6 ms·

Madison ave ad exec here. They're talking about a specific kind of advertising, what we would call "brand awareness" advertising. The objective is, as they say,

Madison ave ad exec here. They're talking about a specific kind of advertising, what we would call "brand awareness" advertising. The objective is, as they say, not to get you to do anything, but rather to shift your perception (implicitly or explicitly) about a product or brand. Alone, it doesn't do much of anything. Matched with direct-response, promotions, events, point-of-sale, etc ... it can be powerful. But this is a tool for mass market consumer packaged goods and the like, not your niche startup. Since they have the picture of the Old Spice guy in the header, that's a perfect example to use. Those ridiculous commercials were not meant to send you running out to buy deodorant. Amongst other problems with that, deodorant is what we call a "low consideration" market - as in, you just don't really think about it. You came up with your go-to brand, then you just stuck with it because of inertia. You can't convince someone of the functional benefits of one brand versus another because they're all exactly the same thing. Those Old Spice spots are meant to have a multi-year effect on your perception of the brand. How many of you remember that Old Spice used to be thought of as an old man sailor deodorant? They wanted to move away from that perception, and in a decade, no one will remember anything except how funky and hip they are. I wrote about this campaign when it broke in July of 2010 here: http://www.joshklein.net/is-old-spices-viral-campaign-a-failure-or-success http://www.joshklein.net/is-old-spices-viral-campaign-a-fail... As an interesting anecdote, Tide has 70% of the detergent market despite literally being exactly the same box of chemicals as any other detergent. Except their box is a different color, and they advertised for 50 years so that your mother would tell you which brand to use when you went to college. EDIT: It's worth mentioning that this kind of advertising is getting harder because of something you need to achieve called "share of voice". There used to be 4 TV stations that the whole country watched, so you could spend enough money to blast your message into the head of every American. This is obviously not how the world works anymore - you simply can't reach everyone, and even if you could, there's almost always a better way to segment your audience and only speak to the people who care. That's why I work in digital advertising, and think the TV/Print people don't have great long term prospects for their industry.

Pewpewarrows 15y ago
Off-topic, but do you watch Mad Men? If so, what is your opinion of it, as an ad exec?
- joshklein 15y ago
  I do, as does everyone in the office. Our parent company is one of the "Big 5", and I know people in all of the others, some of which are explicitly named in the show. Everyone in the industry is obsessed with the show because it is spot on, minus the womanizing and (mid-day) alcohol consumption. Everything from the inspirational speeches to the insane personalities is accurate.
marcin 15y ago
Good point. Also worth comparing startups to regular SMBs, who don't do national TV advertising but rather focus on local listings, niche magazines and outdoor. There is a tool for every marketing job, which for a startup might mean sponsoring a meetup of early adopters, then releasing some shwag, doing PR or advertorials, and ending in harvesting demand via search. Otherwise, when you perceive advertising as a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.
- _delirium 15y ago
  A lot of small businesses do seem to do the brand-awareness thing as well, but on a smaller scale, e.g. local TV affiliates. One classic is the annoying/insane mattress salesman with a ridiculous ad that replays constantly, not really to get you to go buy a mattress now, but to build name recognition so that the next time you do need one, you remember that Crazy Uncle Bob's Mattress Emporium exists.
  - marcin 15y ago
    Yes, but as you said yourself it is local (targeted). Also, those ads usually have very precise call to action and very often are connected with current offer/sale/etc. They're also specific to US - very hard to find anywhere else in the world.
  - joshklein 15y ago
    Technically, these would probably be referred to as "DRTV": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_response_television http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_response_television I actually believe the ubiquitous "crazy local salesman" is less about brand awareness, and more about demonstrating a unique selling proposition - even if you know about the crazy mattress salesman down the street, you can still order a mattress online just as well. But you can only interact with a completely hilarious insane person if you stop by the store.
MicahWedemeyer 15y ago
Thanks for the clarification. For niche players (like me), it's difficult to separate out a lot of the Fortune 500 advice on advertising. Creating "engagement" and "brand awareness" is all well and good, but if my total ad budget is $5,000 for a year, then it's tough for me to say, "Oh well, people have a slightly improved vision of my product and/or brand. Money well spent." We've found that ads that just come out and say what we do perform much, much better. Simply bring up the pain point we solve and how we address it. Couple that with a call to action. Sure, it's pushy and unsexy, but it's easy to understand and it translates directly into user action.
- joshklein 15y ago
  Fortune 500 advice on advertising has almost nothing to offer you; I'm glad you've been able to find a better way for yourself. Fortune 500 Marketing 101 breaks your activities out into the AIDA funnel - Attention -> Interest -> Desire -> Action. [1] I can't think of any reason a startup would focus on any part of that funnel before "action" unless they needed to achieve some bizarro network effect for their idea to work (in which case they better have a couple million bucks to drop, and will still probably fail). The sort of advertising before "action" presumes you're talking to someone who doesn't already know they need something like your product, and doesn't already desire something like it. The only reason to communicate to someone like that is if you've already maxed out your market share amongst people who give a hoot. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing)
  - kerryfalk 15y ago
    AIDA doesn't mean separate campaigns for each. It's a guide for each ad to follow so that it achieves results. Brand awareness campaigns mostly just lack the Action portion (At least directly). I think startups trying to create effective ads can greatly improve their campaigns by thinking about AIDA. I have transformed the marketing campaigns and ads of small companies I have worked for and create all of my own ads for my company while thinking about AIDA principles. Brand awareness/institutional advertising is largely useless for startups but I think they can benefit a lot from learning a little bit about AIDA. It helps cut through the clutter.
varikin 15y ago
On those lines, I have realized lately that I am more inclined to buy products that have familiar names, especially if it is a type of product I am not familiar with. For example, if I needed some allergy medication, I would look for something I have seen frequent commercials about. Not because I think they are better, but because of my limited knowledge, the ads are all I have.
- joshklein 15y ago
  There's a good bit about this in "Freakonomics". Rationally speaking, a company that can waste a ton of money getting you to try their product has signaled their expectation that you will actually like their product enough to keep buying it. In this way, something like a celebrity spokesperson indicates a certain level of reliability. The product probably won't poison you. Also, in lieu of actual information, social proof (buying whatever everyone else buys) is a pretty good shortcut for picking the right thing. That's why we have such a strong compulsion for it; if everyone else eats berries from that tree, it probably won't poison you. If everyone else buys ipods, they probably play your music well enough to get by. This bothers the heck out of rational optimizers like we people who frequent HN, but the average person simply doesn't care enough.
  - timwiseman 15y ago
    This bothers the heck out of rational optimizers like we people who frequent HN, but the average person simply doesn't care enough. Perhaps the average person doesn't care enough because it is not rational to care too much. It takes time to fully optimize any decision, and time is precious.
    - delackner 15y ago
      Premature optimization of code is a common addiction that many programmers face. Optimizing every single product you buy to find the perfect maximization of qualities is the real life symptom of this mania. Which product is best? Just get the one that you find appealing. The amazing thing is that the more you analyze product choices the less happy you end up with the outcome.[1] But this leaves the question: Do you expose yourself to the advertising? Which advertising? If you don't expose yourself to ANY advertising, how are you supposed to choose things when you are standing in the store with no phone reception and no 5 year failure data? You take a deep breath, relax, and just buy whichever one you respond most to. How is a small upstart company supposed to establish a reputation for quality in such an environment? Does a reputation for quality actually indicate true quality? If a luxury brand item fails every few months and you have to take it in for complementary repair/replacement, how do you end up feeling? I used to laugh at people who bought super high-end luxury goods that I know from data are made from cheap materials. But the reality is that the high-end company stands behind their product and they replace it when it falls apart since with their fat margins they can easily replace the products that have problems. The customer ends up happy. If you buy a "best of breed" product from a tiny company with razor-thin margins, chances are they will be gone by the time you are struck by a need to seek their help. This is really hard for me to internalize, given that for many classes of mechanical products the benefit of super-over-optimizing is that you end up with a purchase that lasts for maybe 10x as long, which helps us try to ignore the reality that for most purchases we over-optimize, all we end up with is having wasted hours of time and decision-making energy for little noticeable benefit. [1]http://biopsychiatry.com/happiness/choice.html http://biopsychiatry.com/happiness/choice.html
larrys 15y ago
"They're talking about a specific kind of advertising, what we would call "brand awareness" advertising. The objective is, as they say, not to get you to do anything, but rather to shift your perception (implicitly or explicitly) about a product or brand. Alone, it doesn't do much of anything. Matched with direct-response, promotions, events, point-of-sale, etc ... it can be powerful. But this is a tool for mass market consumer packaged goods and the like, not your niche startup." I think there is another principle that comes into play even for a niche startup. An startup gets initial publicity maybe from TC or HN or even mainstream media. I think it then needs to spend money on brand awareness advertising to keep itself from becoming "out of site out of mind". Unless of course it's mentioned everyday in the news (like Twitter). My question to you (as the ad person) is do you think that a company like myspace could have prevented their decline at least somewhat by investing in brand awareness advertising meant counter Facebooks rise? (Forgetting for a second the things they failed to do or need to fix).
- joshklein 15y ago
  I do not think Myspace could have saved themselves through brand advertising, because Facebook wasn't attacking them at a mass audience level; they cornered the college market, school-by-school, then methodically expanded social-group-by-social-group. According to the research, in most categories, recommendations from friends and family is far and away the most important influencer. Advertising doesn't come close. And anyway, this is very much the opposite of mass market awareness; they did exactly what a startup SHOULD do, which is narrowly define their audience of early adopters and then focus all their energy on a growing a critical mass of adoption there. Then, and only then, should you consider growing to a broader audience. Also, good advertising can never save a bad product.
kstenerud 15y ago
I dunno... If I'm looking for a "low consideration" product, I just go for the cheapest one. They're all the same, so what's the point in going for a particular brand? This is where the "store brands" are nice. For snack food, I check for MSG, which, if present, indicates that they're putting other nasty shit in and using MSG to mask the taste. If it passes that test, I'll try any of them once, then stick with whatever tastes good and has the least amount of ingredients I can't pronounce. Or I'll just buy some trail mix (whichever brand they happen to have). If I'm looking for something I plan to use long term, I go to a number of trusted review sites to see what people are saying about it. I've switched between Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu, and WD many times over the years based on which company maintained quality at the time and which one cheaped out (once again, based on reviews from places like Tom's Hardware, Consumer Reports, etc). You'd be amazed at the swings in quality these companies have year-over-year. Same goes for Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, Intel, MSI et all for motherboards, Toyota, Mazda, Ford, GM, Audi, Citroen for automobiles. Glues, power tools, jackets, shoes, bicycles, furniture... the list goes on. If you're not researching them, you're gambling with your money. I could rattle off a huge list of advertising jingles I've heard throughout the years, but I've never paid them any heed in disposables (I buy the cheapest one), nor have I bought big ticket items without some serious research upfront.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  You are not a normal buyer. However: 1. You'd be surprised how effective some of the approaches are at a subconscious level, and 2. The mass of people don't spend a lot of time comparison shopping. Try and find an American sitcom, minus laughtrack. You'll be amazed at how painfully unfunny most of them actually are.
  - kstenerud 15y ago
    I'm already aware of how painfully unfunny they are, even with the laugh track (the ones with canned laugh tracks are especially aggravating). I can count the number of good comedy shows over the past 40 years on my hand, and only one of them had a laugh track (Yes, Minister / Yes, Prime Minister).
arohner 15y ago
Out of curiosity, as a Madison ave ad exec, what do you get out of HN? Are you technical? Are you here for business or pleasure? What does the HN crowd need to learn about advertising?
- libraryatnight 15y ago
  Advertising could be considered hacking the brain. ;)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
masterzora 15y ago
Those ridiculous commercials were not meant to send you running out to buy deodorant. Amusing fact that I think actually helps to drive your point in further: those commercials are ostensibly about their line of body washes, not deodorants. In fact, Old Spice body wash sales have dropped since those commercials started while sales of their products on the whole has nearly doubled.
timbre 15y ago
A side issue, but there are real differences among what many people think of as interchangeable brands. I started using Tide many years ago after, dissatisfied with my laundry results, I found a Consumer Reports article that said it was the best. I just did a quick search and they say it still is, although you can get your clothes almost as clean with some much cheaper brands (http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/july/home-garden/laundry-detergent/detergents/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/jul...).

Pewpewarrows 15y ago

Off-topic, but do you watch Mad Men? If so, what is your opinion of it, as an ad exec?

joshklein 15y ago
I do, as does everyone in the office. Our parent company is one of the "Big 5", and I know people in all of the others, some of which are explicitly named in the show. Everyone in the industry is obsessed with the show because it is spot on, minus the womanizing and (mid-day) alcohol consumption. Everything from the inspirational speeches to the insane personalities is accurate.

marcin 15y ago

Good point. Also worth comparing startups to regular SMBs, who don't do national TV advertising but rather focus on local listings, niche magazines and outdoor. There is a tool for every marketing job, which for a startup might mean sponsoring a meetup of early adopters, then releasing some shwag, doing PR or advertorials, and ending in harvesting demand via search. Otherwise, when you perceive advertising as a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

_delirium 15y ago
A lot of small businesses do seem to do the brand-awareness thing as well, but on a smaller scale, e.g. local TV affiliates. One classic is the annoying/insane mattress salesman with a ridiculous ad that replays constantly, not really to get you to go buy a mattress now, but to build name recognition so that the next time you do need one, you remember that Crazy Uncle Bob's Mattress Emporium exists.
- marcin 15y ago
  Yes, but as you said yourself it is local (targeted). Also, those ads usually have very precise call to action and very often are connected with current offer/sale/etc. They're also specific to US - very hard to find anywhere else in the world.
- joshklein 15y ago
  Technically, these would probably be referred to as "DRTV": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_response_television http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_response_television I actually believe the ubiquitous "crazy local salesman" is less about brand awareness, and more about demonstrating a unique selling proposition - even if you know about the crazy mattress salesman down the street, you can still order a mattress online just as well. But you can only interact with a completely hilarious insane person if you stop by the store.

MicahWedemeyer 15y ago

Thanks for the clarification. For niche players (like me), it's difficult to separate out a lot of the Fortune 500 advice on advertising. Creating "engagement" and "brand awareness" is all well and good, but if my total ad budget is $5,000 for a year, then it's tough for me to say, "Oh well, people have a slightly improved vision of my product and/or brand. Money well spent." We've found that ads that just come out and say what we do perform much, much better. Simply bring up the pain point we solve and how we address it. Couple that with a call to action. Sure, it's pushy and unsexy, but it's easy to understand and it translates directly into user action.

joshklein 15y ago
Fortune 500 advice on advertising has almost nothing to offer you; I'm glad you've been able to find a better way for yourself. Fortune 500 Marketing 101 breaks your activities out into the AIDA funnel - Attention -> Interest -> Desire -> Action. [1] I can't think of any reason a startup would focus on any part of that funnel before "action" unless they needed to achieve some bizarro network effect for their idea to work (in which case they better have a couple million bucks to drop, and will still probably fail). The sort of advertising before "action" presumes you're talking to someone who doesn't already know they need something like your product, and doesn't already desire something like it. The only reason to communicate to someone like that is if you've already maxed out your market share amongst people who give a hoot. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing)
- kerryfalk 15y ago
  AIDA doesn't mean separate campaigns for each. It's a guide for each ad to follow so that it achieves results. Brand awareness campaigns mostly just lack the Action portion (At least directly). I think startups trying to create effective ads can greatly improve their campaigns by thinking about AIDA. I have transformed the marketing campaigns and ads of small companies I have worked for and create all of my own ads for my company while thinking about AIDA principles. Brand awareness/institutional advertising is largely useless for startups but I think they can benefit a lot from learning a little bit about AIDA. It helps cut through the clutter.

varikin 15y ago

On those lines, I have realized lately that I am more inclined to buy products that have familiar names, especially if it is a type of product I am not familiar with. For example, if I needed some allergy medication, I would look for something I have seen frequent commercials about. Not because I think they are better, but because of my limited knowledge, the ads are all I have.

joshklein 15y ago
There's a good bit about this in "Freakonomics". Rationally speaking, a company that can waste a ton of money getting you to try their product has signaled their expectation that you will actually like their product enough to keep buying it. In this way, something like a celebrity spokesperson indicates a certain level of reliability. The product probably won't poison you. Also, in lieu of actual information, social proof (buying whatever everyone else buys) is a pretty good shortcut for picking the right thing. That's why we have such a strong compulsion for it; if everyone else eats berries from that tree, it probably won't poison you. If everyone else buys ipods, they probably play your music well enough to get by. This bothers the heck out of rational optimizers like we people who frequent HN, but the average person simply doesn't care enough.
- timwiseman 15y ago
  This bothers the heck out of rational optimizers like we people who frequent HN, but the average person simply doesn't care enough. Perhaps the average person doesn't care enough because it is not rational to care too much. It takes time to fully optimize any decision, and time is precious.
  - delackner 15y ago
    Premature optimization of code is a common addiction that many programmers face. Optimizing every single product you buy to find the perfect maximization of qualities is the real life symptom of this mania. Which product is best? Just get the one that you find appealing. The amazing thing is that the more you analyze product choices the less happy you end up with the outcome.[1] But this leaves the question: Do you expose yourself to the advertising? Which advertising? If you don't expose yourself to ANY advertising, how are you supposed to choose things when you are standing in the store with no phone reception and no 5 year failure data? You take a deep breath, relax, and just buy whichever one you respond most to. How is a small upstart company supposed to establish a reputation for quality in such an environment? Does a reputation for quality actually indicate true quality? If a luxury brand item fails every few months and you have to take it in for complementary repair/replacement, how do you end up feeling? I used to laugh at people who bought super high-end luxury goods that I know from data are made from cheap materials. But the reality is that the high-end company stands behind their product and they replace it when it falls apart since with their fat margins they can easily replace the products that have problems. The customer ends up happy. If you buy a "best of breed" product from a tiny company with razor-thin margins, chances are they will be gone by the time you are struck by a need to seek their help. This is really hard for me to internalize, given that for many classes of mechanical products the benefit of super-over-optimizing is that you end up with a purchase that lasts for maybe 10x as long, which helps us try to ignore the reality that for most purchases we over-optimize, all we end up with is having wasted hours of time and decision-making energy for little noticeable benefit. [1]http://biopsychiatry.com/happiness/choice.html http://biopsychiatry.com/happiness/choice.html

larrys 15y ago

"They're talking about a specific kind of advertising, what we would call "brand awareness" advertising. The objective is, as they say, not to get you to do anything, but rather to shift your perception (implicitly or explicitly) about a product or brand. Alone, it doesn't do much of anything. Matched with direct-response, promotions, events, point-of-sale, etc ... it can be powerful. But this is a tool for mass market consumer packaged goods and the like, not your niche startup." I think there is another principle that comes into play even for a niche startup. An startup gets initial publicity maybe from TC or HN or even mainstream media. I think it then needs to spend money on brand awareness advertising to keep itself from becoming "out of site out of mind". Unless of course it's mentioned everyday in the news (like Twitter). My question to you (as the ad person) is do you think that a company like myspace could have prevented their decline at least somewhat by investing in brand awareness advertising meant counter Facebooks rise? (Forgetting for a second the things they failed to do or need to fix).

joshklein 15y ago
I do not think Myspace could have saved themselves through brand advertising, because Facebook wasn't attacking them at a mass audience level; they cornered the college market, school-by-school, then methodically expanded social-group-by-social-group. According to the research, in most categories, recommendations from friends and family is far and away the most important influencer. Advertising doesn't come close. And anyway, this is very much the opposite of mass market awareness; they did exactly what a startup SHOULD do, which is narrowly define their audience of early adopters and then focus all their energy on a growing a critical mass of adoption there. Then, and only then, should you consider growing to a broader audience. Also, good advertising can never save a bad product.

kstenerud 15y ago

I dunno... If I'm looking for a "low consideration" product, I just go for the cheapest one. They're all the same, so what's the point in going for a particular brand? This is where the "store brands" are nice. For snack food, I check for MSG, which, if present, indicates that they're putting other nasty shit in and using MSG to mask the taste. If it passes that test, I'll try any of them once, then stick with whatever tastes good and has the least amount of ingredients I can't pronounce. Or I'll just buy some trail mix (whichever brand they happen to have). If I'm looking for something I plan to use long term, I go to a number of trusted review sites to see what people are saying about it. I've switched between Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu, and WD many times over the years based on which company maintained quality at the time and which one cheaped out (once again, based on reviews from places like Tom's Hardware, Consumer Reports, etc). You'd be amazed at the swings in quality these companies have year-over-year. Same goes for Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, Intel, MSI et all for motherboards, Toyota, Mazda, Ford, GM, Audi, Citroen for automobiles. Glues, power tools, jackets, shoes, bicycles, furniture... the list goes on. If you're not researching them, you're gambling with your money. I could rattle off a huge list of advertising jingles I've heard throughout the years, but I've never paid them any heed in disposables (I buy the cheapest one), nor have I bought big ticket items without some serious research upfront.

jacques_chester 15y ago
You are not a normal buyer. However: 1. You'd be surprised how effective some of the approaches are at a subconscious level, and 2. The mass of people don't spend a lot of time comparison shopping. Try and find an American sitcom, minus laughtrack. You'll be amazed at how painfully unfunny most of them actually are.
- kstenerud 15y ago
  I'm already aware of how painfully unfunny they are, even with the laugh track (the ones with canned laugh tracks are especially aggravating). I can count the number of good comedy shows over the past 40 years on my hand, and only one of them had a laugh track (Yes, Minister / Yes, Prime Minister).

arohner 15y ago

Out of curiosity, as a Madison ave ad exec, what do you get out of HN? Are you technical? Are you here for business or pleasure? What does the HN crowd need to learn about advertising?

libraryatnight 15y ago
Advertising could be considered hacking the brain. ;)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

masterzora 15y ago

Those ridiculous commercials were not meant to send you running out to buy deodorant. Amusing fact that I think actually helps to drive your point in further: those commercials are ostensibly about their line of body washes, not deodorants. In fact, Old Spice body wash sales have dropped since those commercials started while sales of their products on the whole has nearly doubled.

timbre 15y ago

A side issue, but there are real differences among what many people think of as interchangeable brands. I started using Tide many years ago after, dissatisfied with my laundry results, I found a Consumer Reports article that said it was the best. I just did a quick search and they say it still is, although you can get your clothes almost as clean with some much cheaper brands (http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/july/home-garden/laundry-detergent/detergents/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/jul...).