When times are bad, the money you spend on your marketing and advertising should be made to work even harder. The pain any organisation must feel at handing over hundreds of thousands of pounds to ITV or Sky, while laying off staff and slashing the R&D budget, is enough to make most FDs weep. But it has to be done – pity the fool who loses market share during a downturn because he stopped marketing.
But looking at the sad array of 30 second spots during the commercial breaks of the Champions League semi final last night (tough luck Didier, Ashley and Roman – it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys) made me wonder whether shedloads of precious marketing budgets are being wasted.
Take the Heineken spot, for example. This features a bunch of youths generally grooving around and texting each other – because texting is what the happening youth does these days, according to the bloke in planning – sending messages such as ‘Come on over if you fancy a Heineken!’ Tragic really. When was the last time any youth tried to entice a mate over with the prospect of ‘a Heineken’? And then you get a load of operatic singers in a pool singing the UEFA theme. Really surreal.
I’m probably resistant because I’m not a UK lager drinker – for a number of reasons. The main one is that British lager is the product of a grim industrial process; the best thing you can say about the product is that it’s wet and it’s got alcohol in it. The fact that you can usually buy gallons of the stuff for £9.99 at your local supermarket tells you all you need to know about its inherent value.
But this kind of material makes an old fart like me yearn for the ‘Reaches the parts that other beers cannot reach…’ campaign, or some Carling Black Label Dambusters stuff. Knowing ad people are now shaking their heads at my naivety.
The problem is caused by the harsh efficiencies of global product marketing. These days, big international brands like Heineken have to produce ads that will be shown all over the place. Pan-European, even pan-global. The result is a dull, lowest common denominator approach where everyone has to be kept happy. It’s bland and forgettable, just like the product. There may be a few saddo youths in Macedonia who think that the UEFA Heineken ad is the coolest thing they’ve ever watched, and are so moved to action that they instantly go out to throw six pints down their neck, but I doubt it. (I’ll probably now get an angry email from the research organisation that tested it to destruction on lager-swilling 18-25s from Barking to Burkina Faso. But research has always been the death of a good idea. That’s another story.)
The one exception to this reign of mediocrity is the utterly brilliant Meerkat ad for Comparethemarket.com (which is much more entertaining than watching Chelsea). This is clever, highly effective advertising at its very best – I still snigger on the twelfth occasion I’ve watched it. But I don’t just gladly accept a free laugh; I remember why. The branding is so good you instantly remember the name of an otherwise completely tedious price comparison website fighting hard for recognition against Moneysupermarket.com and all the rest. I even used it when trying to research car insurance. And they have produced a very amusing meerkat site, www.comparethemeerkat.com, which is good for a quick giggle over your lunchtime sandwich.
It’s so good they’ve even whipped up a story carried by the BBC (and probably the subject of millions of hits) about why meerkats don’t make good pets. Having spent several Sunday mornings recently watching these weird critters in the local zoo, I suspect that advice is entirely accurate. They’re so hyper they need to watch a few lager ads to calm them down.
In today's bulletin:
Barclays bounces but Lloyds still a loser
Unilever profits hit by cheapskate shoppers
Editor's blog: Advertising in a global meerkat
'Patronising' Branson ad leaves Virgin staff steaming
The dangers of office politeness
