Sunday, February 25, 2007

The (New) Rules of Advertising

Here are the 'new' rules of advertising, according to Ad Age, via The Jaffe:
Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago, has resigned as CareerBuilder's agency of record after a five-year run. In an internal memo issued today, the agency's president, Peter Krivkovich, said CareerBuilder put its account up for review after the agency's Super Bowl ads failed to rank in the top 10 in USA Today's viewer poll.


Here is how agency prez Peter Krivkovich told his staff of the news via an internal memo:
"C-Kers, we have to tell you -- in our entire history, hell in the history of this crazy thing called advertising, I'm not sure there has ever been any thing as baseless or as unbelievable as that. It's so ludicrous and they are so serious about that poll it's almost funny."


So there you have it. In order for advertising to be judged as 'effective' moving forward, all it has to do is draw attention to itself. With that new 'criteria' in mind, I can only imagine what the trainwreck of Super Bowl Advertising will look like in 2008.


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12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mack,

Call me naive, but I think (and hope) that level of stupidity is not the norm.

It's also one of the reasons why I like working with clients who do not have millions to spend on a Super Bowl ad. Our clients need/want results.

Flashy for flashy sake or funny for funny sake doesn't help them achieve their goals.

Thank God, to them anyway, the marketing goals still matter!

Drew

Anonymous said...

Hell, if that's all they want, we're on easy street! Just throw some topless girl on the screen, and whammo, instant eyeballs!

You might not sell anything, but...

Mack Collier said...

Exactly Paul.

Sales down? Customer satisfaction in the tank? Who cares, our SB spot just hit 2 million views on YouTube!

Anonymous said...

What's even funnier (sadder?) is that CareerBuilder actually cited the USA Today poll specifically. Talk about a weird metric...

Which is too bad. Because C-K's monkey ads are some of the funniest I've seen in a while, and its "Monk-E-Mail" viral stuff was... well, truly viral. (Can't think of higher praise than that.) It made me sit up and notice CareerBuilder, anyway.

Anonymous said...

That's right. Run bare-nekked ladies and get noticed, if that's your objective.

Businesses need good marketing consultants more than ever, if they believe getting noticed takes precedence over getting noticed to build brand and to sell products. What do those numbers look like? I am confident they won't be found in a USA Today poll.

The monkees have taken over the zoo, and the Super Bowl has created an advertising environment that has spun business marketing objectives dizzy.

anne simons said...

Yikes. Basing one's marketing roi on its positioning in the USA Today poll? Unreal.

I wasn't quite clear from the article---was it CB's idea to dump the monkeys or CK's?

Mack Collier said...

Anne I think it was CB's call to dump the monkeys, but you're right, the article isn't clear on that point.

Anonymous said...

If you remember the Miller Ads with the girls Cat Fighting. That ad was extremely popular but it sold NO beer. Advertising has to sell products or services. If it doesn't do that then I agree - fire your agency. Mark Stevens, author of "Your Marketing Sucks."

Anonymous said...

I have done a fair bit of work recently, and out of all the ads we looked at there are two things that are usually missing:

1. The consumers' needs
2. the product benefit

;)

gianandrea said...

probably careerbuiilder was looking for awareness and not for sale. but if this was the goal, some topless would have definitely help: don't loose time with a strategy, get some flesh on screen.

Anonymous said...

Maybe CB realized that they can pay for their creative with the money they'll save on the Super Bowl spot if they use a real media agency.

Anonymous said...

Careerbuilder marketing dept. is nuts.

I worked in the marketing department about 1.5 years ago in Chicago. They WERE obsessed with the ranking of the TV spots.

The director of advertising at the time was tyrannical, unrealistic and obsessive.

So glad I don't work for them anymore.. but everyone we worked with at C-K were class acts.

Good for them.