Watch this video, laugh if you like….then we can discuss it.

Yesterday, Herman Cain became the “Rebecca Black of political advertising.” She’s the teen who made a music video in unintentionally pointing out the banality of teenage life and pop music. It drew ire, and 166 million YouTube views. In a world where all press is good, Black’s epic fail created bigger waves than major label success.

Enter Poe’s Law: It Takes a Smiley to Mock Extremism
We had an interesting discussion of this over on my Facebook page, about whether this is a serious ad, or a parody or attack.

This brought Facebook, where Bill Cammack and Katherine Harris add their humor and professional insight (Bill produces video, Katherine is a former political insider.)

Military advertising is a tough thing in the best of times; how do you pitch people on an opportunity that may involve getting shot at?

If there’s a war that’s even moderately popular, you can say things like “Protect the Homeland.” If there’s no war – it’s happened at least once – you can pitch getting to use weapons and maybe learn a skill, hence “Accelerate Your Life.”  Alternately, you can dare people; ask if they are tough enough to do what you do. Thus the Marine Corps’ “The Few. The Proud.”  (And yes, they do mean to capitalize it that way.)

That’s about it.  Which is why we end up with things like “Army Strong,” which sounds a bit like “Hulk Smash.” At least there’s authenticity in that.

However, probably the wrong approach is to show what really happens while you’re getting shot at.  Why? See this example from the Navy, which is all over Boston’s MBTA Orange Line.

Who starts a recruiting discussion with a picture of a chaplain apparently administering last rites to a child? After all, when this happens there’s almost always a regrettable story involving phrases like collateral damage.  Wieneke’s first law of advertising: Unless you are selling The Sopranos, avoid associating your brand with death. Especially if your brand actually has anything to do with death.

It blows my mind that the Navy, which is home to Seal Team 6 — a brand so strong, Disney tried to horn-in on their naming rights — is leading with a headline “Compassion Hand Delivered.”

I suppose the SEALS have an unusually potent form of compassion in their hands. This is where the Navy’s new theme “A Global Force for Good” misses what could make the brand resonate. It recasts the valor of the Navy as a macho Red Cross.

The Navy’s ad firm, Campbell-Ewald, renewed their contract, valued at up to $800 million, partly on the Global Force for Good rebrand.

The Navy’s old recruiting slogan, “Accelerate Your Life,” drew on the promise of travel and responsibility.  But the new slogan, “A Global Force for Good,” sounds too much like a non-profit, or a green investment fund making an equally vague claim. Walmart claims to be a force for good, and Delta, and Nu Skin. See the problem?

My beef isn’t abut the Navy doing good; it’s that the tagline creates a huge brand gap. It also sounds superior. And of course, it gets their name wrong. Its the “United States Navy”. There are other 34 countries comprising the Americas. Yes, I digress.

The problem is we’ve seen Hunt for Red October and Top Gun; that’s the Navy of Hollywood. It is hard to square them with “A Global Force for Good.” It leaves too great a disconnect with the Hollywood impression the Navy helped cultivate.

It’s tough to be in the military, even in the advertising department.

Side note: I’m looking forward to enlisting your help in something that will support those serving us in uniform. It won’t make up for a flawed tag line, but its a great opportunity to show that service and sacrifice matter. Stay tuned for details.

Related reads:

• Why the Marines Still Rule Madison Avenue
• Sailors Take Aim at New Recruiting Slogan
• The US Military: A Global Force for Good…Maybe Not.

Marketing is an emotional process. And it’s the strength of feelings we have from brand experiences that sears a brand into our consciousness.

Sometimes brands have great stories to share. Increasingly, marketers are taking a page from P.T. Barnum and creating stunts that become hooks for these experiences.

It can be transfixing. Take the recent stunt that Duval Guillaume Modem produced to reinforce the ‘That Calls for a Carlsberg” campaign.

A theater packed to the hilt with tough-looking biker types, and just two seats for the film remain, right in the middle of the crowd.

The video shows overwhelmed couples considering whether they should take to the exit or pardon their way past the toughies to claim their seat. Of course the tenacious few are rewarded with applause and let in on the joke with a cold beer and a cheerful toast.

This is an ad that takes you on an adventure. It takes a risk, and expects that its audience will get the joke and appreciate its humor. And along the way, it communicates who Carlsberg thinks their beer is for, and what it might be to be a Carlsberg drinker.  That’s more than a stunt; it’s smart branding.

I’m happy to have a short article in the current issue of Advertising Age. It’s a look at the over-use of QR-codes in ads, and it suggests that sometimes a giant stuffed rat just works better.

I’d like to add a few comments, starting with a photo of the rat in question, which stands around 30 feel tall. The union guys who use him to call attention to their protests just love this mechanism. After all, sanding around handing out flyers can get dull. Having a 30 foot tall rat just up-levels the whole effort.

Giant Rats Have Their Charms
Great advertising campaigns share four common elements: the are tangible, approachable, personal, and memorable. The stuffed rat and the guys with it worked on all those levels. A QR code as a central creative element just doesn’t work. Its not the code’s fault.

Too often, short-sighted use dooms the QR code, regardless of how great it is.  QR’s in the subway where there’s no mobile signal, or who don’t lead to mobile optimized pages, or who don’t create a clear motive to use the code in the first place, will fail.  They’re bad marketing. Putting QR’s on urinals, where I hope never to see cameras, or on my dessert (yes, really) is wearing the novelty away.

But CueCats of Any Stripe Are Lame
Beyond silly use by marketers, there is a problem with this mechanism. It isn’t convenient enough to be a great mass market connecter. In the article, I compared QR codes to their failed predecessor, the CueCat. In fact, my new favorite digital strategy friend, Lee de la Houssaye, wrote a post extended this idea, that QR Codes are CueCat2.0.

Do QR Codes Have a Future?
Sure they do. But research from Japan, where QR codes have wider use and maturity, shows that of those who use them, the average is less than two uses per week. And in those cases, the overwhelming reason they used the code was to get a coupon or discount.

If customers only opened two email messages per week, or answered two phone calls per week, that would discourage making them the core of many mass marketing campaigns. Unless they arrive with a great discount, or attached to a great rat, they eventually won’t get noticed.

Every time I get irritated at a rap or hip hop song, some musician should get a bonus.

Why?

Because I am EXACTLY NOT the target market they are aiming for. Rap and hip hop should irritate middle-aged parent types like me, just as much as Ice-T and early Prince freaked out my elders when I was trying to pass myself off as cool. (For the record, I do like Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash and every single member of the Sugar Hill Gang  – so it’s not that I dislike all rap. I just dislike all rap that wasn’t made during a time best described as “back in the day.”)

Which brings me to Axe Body Spray. Axe has been getting all sorts of grief ever since word hit the internet about the Axe Multiple Girlfriends App. Ogilvy Tunisia (Who knew? Is there an Ogilvy South Pole? Probably.) … Where was I? Oh yeah … Ogilvy Tunisia created an Axe Facebook campaign built around the idea of letting guys brag about how many women they were dating at the same time.  The app was part of a Tunisian campaign created after research showed that Tunisian guys love bragging about how many girls they can line up. The app let Tunisians males (and I assume others, unless it had a passport ID device built in – maybe it did) change their relationship status to let their friends know that they now had multiple girlfriends.

And, no surprise, a lot of folks got upset about it, so you can see the internet is still working just fine. But while I totally respect people’s right to complain about it, that doesn’t make it a bad campaign. Refer back to what I said about rap music to see why. The people who complained were not the target market — a Tunisian guy — and neither am I. I don’t like bragging about the number of girlfriends etc.  (I also have never taken to the streets and helped peacefully overthrow a repressive regime, but that’s another issue altogether.)

Ogilvy Tunisia’s assignment was to sell Axe, and I bet they did, which means they succeeded. PLEASE do not think I condone how this (or pretty much any other Axe campaign) portrays women. I do not. I am well aware of how horribly women are treated in a lot of places, not the least of which are many Arab states. Go and protest all you want.  What I’m saying is that because it pissed so many people off, the campaign showed it was perfect for its target market. This was a brave campaign that wouldn’t have survived design by committee.

The Most Dangerous Phrase in Advertising
Which brings me to a great piece I read recently by Phil Johnson about the most dangerous expression in advertising: “I like it!” Be suspicious if all the marketing/ad folks say this. Why? Because they are NOT the target audience. This group spends way too much time thinking about what it is they are trying to sell. And by “way too much” I mean more than an actual consumer. You spend enough time thinking about selling widgets and you really do think that the advent of the purple widget with extra wide grooves will totally revolutionize the widget market by replacing the puce widget with the wide grooves. In fact, consumers want a widget that works better than the old model and doesn’t cost more, and they are going to think about this decision for exactly five seconds before deciding which widget to buy.

Herding iPad Using Cats
All of which brings me – finally – to the Friskies games for cats iPad app. Yes, for cats. Imagine a usability tester behind the reflective glass as a focus group of cats ignores or attends to iPads.  Once again, this demonstrates that I AM NOT THE TARGET MARKET. I own an iPad but not a cat. If I owned a cat and was able to, I’d trade it for a second iPad.

But for those who love both cats and iPads, I get how this would be cool and worthy of telling others about. It’s a great way to extend the brand experience.

Sometimes “not getting it” is the exactly right viewer experience for those who are “out of segment.” Both Axe and Friskies are silly campaigns, and as a marketer I know they work; just not for me. And that’s okay.

Airports are like islands of misfit advertising.  If you’re ever tired of just getting from point A to B, try being an ad critic; airports are often blessed with unusually bad advertising. This week’s ads feature Lebron James, who last week astonished both Celtics with his skill and the media with his dumbassery. As my hometown Celtics take him on, I thought you’d enjoy this series of ads.

I was recently in Cleveland, consulting and taking pictures of bad ads, when I was stopped by this huge ad below. Its was about 30 feet across and placed right where you exit the secure part of the airport.  “Witness what?” I wondered.  I didn’t get it and started asking locals and photographing the ad. Suddenly three TSA security staff arrived…but rather than asking me to put my camera away, they all gladly helped explain their disgust for Lebron James, and how this ad is a giant slap back at him. They quite approved of it.

Explaining The Still-Not-So-Obvious
I still didn’t get it.  They explained that Nike and the Cavaliers had built a whole campaign around witnessing Lebron’s greatness before he abandoned Cleveland.  I hadn’t seen the ads, as I live and blog from beneath a rock apparently.

Cliffs, a fairly unknown local coal-mining energy company, took out a ton of ads that tap in to the Cleveland fans’ anger about Lebron’s flashy exit from their city to greener NBA fields.

One TSA screener pointed out that Cliff’s ad was both fantastic and hypocritical itself. After all, though Cliffs was still in Cleveland, “Cleveland” was no longer in Cliffs.  They had been known as “Cleveland Cliffs” until a few years back, when they dropped the local affiliation from their name. Nonetheless, they’re hiring, still local, and defending their HQ city’s honor.

It’s Not a Meme Until Hitler or Betty White Get Involved

The fact that I needed a team of TSA screeners to explain the Cliff’s ad didn’t make this think that ad was too great at first. But of course, I am clearly not the target market.

A relatively unknown firm earned huge local brand cred by tapping into a common vibe, or meme. That still beats the dreck you might see from Accenture, or the US Mint.

Encourage the Museum of Bad Advertising
Do you see crazy advertising in airports or elsewhere?  I love getting examples from friends, and I’ll gladly post your finds.  If you have to travel and find yourself killing time at the airport, try your hand at advertising curation.  It’s a quirky local canvass, and sometimes you’ll find breakthrough creative in the most unexpected places.

Even though marketers may seem to ruin it today, I was reminded that Mother’s Day in the US actually grew out of the peace movement. It was first proposed by Julia Ward Howe back in 1870 in a  Mother’s Day Proclamation that called for a meeting of all women:

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

This was the same Julia Ward Howe who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and was wife to Samuel Gridley Howe, the first director of Perkins School for the Blind, where Helen Keller would later study. Three of Howe’s children would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for their collective authorship of their mother’s biography in 1916. Who’d think her interests would overlap with Facebook in 2011?

Facebook Friends for Peace
An infographic from Friends Without Borders, posted this week, shows a strong increase in friendships across conflicted borders, such as between Israel and Palestine.

Elite Infrastructure
As some on the net bemoan that “the best minds of our generation are thinking about how to make people click on Facebook ads,” I’d invite you to question the premise. Perhaps the best minds are using ideas to change the world, and those of us who specialize in monetizing the social medium are just their infrastructure.

In Julia Ward Howe’s day, the “best minds” were likely in finance or trade. But on this Mother’s Day, consider that the Howes, who inspired abolitionists, taught those who would teach the blind across the world, and raised devoted, Pulitzer-winning children, seem like the smart ones. And the MBAs of their day were just necessary, talented, elite infrastructure.

Happy Mother’s Day!

When you were a kid, did you want to be in advertising?

These kids already get the business at a deep level, and they want to win a Jersey Award.

When Good Brands Behave Unethically
Back in February, I pointed out Kellogg’s false health claims on Rice Krispies and Froot Loops.  Specifically, during the worst flu scare in 50 years, Kellogg’s claimed Rice Krispies boosted immunity. They also claimed that Froot Loops were a good source of fiber.

This was something I saw in the grocery store, and as a marketer and parent, I found the ad so offensively false that it deserved any ridicule I could muster. So, a cell-phone photo later, I filed my blog post. Happily, both my readers commented and joined in. Thanks for that!

Clinically Shown to be 20% Better Than Nothing
Coverage on NPR’s Marketplace focused on additional bad advertising by Kellogg’s:  a claim that Frosted Mini-Wheats are clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by 20 percent. The study compared kids who ate Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats to a control group who got a breakfast of only water.  Perhaps a fairer claim would be have been 20% better than nothing.

This is an intellectual sucker punch. And it is a lie to parents by a brand that claims to care about nutrition and families. It is also a sign that something’s gone wrong in Kellogg’s marketing machine.

Marketers and Parents Should Call This What it Is
Advertising law may have allowed this, but it doesn’t make it true or ethical. And the product managers and attorneys at Kellogg’s should have known and acted better, both as brand stewards and as thoughtful citizens.

The Federal Trade Commission investigated Kellogg’s, and gained their agreement to stop such claims, but without requiring the company to admit the claims were false.

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies and Fruit Loops Aspire to Pharma Aisle

Fruit or Froot?
Does Rice Krispies really help my child’s immunity more than, say, fresh fruit?  And though Froot Loops now provides fiber, isn’t it still loaded with crap that most adults wouldn’t intentionally feed to their kids?  What’s a better source of fiber: “Fruit” or “Froot”? Go ahead, pick any froot.

Its good that the FTC called them out, but Kellogg’s response has been focused on regulators, not on setting things right with families or promising to do better.

The brand should take responsibility for its misstep and use this experience as an opportunity to improve. And parents and marketers should expect nothing less.  Without an apology, the brand seems to be dodging, rather than leveling with, its audience.

If you’re a personal injury lawyer in New York City, how do you cut through the clutter of competition?

How about slightly self-conscious humor? Trolman Glaser & Lichtman did. It sounds like they’d do it again, too.

Apparently, funny can get a personal injury law firm coverage in the New York Times.

And funny can also help pay the bills. According to its advertising agency, the Levinson Trachtenberg Group, the commercials and the buzz around them have increased client leads by 25 percent.

I’m not sure if it’s the best lawyer advertising call-to-action copy I’ve ever seen, but it’s the funniest:

If you’ve been injured, call us.…but keep in mind, you need to really be injured.

Once, being present in the media channel was enough. I appreciate that this firm is trying to reach beyond the typical personal injury branding of “Zach the Hammer.”

While not brilliant, it’s unique – and in a cluttered marketplace, that counts for a lot.