When Ads Go Bad

Don't make your customers hate you.

Just like many professionals, we like reading about our profession. We read the advertising trade publications to get the buzz of what’s going on inside our industry. And we read the popular press to see how we’re viewed from the outside.

Unfortunately, that’s not always exactly uplifting. In fact, very often such stories are about some hair-raising errors in judgment, and usually end with a variant of this sentence: “The ad was pulled from circulation, and the company apologized to all who were offended.”

When an ad goes bad there’s usually plenty of blame to go around. The client gave the creative team some rough parameters (or maybe even specific parameters), the creatives spit-balled some ideas, one was chosen and fleshed out, and the client signed off on it. Sometime thereafter an ad was unleashed upon the world.

That creative team should very much fall on its sword, though, if the ad was badly targeted, poorly communicated, or was somehow actually offensive. Even if it completely followed the client’s directives, it’s the agency’s job to make sure it does what it’s supposed to: drive awareness, position against competitive offerings, pre-qualify potential new customers and precondition targets for the selling process. It’s the agency’s job to foresee any backlash, any counterproductive scenario, and when necessary to put the brakes on. 

So when a bad ad is released, it’s the agency’s fault. Period.

This is always the case, even when the ad’s relative “badness” is a matter of conjecture. Take this example from earlier this summer. McDonald’s in Singapore ran a print ad for McNuggets, declaring that “Today’s PSI (Peak Sauce Index) is deliciously high.” The problem? In Singapore, as well as throughout English-speaking East Asia, PSI is universally recognized as the Pollutant Standards Index. And the week the ad ran, Singapore’s PSI was at a record high, leading to widespread illness and misery.

The ad was pulled, and McDonald’s apologized to all who were offended.

There were no moral shocks here, no stereotyping or offensive language. Just a bit of cultural thoughtlessness. That was enough, though, to make the ad completely counterproductive.

An advertisement sent out unto the world must follow the basic tenet of marketing: Know thy customers. Know what appeals to them, and just as importantly, know what turns them off. If there’s the slimmest chance an ad might bruise their sensibilities, or cause them to think unpleasant thoughts, then that ad should never see the light of day.

Of course you know your customers. But you should be able to rely on your agency to make sure your advertising is right for those customers. The agency should value your results far more than their own creative prowess. They might create stunning ads, but if those ads create backlash, they’re hurting you — not helping you.

The C4

1. When we see our industry in the popular press, it’s a little like seeing a train wreck. We know it’s gonna be bad, but we can’t seem to look away. When the popular press writes about advertising, nine out of ten times they’re writing about advertising gone awry.
2. Advertising goes awry because someone, somewhere in the process, didn’t give due respect to the audience’s sensibilities.
3. When that happens, it’s the agency’s fault. Always.
4. Know your customers. And make sure your agency knows them, too. A good agency never stops learning about their clients’ customers, and they craft marketing material that appeals directly to those folks. They know the cultural, political, and sociological hot-buttons to avoid. They’re creatively gifted, to be sure, but they know that creativity counts for less than zero if their clients end up publicly apologizing for their work.

“It's Not Us With The Problem”

“It's you.”

It’s always a bit suspect when pros discourage amateurs from trying their hand. Doesn’t matter what their true motive is, it always appears as if they’re trying to seal off the sandbox they think of as their own.

So we know that’s the risk we take when we try to warn off DIY marketers. We know we look like we have a petulance problem.

But hand on heart, to the amateur advertisers we say this: It’s not us with the problem, it’s you.

Okay, well, perhaps “potential problem” might be more generous. Every business owner who eschews professional marketing help in favor of shot-in-the-dark efforts might potentially hit the bulls-eye every time.

Conversely, there’s that potential for alienating customers. For opening up a can of I-wish-I-hadn’t-done-that.

Marketing designers, account specialists, writers, and the rest of our gang get into this field because we’re good at it — and we get results. Our clients are good at what they do, too, and have the sense to let everyone stick to the jobs they’re best at. We wouldn’t try to run their shops, and we’d heartily object if they tried to run ours.

Marketing looks easy from the outside. That’s all. Looks easy to slap some words with images, to shoot 30 seconds of video, so that’s exactly what these would-be pro-ams do.

You know this because you’ve seen examples. And you knew immediately what you were looking at. Some become internet-famous for their stumbling attempts, and for video that comes off looking like self-parody.

And in all fairness, some resonate with the buying public. Some reap profits. These are the ones that achieve real pro-am status: amateur players getting pro results.

We won’t say amateur efforts never pay off, but we’re sanguine in saying they never pay off with consistency. That’s the difference our pro standing brings — we’re consistently on target, consistently playing our best game. It’s born of experience and of a devoted fascination with the intersecting alchemy of design and persuasion. Of commerce and content.

We’re not hiding any rulebooks from the amateurs, because this is a business without rules. The closest thing we have to rules, we break constantly…or rather, we break them precisely the number of times necessary, precisely when and where it best serves our clients. Amateurs might bend the rules or adhere to them religiously, but you have to wonder how well considered that is, and whether they’re thinking about it as strategically as we would.

Print, broadcast, internet, and billboards — there’s plenty of marketing bandwidth hereabouts, plenty of room, in other words, for a pro-am circuit. In good conscience we don’t encourage it. In terms of pure self-interest, however, we really should.

All this amateur work, to be quite frank, is making us look great.

The C4

1. More business owners try their amateur hands at marketing and advertising, than any other best-left-to-the-pros services. We can’t prove this empirically but it’s anecdotally solid. Business owners who have no problem letting their general contractors build their properties or their lawyers file their briefs, are willing to take a swing at homegrown signage, advertising, or integrated marketing.
   
2. There’s no reason some of them can’t be marketing savants. No reason some of them can’t be plain lucky. Pro-am advertising occasionally pays off.
   
3. Consistency is what we’re competing on. That and experience, confidence, and dedication.
   
4. Truth told, it’s win-win for us either way. Either the amateur yields to the pro, or he makes him shine in contrast. 

Do We Always Stand Still When We Do Nothing?

Activity does not always equal action.

What sort of challenges and tribulations were waiting for you when you showed up for work this morning? Weren’t there leftover problems from yesterday, all mixed up and merged with the new ones that cropped up overnight?

Managing that never-ending flow of issues might not be fun, but what choice do we have? Can you even imagine a world of smooth-flowing business and a lack of crises? It might sound utopian, but surely you must realize: it would be a little eerie.

Maybe even a little boring.

So this is the business model we’re stuck with: problems arise, we address them, then we await the next problem. C’est la vie. Viva la business.

But here’s one of the dangers of being the habitual problem-solvers we are: We come to think that action, any action, in the face of challenge is virtue. Action, we think, is always preferable to inaction.

It calls to mind the scene of the man searching for his keys under the light of a streetlamp. He’s fairly certain that’s not where he dropped them, but that’s where he’s searching, because that’s where the light is.

We’re in danger of acting just as irrationally when we jump to our feet, thump our chests and wave our arms in the air at the first sign of trouble. We’re driven to act, or more accurately, to react, because a leader must confront problems. That imperative can be so all-consuming that sometimes we forget to ask the most elementary leadership questions, like Is action even necessary at this point?

Action requires a plan. A plan requires fully understanding the problem and what a successful outcome looks like. Activity may make things worse. Action is better. Sometimes doing nothing helps the drama to subside so the real problem can be assessed. Never confuse activity with action.

It goes against the grain, but sometimes the best response is to do nothing. Or at least, wait until the sun comes up, and then search for the keys where they really might be.

The C4:

1. Business, like everything else, is governed by inertia. That’s great for growth and upward trajectory, but it instills a mindset. It leads us to think that activity is action, and that all our actions drive us forward.
   
   
2. No, sometimes it’s just busywork. Just the spinning of wheels. Sometimes we force ourselves to act, in response to events or sometimes in response to nothing at all, without stopping to wonder if inaction might have been the better course.
   
   
3. Your business may be in motion (of course it is) but that doesn’t mean you always have to be in motion, too. Your acumen, instincts, and best judgment might well advise you to take it slow, to be deliberative, to keep still and wait to see what happens. If that’s what your inner voice is telling you, then listen.
   
   
4. Yup, it comes down to a judgment call. You decide when to jump, and when to sit still. Sorry hoss, but that’s the gig you signed up for.