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It didn’t occur to me until I read a recent blog about Army advertising that the Army shouldn’t really be advertising. Who else advertises for a chance to get yourself killed, and if not, you’ll get some money and good health benefits later? 

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not bashing the Army or any of the armed forces and I’m very thankful for all the women and men who are out there fighting for us and those that have been wronged. This post isn’t about whether the Army is right, I just want to talk about the Army’s advertising. 

In 2006 the Army recruited the McCann Worldgroup to come up with a new slogan, which is now “Army Strong.” You know how much this is costing the Army? $1 billion for five years. That’s right, the Army spent a billion dollars to use that slogan for five years. I hope that McCann is also doing all the advertising, which I would assume, but I know it’s dangerous to assume anything. Military.com just says that McCann signed a five-year contract with the Army, with $200 million guaranteed each year for the first two years. 

The Army did away with its previous slogan “An Army of One,” which it only used for six years. They decided to get a new slogan in 2006 because in 2005 they missed their recruiting numbers by the widest margin in more than 20 years. 

I guess it worked because in 2006, recruitment of 80,000 new soldiers was met. The “Be All You Can Be” slogan was used for almost 20 years, so the “An Army of One” slogan was just in infant stages before it was pulled. According to Military.com, the slogan “Army Strong” was “developed in numerous tests with focus groups and interviews with soldiers, is meant to convey the idea that if you join the Army you will gain physical and emotional strength, as well as strength of character and purpose.” 

The new slogan, along with an enlistment bonus topping out at $40,000 rather than $20,000 also helped the Army meet recruitment goals. Oh, and not to mention that they’ve lowered the bar on their standards. Many people that usually wouldn’t have made the cut are over in Iraq, fighting for us. People that don’t know how to shoot a gun straight, among other things. Scary, huh? Of course, I’m not going to talk too long about this, because I don’t see my butt getting up and going to Iraq, but it’s just sad that we are even in this situation. 

Anyway, back to my point. Most people know that the Army isn’t as glamorous as the ads make it out to be, yet these kids at 18 years old, seem to think it could be. They’re hoping it could be and they’re hoping for a change, and they see the possibility of that change that generally isn’t real in these commercials and ads. To me, the Army ads seem like any other kind of company, touting its benefits and hiding its negatives. Being truthful is at the top of the “required” list for a good ad. I wish the Army ads would just let people know what they are in for from the beginning.

PepsiCo’s SoBe Life Water commercials featuring lizards and supermodel Naomi Campbell dancing to the Michael Jackson hit “Thriller” begs the question: why?

What has dancing lizards have to do with SoBe Life Water? Well, not much. Supposedly these new flavors of water are “Thrillicious,” prompting the SoBe people to reenact the killer “Thriller” music video. The 25th anniversary of the album “Thriller” occurred this year, so SoBe got a piece of that action by using the famous song. According to a press release by Dave DeCecco of PepsiCo, “As evidenced by results of several Super Bowl ad polls, SoBe Life Water made a huge connection with consumers. Three of the top Super Bowl surveys ranked the SoBe Life Water Thrillicious spot as among the best commercial moments. Leading the way, SoBe was tied for the 10th most liked spot in the USA Today Ad Meter consumer poll — the highest ranking of any non-carbonated beverage advertising during the game. The Thrillicious spot also hit the top 10 in TiVo’s list which measured second-by-second audience data. On the web, AOL’s Super Bowl survey has the SoBe Life Water spot in its top 5 picks by consumers.”

Really? I understand SoBe’s brand identifier is the lizard, but why would dancing lizards make me thirsty? This commercial drew disdain from CampaignCritics.com, which stated: Rather than endorsing the product with a dancing lizard … how about advertising a celebrity athlete who chooses refreshing Life Water (ever hear of Gatorade?) over other beverages? The demonstration of functionality instead of hype resonates more with consumers, who are making smarter health-conscious decisions and aren’t falling for the hype anymore.”

Of course, some might argue that SoBe is using a campaign made up of time-proven techniques:

- It has a famous person: men love Naomi Campbell, and women want to look like her.
- It has animals: people love animals that don’t act like animals. I’d rather see animals of the fuzzy and cute variety rather than a reptile, but that’s just me. Either way, people like to see dancing animals.
- It has a memorable, make that iconic, song: duh!
- It has dancing: apparently, we love dancing, since Dancing with the Stars is still airing. Although I’m not sure how…

SoBe’s trying to catch up to Vitamin Water, which is now owned by Coke, and we all know those two have to compete every chance they get! But, hey, whether you love the commercial or hate it, it did create buzz. People know what the commercial is for, and they remember seeing it. And that’s what creating a good ad is all about, right?

“Eyealike VisualAd is the world’s first image and video-based contextual advertising platform for social networks and rich media websites. With a unique ability to recognize facial features, skin color, hair, gender and age as well as objects like logos or product images, Eyealike VisualAd can serve highly targeted ads based on the context of online images and videos. The proprietary approach is similar to Google’s AdWords model, but based solely on an automated method that quickly indexes, filters and classifies images and videos rather than relying on keywords to place targeted ads alongside rich media.”

I got the first paragraph straight from Eyealike’s Web site because I didn’t think I could explain VisualAd any clearer.

Eyealike’s VisualAd platform can recognize people with 90 percent accuracy – quite impressive for a computer. In a press release from October 13, the day that VisualAd was unveiled to the world, Sue Feldman, IDC’s Vice President for Search and Digital Marketplace Technologies, said, “Online ad revenue drives the digital economy, and no one has a lock on that revenue stream today. Online advertising – particularly contextual advertising – continues to soar. IDC believes that large publishers and ad networks can seize a significant share of this revenue.

Eyealike’s ability to automatically tag and classify images based on the image, not the keywords, should result in matching more ads to images, and also improve the match based on the actual image. This is an approach that could help increase the ad revenue for websites with visual assets.”

Although VisualAd is similar to Google AdWords, the amount of money that can be made is much higher. Many large social networking sites have low CPM rates, from 8 cents to 12 cents per thousand views. VisualAd’s goal is to make those same sites now worth $2 to $20 and up by increasing CPMs.

The VisualAd technology not only recognizes faces, but logos as well. If you have a pic of yourself with a Nike shirt on with the swoosh logo, VisualAd knows that you’re more likely to respond to a Nike ad displayed on your page.

When it comes to faces, the technology can spy an infant in your arms or the same infant in a multitude of pictures on your profile and assume that you need a Gerber item or a Huggies item. A financial services firm can conclude you might be interested in setting up a 529 college savings account for your little bundle of joy. Thus, seeing all of this info in a picture on a social networking site allows for more targeted ads.

This is definitely innovative – no one can argue that – but is it scary, a little too Big Brother-like?

When it comes to advertising to a mass audience, which medium is better: TV or Internet? It seems like the camps are divided. A younger group would vote for the Internet and typically older groups vote for TV.

Instead of trying to make that tough decision, especially in a slow economy where you don’t have as many advertising dollars as you’d like online video is a happy-medium that many advertisers are starting to use.

People would rather be on the Internet to communicate one-on-one with others. They would rather see commercials and mass messages from their TVs though. TV is the best medium when you want to communicate to people using different senses. With Internet, you generally can only communicate with sight, not sound. Online video is changing that.

TV Commercials Aren’t the Be All and End All of Advertising

The problem with TV commercials is that you don’t know when the people you are targeting are ready to buy and that’s one of the largest factors that determine whether an ad works. The message has to be relevant to the consumer and the consumer has to be ready to buy. Most consumers don’t need big purchases like cars and TVs every week. TV commercials featuring these products can be argued that they are wasting some of their money, which is true. These advertisers are only reaching a small number of people who are ready to buy. That’s where online video comes in.

Online Video is King?

Will online video be the medium that keeps mass advertisers happy? Will that be the venue that makes the most of advertising dollars? It’s possible.

Online video gives the advertiser the power to target more effectively. Let’s say a user clicks on two car banner ads on a Web site. The probability of that person needing a new car is pretty good. The probability is much better than the person sitting at home, not choosing which commercials to see next, unlike the Internet user. Once the Internet user clicks on a banner ad for a new car, that person is then shown an online video commercial featuring the car that was on the banner ad. That person has been targeted much more effectively than someone watching TV. This person chose to watch that ad. That means this person is ready to buy.

Online video eliminates the question of whether a consumer is ready to buy. Based on what the person clicked on and watched, you can then show the consumer another video with content based off of the first video’s content.

Online Video is Coming

Fox International Channels bought utarget.Fox, the largest online video network in Europe, in early 2008 to capitalize on this new trend. And hello! YouTube is a big hit, to put it mildly. Online video seems to be the answer to mass advertising’s question of when the consumer is ready to buy. Now all that’s left is for mass advertisers to make online videos that are compelling.

No one buys anything from a person or business he doesn’t trust. You wouldn’t buy a car from a dealer you thought was ripping you off, or from a salesperson who you thought wasn’t being honest with you, right?

Most people have always gone into a skeptical mindset when they make big-ticket items, like televisions and cars, but that skepticism is leaking into smaller purchases too. With all of the hyped-up advertising, with promises that can’t be delivered, you can’t really blame consumers for being cautious.

It’s precisely this reason that you need to use marketing techniques that put customers’ minds at ease. Here are a few ways to get trust from your customers, which is a first step to making any sale:

Testimonials
People believe what other customers have to say about you and your product more than they’ll believe what you have to say.

Using testimonials in your catalogs, brochures and other marketing materials is what will convince people that your product is the best, that it works and that it won’t break.

Get testimonials by asking customers what they liked about your product or service and how it helped them. Ask if you helped them solve a problem – these kinds of benefit testimonials work especially well. Write down their comments, and get their written permission to use them. It helps if you offer a discount or something valuable in exchange for their time. But, be sure you get the testimonial before you offer the discount or you might be called out for bribing your customers!

Write articles to establish yourself as an expert
Writing free articles for your local newspaper or magazine can be a great source of getting trust from the community. Write about what you know – your industry or your type of product – but don’t only talk about you and your product. In fact, it’s best if you don’t mention your affiliation at all in the article. Your name, occupation and/or business name will most likely be in the credit line. You might also get a headshot to accompany the article. People want to buy from those they think are knowledgeable – knowledge equals trust.

Ask for referrals
Give out your business cards to your customers and ask if they know anyone who might need your service. You can also ask your friends and family to ask their friends and family for referrals. Also, try some networking events like social industry dinners – they can be great places to strike up a conversation and find someone that might need your product, or knows someone that might need your product.

Personalize your direct mail
Use people’s names on letters and postcards – people will be more apt to read something that is addressed to them by name rather than to “Dear customer.” You trust someone that you know personally, and using names are an easy way to evoke trust. Also, try to get to know your target market – whether they have kids, pets, etc. and use that info in your direct mail pieces. “Now that your kids are about to go back to school …”. Make people think your direct mail is talking directly to them.

Lastly, once you establish a contact, keep following up periodically. Once a month or once every other month is good – enough for them to remember you, but not enough to annoy them. Once you earn consumers’ trust, the rest of the sales process is much easier!

When people first start a new job or start a new business, when do they feel like they have officially “arrived”? Usually, it’s when they get their business cards! Getting your nice new business cards is an exciting time – for some reason seeing your name on a small piece of cardstock with your title and contact info is enthralling.

If you’re just starting up a new business or you’ve changed jobs and need to get new business cards printed, your basic options for where to get these cards is a traditional brick-and-mortar printing company, or an online business card printing company.

For this post, I’ll go with the online company for the following reasons:

Online companies are generally cheaper. They’ll save you money, plain and simple. They generally have less overhead costs and may not need as many employees. The savings the company gets by employing only a few people to multitask are forked over to you.

You have a plethora of options. You generally have many more designs and templates to choose from when you shop online.

You’ll get your cards faster. Online companies can start printing orders right away, so there isn’t as much backlog. A small backlog means you get your order quicker. Also, many processes are automated, so the process can get started overnight, without anyone having to run the equipment.

It’s convenient. You can shop and order at any time of day. You can shop in the comfort of your pajamas if you want to! Plus, with the rising gas prices you won’t have to drive to pick up your cards or to check out the proof – everything can be emailed or mailed directly to you.

Let’s face it. It’s not your full color brochures or flyers that can get you to increase your sales. It’s actually the kind of service you provide that turns a potential client to a definite buyer.

Even with outstanding and excellent work in your ads, it doesn’t take a genius to know that if you don’t combine it with great customer service, you’ll surely lose even that iota of success you imagined. Without good customer service to back up what you promised, no amount of color, design and copy would save you from failure.

Hence, it is a must that your staff and employees can deliver what you have promised. If they can sales-talk their way with their actions, then the better for your business. Who wouldn’t be enticed with someone who can tell you everything you need to know about the things that they’ve advertised? Not only do you come out as experts in your field, you also build credibility and trust among your prospects, which can fast track their decision to buy from you.

And who doesn’t love salespersons who serve you with a smile and friendly attitude every time you walk in their doors? Whether we like it or not, the attitude of our staff reflects the way we deal with our clients.

So remember: it’s not your ads that provide success. It’s the people in your organization and great customer service that brings in the best results.

I think that what it takes for your business brochures and other marketing collaterals to become effective movers for your business is a strong headline. It all boils down to the headline that you provide your marketing brochures that can make or break your target clientʼs impression of you.

For one thing, a headline should be the very first thing that your readers should see. Look at any newspaper and youʼll notice that the headline is usually in big bold letters, with a different color than the rest of the text. This is precisely because you want to make sure that your headline gets the attention. Not only that. But your headline is what draws your clients in to your ad. And if you really have a great headline, getting them to read more of what you have to say is easier.

Second, your headline should be able to provide the punch that your brochure needs. The oomph that you want to give your collateral is basically found in your headline. So do not save the best part for last. Rather, make it your very first offer. Compel your readers to look at what you can do and virtually shout your benefits to your target audience.

Lastly, make it short and simple. Just a few words will do, and yet, it should be able to tell the whole story. If you canʼt make it happen in just 10 words, then try a sub-headline to further describe your sales message.