If anybody is paying the slightest bit of attention to the Olympics, you know what the Speedo LZR Racer suit is. And there is a story in Ad Age online today about how Speedo plans to leverage the success of swimmers in their suit for a marketing and publicity campaign.It seems to me that the reason this campaign will be successful is not because of the brilliance of the agency or pr firm, but because of the excellence of the product. Marketing success is probably more backward integrated that you think.
Our job as creative thinkers is to have that sort of big picture vision if we're going to be of any real value to our clients. If you're a client, don't discount what your agency can bring to the party before anybody starts dreaming up any "ads".
I once had a client more or less tell me to shut the f*** up about my thoughts on the product content, saying, in essence: "Our job is to put it together. Your job is to sell it, whatever it is." Maybe my thoughts were idiotic, but I've always believed that the more ideas you have, the more ideas you have. So why shut anybody down? Besides, that particular entity failed because nobody had any interest in the content of the product that was put out. Even after us, they had a decent ad campaign. So advertising wasn't the problem. It was the product.
Marketing success can be summed up in four words: "Do good. Tell people."
You need to have both parts in there for it to work.
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1 comment:
David Ogilvy was very poignant on saying you can sell anything. I've read and read a million plus books on marketing and advertising and you know I think everyone in a decent agency, usually the smaller ones, do their best work, when they are honestly behind their product. It makes the hard times with the tempermental client easier, and makes us remember although it's about the money, it's about providing a service. For us, liking their product, makes us better marketers.
I want our clients to like what we sell: creative and service...shouldn't they expect me to like what they sell?.....
...some could care less...
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