While at home after a very long day recently, we were engaged in our normal evening habit of watching television (a.k.a. download time), when possibly the worst commercial ever taped came on. At first, we just had a great laugh about it, but, it also started a conversation about how being too clever or too out-of-the-box with your communication choices, can be a detriment to the overall effort of the campaign. Not only was this commercial horrific, it was aired repeatedly during the show (at least they got that part right from a frequency perspective). We can remember the commercial, but not the product that they were pitching, which, defeats the purpose of the campaign. The lasting impression (just to get an idea of how bad this really was); the commercial was advertising a hand sanitizer/hand soap in a public bathroom while a gal was sitting behind spy glass screaming at people as they washed their hands. Who does that?!
Another prominent example is a marketing piece created by Penzeys Spices. Several years back Penzeys created a campaign with a killer motto – “Love People, Cook Them Tasty Food.” The company created really high-quality bumper stickers that they gave away in all of their stores. The problem was that nowhere on the sticker is the Penzeys name. Even worse, the company have given away thousands of them. Oops. As a result, anyone who received or sees them has any idea that it is in any way linked to Penzeys. Talk about a huge opportunity lost, not to mention loss of R.O.I. If you are familiar with printing in any way, this was not an inexpensive print job.
Always keep in mind the goal of any public relation efforts. The focus needs to be identifying the target audience for your particular product and how to reach your customers in a successful way. Whether you are a writer or a business owner, it is with unquestionable certainty you are very, very busy. Hiring professionals in PR, publishing, advertising and social media takes all that off your plate. Our point? We don’t want to see anyone else make the mistakes above.
