Some noob, in another thread, just typed that he was looking for work in ad agency and it inspired this little whine and cheese post:

I received my September issue of WIRED on Monday and saw this ad between pages 52 and 53:



Clear your mind. Free your senses.

This is how it should feel.™
Westin®
Hotels & Resorts

The ad is printed in black ink on clear acetate followed by a sheet of white stock. On the back of the white stock is absolutely nothing except a tiny westin.com printed in black ink at the bottom center.

A full page black and white ad in WIRED costs $39K. A 2 page ad would be $78K. Who knows what the premium would be for this special ad. $78k (plus) for a 6 word ad!

What the F%#K was Westin thinking?

Wouldn't you have loved to have been the copywriter on this ad! Your comish would have been somewhere between $7800.00 and $15,600.00 for a whoppin' 6 words. $2600.00 a word and NO accountability. Sawheet!

US NEWS & WORLD REPORT has been running a number of FedEx ads that look like this:



It costs $158.3K to run a 4-color full page ad with a bleed. I'm sure FedEx's agency is probably getting a better rate than that. But still, look at this ad. . .purple and orange with reversed out orange lettering in the purple and white lettering in the orange. YIKES! The colors offend so much who the heck would even bother trying to read the reversed out type?

I don't blame the ad agency, but the Wharton MBA at FedEx who approved this ad campaign needs to be FIRED because he's clueless as to what a good print ad is. David Ogilvy is twitching uncontrollably in his grave right now.

I saw that Westin ad somewhere else (maybe it was a previous issue of Wired), and I laughed out loud when I saw it. But I have a feeling they're not restricting it to Wired. Therefore their costs are considerably higher. They are looking for brand name recognition. That's it.

And I agree it sucks. But as they have no way to measure the ad's effectiveness and just consider the costs part of their ad budget (what a joke...an ad budget--if your ad brought in a high ROI, wouldn't you want to spend as much as you can as quickly as you can until it stopped working? Why limit yourself with a budget? But...I digress...), they probably don't know any better. I bet their ad agency will win an award for this one:

"It's original and bold, with just a touch of 'I dare you.' The XYZ Ad Agency went against the grain for Westin, and the bright creative folk there are now turning away Fortune 500 companies who are lining up to cash in on their success."

Moreover, it probably cost them millions to create that "ad."

John

Nothing original about it... remember the VW Beetle ads (I think VW is still running different variations of them to this day).

Of course, at least VW had a decent picture in their ads.

Perhaps they think they can do as well as VW with this one.

Like you've already said, they may never know if it does work or not.

Wow...fantastic point, John. I never thought of this, but it makes perfect sense. If you're making a good profit on your advertising, you'd want to spend as much as you could until it no longer worked.

Of course, you have to have a way to find out whether it is working or not...

At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I get this. (maybe it's cause I'm a mom - lots of moms will get this).

Sometimes we just want - nothing. No thoughts, no worries. We need to clear our minds.

When they say "this is how it should feel" they mean the clear, relaxing emptiness of the page.

I know it sounds stupid if you don't get it. But if you are feeling overwhelmed (as I am right now with a dumb kid's cartoon in the background playing very loudly), esp. after a summer of not being able to do as much copywriting as I'd like because my son isn't at school. Well, that ad looks like paradise!

Namaste,

Janet
P.S. I hate the other ad.

JanetB, I do get the print ad. I don't have a problem with the comprehension level of the ad. After all, it's only 6 words long so that part should test fairly high (but it still wouldn't be 100%).

The ad is missing the main point of a print ad and that is to generate sales. Nothing in those 6 words is making anyone call and book a reservation. Oh wait. . .there's NO toll free number in the ad! (The ad agency is so gutless they post Weston's main url instead of coming up with a unique url in order to track unique visitors.)

Since you do like the ad, why don't you do the same for your business. Take a sheet of paper, type your name and url at the bottom of it. Then come up with an ad for your business that is 2 sentences of 3 words each and put it smack dab in the middle of the sheet. Then take it to a print shop and get 5,000 printed, rent a list of biz owner names, buy 5,000 first class stamps and have a lettershop put everything together and mail it for you. It will only cost you around $2750.00 and you'll be targeting business owners who are as busy and as hetic as yourself and who are all probably looking forward to the relaxing emptiness of your page. How many people do you think will be visiting your website and then giving you work?

My point is that you'd be pissin' away $2750.00 and Westin is pissin' away $80K (plus).

Just booked my trip to the Westin.

Damn that ad was good.

It was screaming for me to break out the credit card.

Somebody ought to get a promotion for that Jenius work

reminds me of when I was watching the superbowl and the stupid gillette razor commercial played 3 or 4 times... millions of dollars worth of ad time... no call to action just some stupid fusion thing... same benefits as all the other razors - "more blades!"... and... all I could think was:

"How many effin $15 razors do you have to sell to break even on a $million + ad? They're gonna bleed red for years!"

Okay, I get what you're saying Jaykay - I mean, Mr. Subtle.

In fact, whenever I disagree with you, you always explain why you're right and I always learn something. Which is worth the egg on my face.

Janet

This is a classic arguement, but you have to see it from the agency's view. The sale was generated -- billable to the client. If that doesn't make sense, you haven't entered "the branding zone." Similar to the Twilight Zone, the branding zone is where "up" is "down" and brand awareness and Clio awards are all.

A fairly funny WSJ article is "Nissan's Ad Campaign Was a Hit Everywhere But in the Showrooms" Wall Street Journal April 8, 1997 p. 1 Sally Goll Beatty. "Toys" ad featuring an action figure in a 300ZX didn't sell many cars, but won
lots of awards. The few people who came in asked for the 300ZX, unaware the model was discontinued long before.

Ogilvy used to calculate the time from the agency winning the Clio and then losing the client -- usually for lack of sales -- was eighteen months. Needless to say, it's hard to get that figure calculated.

Making Sales Is Not The Point
Ask ten people what a brand is and you'll get ten answers -- even if you ask ten people who should know. One consistency: none of these people will even hint sales and branding billable should be related.

Branding is about disconnecting objective results from budgeting items. The biggest financial success branding ever had was the idea of branding itself. It allows the agency to take credit for every upswing in the economy or exchange rate flux, while shucking responsiblity for every downturn in sales. Pure genius. The only product agencies like the ones behind these ads sell is branding. And corporations have bought it hook, line and sinker.

First off, brand awareness is not brand preference. People being aware of your brand can also know they don't want to have anything to do with it.

When we're talking about branding we're talking about designing the desirability of every element. Not just copy or advertising, the logo or slogan, we're talking product look and feel, how the phones are answered, and what the invoices look like.

You have no idea....

That is Billion with a "B," as in roughly $750 million for the plant to deposit diamond thin film on metal. And $300 million in advertising.

And that was for the Mach3. But you don't get all the free publicity for peanuts.