Month: October 2014

Boredom banished at DMA 2014

The Direct Marketing Association’s annual conference is happening this week in San Diego, and I’ll shortly get on a plane to join my colleagues. I will be on a panel Tuesday morning October 28, called “Creative Slamdown: How world-class creatives successfully sell strange, obscure, boring or even the most mundane products” put together by estimable designer and freelance creative director Carol Worthington Levy. Panelists Kathy Lemmon and Michelle LaPointe and I will vie to present the most interesting case history of a dry, difficult or tedious assignment which was executed in an interesting and hopefully effective (since this is a direct marketing conference, after all) way.

My centerpiece is a print ad for Rovi’s advertising in the guide (the ads the appear on your TV channel guide while you are looking for a show to watch) aimed at media buyers. Come see how we turned a straightforward and complex pitch/explanation into something memorable, or at least unexpected.

The session is at 11 am, just before the “Hall of Fame” luncheon which is traditionally a barn burner, so this is a great way to get all fired up and ready to go.

Southwest’s new ad campaign fixes what ain’t broke

I love Southwest Airlines, especially since I moved to a remote corner of the world where SWA is my only conduit to the large markets where I need to travel. I set my alarm to exactly 24 hours before flight time to check in for the best seat (EarlyBird check in? That’s for amateurs) and I happily puddle jump my way across the country, paying little mind to the multiple stops.

As a marketer, I have also loved Southwest for their advertising, which has remained amazingly consistent for many years. A few years back, I visited a local history museum in downtown Dallas. Therein were displayed photos of early Southwest uniforms that were amusingly outdated—and Southwest planes that looked identical to the one I’d just arrived on.

But now all that’s changed. Southwest has a new logo, a new color scheme, new advertising and new skins on the planes—because, as CEO Gary Kelly joked, any Dallas woman over 40 is ready for a facelift.

I am very troubled. The “old Southwest” used humor to deflect and deal with the serious nature of its business. Flying is a technical challenge, and it requires some personal adaption from passengers and crew, so we might as well have as much fun as we can. I remember fondly the “Sick of your job?” recruiting message on the vomit bags, as well as my favorite among the many scripted flight attendant jokes: “We have someone on board who’s just celebrated his 100th birthday by taking his first airplane flight. On the way out, we hope you’ll say congratulations to… our pilot.”

The new messages do away with all this Texas-style horseplay. They’re all about People. Extreme close ups of people’s faces, Southwest team members, with “hit me hard” lighting and a band of color that echoes (but slightly changes) the classic SWA palette across the bottom. On TV, we have these talking heads making inspiring but very generic statements, often followed by a jump cut to a “candid” in which they are celebrating their own awesomeness.

SWA’s old marketing was unique and appropriate to its image. The new campaign, with a logo and palette change, could be switched to a rental car or hotel firm or most any can-do corporation. Who approved this mess and what were they thinking? (Here’s a straight-up comparison: watch the launch video for the new campaign above, then this one from a year ago. Tell me which does a better job of bringing a lump to your throat.)

Well, here’s a clue. FareCompare.com notes that the new campaign says nothing about “bags fly free” which was a cornerstone of Southwest’s marketing and became ever more prominent as other airlines started to charge for bags. The new Southwest doesn’t have a clear identity so I guess they can do anything they want including charge for bags. Sigh. I miss that “sick off your job” vomit bag.

Persado is not going to put copywriters out of business. (Whew.)

Persado Try It Page
Persado “Try It” page; click the image to try it for yourself

A recent article on artificial intelligence in the Wall Street Journal had me trembling with fear. It described a technology called Persado which writes emails and landing pages for multivariate testing, stating each component of the message in an infinite number of ways which can be mixed-and-matched through AI to surface the result that gets the best response.

“A creative person is good but random,” according to Lawrence Whittle, head of sales at Persado. (Note that the reporter relies on the sales department, rather than talking to a technologist.) “We’ve taken the randomness out by building an ontology of language.” The article goes on to explain how Persado deconstructs each ad into five components including “emotion words”, product descriptors, the CTA, text position and images and then offers up every conceivable option. (Actually I guess it does not offer them up but simply inserts them into an automated test.)

I experimented with the “play with the technology” page today (after taking over a month to get up the courage to visit the site) and am greatly relieved. The static page is shown here; you can click through to the site and try it for yourself. The “free storage” subhead, button and the text in between will dance around as you mouse over them showing all the options Persado has come up with.

However, there’s one thing that’s obviously wrong with this example landing page that Persado doesn’t address, at least in the demo. Any cub copywriter can tell you the biggest problem with the ad, which is that the company’s logo is used as the headline and the true head, a benefit statement about free storage, becomes the subhead. The logo head is actually completely unnecessary since the logo is repeated in the screen shot of the smartphone. (To be fair, Persado lists “image” as one of the things it tests, but it’s not happening here. It would be embarrassing if they put up a demo which does not properly represent the product.)

What Persado is going to kill is not copywriters, but boredom. I’ll certainly experiment with headlines and different button text, and if there’s more than one way to express a key selling point I’ll give my client options. But I don’t have the patience, and you’re not going to pay me, for micro-experimenting with every word in the copy. Persado, be my guest.