PART V of V: 5 Advertising Mistakes Retailers Make Ever go into a car dealership and ask the sales guy to tune your engine? You don’t really think that he/she would know how to do it, do you? Sales people sell cars they don’t provide highly technical engine adjustments. The dealership has trained mechanics for… Read More »
Human beings have an obsession for naming things. This is not surprising since it is the basis of all society, all language and all communications. We name ourselves first. We grow up knowing our labels and very few of us change those labels. This is us adding our own version of metatags with each choice… Read More »
Names are funny things. They are the nouns of our lives. They create expectations and label us. They become our brands. We are often asked why we named our company Calexis and what it means. The truth is, we made it up. Our business is creativity. We create brand imagery and names for our clients,… Read More »
Everyone gets excited by a big retail contest: there are prizes to be won, discounts to be won, a game to be played. But while consumers consider this kind of promotion to be like a lottery with millions to win, marketers see the event as a massive coupon drop. When you consider that the majority… Read More »
What are the secrets to assessing a creative presentation when your agency shows you the work? It is no secret. It is just a discipline to learn. I just got back from the presentation of a new ad. The client did very well. He knew how to evaluate the presented material and his questions and… Read More »
A freelance assignment in Hungary came up in 1989. The country was just breaking free from Russian domination and communism, literally at that very moment. A bank in Budapest, called DunaBank, wanted to use their new entrepreneurial freedom to launch a credit card. We did this and after a couple weeks returned home. After I… Read More »
The Creative strategy for Camay bar soap in Venezuela was that it was gentle, leaving skin feeling soft because Camay contained cold cream. Softness was the end benefit of using the product, being caressable was the end-end benefit. The commercials were designed to empower the female Camay user. The lead character was always a young… Read More »
A freelance assignment in Hungary came up in 1989. The country was just breaking free from Russian domination and communism. A bank in Budapest, called DunaBank, wanted to launch a credit card. I was hired based on my marketing work with Texaco’s credit card operation, and the fact that Canada was less scary and more… Read More »
As Super Bowls, Stanley Cups and other championships roll around, it is interesting to see so many people wearing the jerseys or replicant jerseys of their favourite teams and players. It is a new thing. Even putting names on the backs of jerseys is a relatively new thing and not all teams even add them.… Read More »
Everyone who has ever managed people should aim to be a “Geppetto Manager.” In the famous Italian story, retold by Disney, Geppetto was the old woodcarver who made a wooden marionette named Pinocchio. Pinocchio, the puppet, dreams of becoming a real boy. The story is about how Pinocchio learns to have a conscience and then,… Read More »