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 »
I once gave a class presentation about the psychology used in advertising that leads people to deceive themselves. I outlined some of the techniques to our class of about twenty or so. At the end of the class, a number of students said they did not believe me. They said they could never be fooled… Read More »
The leaves don’t turn; the snow doesn’t fall. It doesn’t get colder or in the spring thaw. There are some seasonal changes, more or less rain, hurricanes. But no gradual progression of the seasons. So how do people mark the changing of the Florida seasons? The secret for residents is the flow of commercial holidays… Read More »
We were pleased a few years ago when our Media Director advised us that she had negotiated a free promotion activation from the CBC. She got a promotional tie-in with Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) for our Subway client and, even better, it was to run during the highly rated Stanley Cup Playoffs. All… 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 »