the SNP have had an imagination bypass. It sounds more like a road sign at Berwick than it does a must-do invitation to visit our country.”

Maybe they should have gotten the agency that developed the slogan for Biggar, Saskatchewan:

“New York is Big, but this is Biggar.”

If nothing else, this is the kind of slogan that should make Ottawans not feel so bad about the $200,000 “Technically Beautiful” fiasco from a few years back.

I had fully planned to write about something else tonight, but I came across this in my Google reader, and there was no way I could NOT write about it.

It seems that the hunky mascot for a certain lemon-scented floor cleaner has been moonlighting. In fact, he shows up in a supporting role in the adult feature American Daydreams in a scene with contemporary actress Brooke Banner. In the scene, Banner, the engenue of the piece, falls asleep after being tasked with cleaning the kitchen, and is paid a visit – a sexy visit – by Mr. Clean himself.

We all know that television advertising is declining, but this is a sad wakeup call for the ad world. The classic spots between soap operas made Mr. Clean, but fewer television spots means less residuals for this iconic actor. Forever typecast as a buff, attractive, yet hetro cleaning companion, attempts to pick up even character work elsewhere would be futile. With no reliable income to fund his gold earring, head wax and meth habits, a man who once had the respect of millions of housewives is now reduced to working in the sex trade. If something isn’t done, it’s only a matter of time before the Pillsbury Doughboy ends up blowing guys in a phone booth for struedel.

The lesson here for marketers: sure, your brand is strong – but are people fucking it on camera? I thought not.

[via Advertising Lab]

Public relations and advertising are both changing at a rate that the industry has never seen before.  This is a fact, and anyone who cares to dispute it should get out of the game right now before it gets embarassing. 

That said, the early evangelists of these changes, those who trumpet in the era of the blogger, the era of engagement, or the era of whatever change is around the corner can sometimes lose sight of is the fact that these new media are shaping the future, but that doesn’t mean they’re erasing the past.

I’m very much among those early evangelists in both public relations and advertising.  I firmly believe that social media will play a very significant role in the future of PR, and that brands who understand that they need to move away from passively pelting consumers with ads and start getting them actively engaged will benefit the most.  However, reading an article in PRWeek this morning [subs. req.] got me thinking about the fact that as much as we (and I) trash it, traditional advertising and PR efforts still work.

In the article, Julia Hood tells the story of buying Bose headphones based largely on the ad campaign.  This causes her to raise an interesting point:

This led me to something that has been percolating. Is it possible that we all engage in overkill in promoting the impact and influence of user-generated media at the expense of other marketing platforms? At the risk of not having this link picked up by our beloved PR blogger audience, I think we might be.

Radio was displaced by television, theatre was displaced by film, painting was displaced by photography.  Still, these media are not dead – they’re still valid forms of communication and art.  As much as we PR bloggers like to announce that things are dead (how morbid!) many of these things will never die. 

I still use press releases.  I use them differently than I did five years ago, but I still use them.  Likewise, I still pitch major daily newspapers, television reporters and other “old media.”  There’s no denying that the way we’re consuming our media is changing, but we can’t be too quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater, if I may dust off an old chestnut.

The lesson that we can all learn is not about what media we should use or not use, but fundamentally how we should communicate with our publics.  What if we took a lesson from blogging and started treating all of our publics like real people?  

I haven’t seen the ad that caused Julia to buy bose earphones, but I bet that it’s informative, friendly and believable, and not dependent on “Get your Fash’on” style meaningless slogans.  That ad probable spoke to a key insight, probably as she listened to music and crowd noise on the subway, and delivered her informative, to the point content and a way to solve her problems.

Usually, advertising isn’t ineffective because it’s advertising.  Usually, advertising is ineffective because it sucks.  Learn lessons from the new media, and apply it to the old, and you’ll get the best of both worlds.