• About

The Malcolm Auld Blog

~ Marketing Musings and More…

The Malcolm Auld Blog

Monthly Archives: April 2014

Confusing people is a fast way to failure…

13 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, Marketing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

advertising, branding, copywriting, marketing

Hello folks – am back at my desk after delivering 23 seminars around the country during the past 6 weeks. They covered direct marketing using offline digital tools, online digital and other traditional channels. Almost lost my voice.

One thing you get to enjoy when staying in hotels is to read the printed newspaper over breakfast – not commonly done at home these days. While turning the page in Townsville last week, I was reminded of an incident from last century – that’s the 1990’s.

I wrote a full-page four-colour press ad to sell an environmental statistics book published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

This was not your usual hard-cover coffee-table book with glossy pictures of rainforests and endangered species. No folks, this was a few hundred pages of recycled stock, chock-full of statistics and data designed to cure insomnia.

The ad was booked to run in The Australian newspaper – a broadsheet for those who don’t know it. There were only two ways to order the book – by fax or mail.

I put an extremely light blue tint in the coupon to help differentiate it on the page and to match the blue/green colours of the environmental theme. We sent specific instructions to the newspaper about how light we wanted the tint.

On the day the ad ran I opened the paper and nearly threw up my breakfast. Despite our instructions, the production team at the paper decided to increase the percentage of tint, so it really dominated the page. They thought they were doing us a favour – but of course they were destroying our ad. That’s because any faxed orders could not be read, as the coupon returned as a solid black when it spat out of the fax. In short, it was an (environmental) disaster.

So imagine my surprise last week when I opened The Australian over brekkie. I thought the production team had come out of retirement.

There before my eyes was an ad printed upside down. What a disaster I thought. The advertiser would be asking for compensation on that clanger.

Yet the following day I was reading another paper at the airport during the standard delay for the flight. I assume that’s why the newspapers are free at the departure lounge?

I turned the page and here was a full-page ad printed upside down. I’d kept the original ad to write this blog, so I checked the two ads against each other. They were for the same brand – apparently the upside down ads were meant to be, well, upside down. People are supposed to turn their broadsheets 180 degrees to read the ad – how inconvenient and how bloody confusing.

This is not very creative by the way – to be creative the ad would have to give a reason to consider turning it upside down. But it didn’t – there was just a number printed in the middle of the page. Why would I risk knocking my brekkie off the table to read the ad?

Here it is:

Why should I turn my newspaper upside down?

Why should I turn my newspaper upside down?

I took a wild punt and guessed that somewhere in the copy there would be a statement about “change your view”. And I wasn’t disappointed – it’s the obvious thing for something like this and has been done dozens of times before to sell spectacles, conference venues, hotels, holidays and more. But this ad has gone further – it comes with a website about ‘change your view’.

Maybe they should change their view and realise that confusing people, or frustrating them is a fast way to failure. Unless the pay-off for doing something out of the ordinary is sensational, people won’t do it, or worse still, will do as you ask and get frustrated at the result – as I’m sure some people did turn their paper upside down and even visit the site.

But is it any wonder people are reading newspapers on tablets? If the upside-down ad craze takes off, it’s a lot easier to turn the digital pages 180 degrees on a tablet or smart phone.

I’m off to invent a spinning App that turns the ads around automatically it detects them on my digi-reader. It will save the humans tilting and turning their mobile devices.

That’s of course after I finish reading the weekend papers.

 

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Recent Posts

  • WOW a 5-hour marketing seminar on a subject that doesn’t exist…
  • Good grief, now LinkedIn staff are sending unsolicited social selling spam…
  • Another example of social selling failure with marketing automation on LinkedIn…
  • Has COVID killed the culture cult…
  • Social selling has become the new spam…

Archives

  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • December 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012

Categories

  • Advertising
  • B2B Marketing
  • BIG DATA
  • Branding
  • Content Marketing
  • Copywriting
  • Culture
  • Customer Service
  • Digital
  • Digital marketing
  • Direct Marketing
  • Email marketing
  • Group Buying
  • Marketing
  • Marketing Automation
  • Media
  • Meetings
  • Mobile marketing
  • PPC
  • QR Codes
  • Remarketing
  • retail
  • Sales
  • Sales Promotion
  • SEM & SEO
  • small data
  • Social Media
  • social selling
  • Telemarketing
  • Thought Leadership
  • Uncategorized
  • Viral marketing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Malcolm Auld Blog
    • Join 542 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Malcolm Auld Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: