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MARKETING: How do you catch that unique customer?
By David L. Rawle
It’s increasingly challenging for advertisers to reach prospective customers. Audiences are more fragmented than ever, and media costs keep going up. Even if you can afford to buy a reasonable schedule of television spots, you run the risk of being TiVo’d. So, how do you get your message through? How do you catch a unique customer?
You resort to clever means.
In broadcast, clever media buyers and planners include news programming and special events in their television buys to avoid getting TiVo’d.
Viewers are more likely to watch news or special programs like the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards in real-time, rather than TiVo-ing them for later commercial-free viewing.
On the print side, savvy advertisers are including entertainment in their ads. For example, the April issue of FHM magazine includes an eight-page advertorial for Dockers featuring the cast of The Apprentice. The advertorial was an exclusive interview with all 18 contestants dressed head-to-toe in Dockers’ clothing.
In addition to “traditional” media buys, marketers are using other avenues to cut through the clutter and get noticed. There is a tremendous amount of creative communication around what we call “lifestyle touch points;” reaching people as they live their daily lives, on their terms. Marketing messages now appear on pizza boxes, shopping carts, ticket stubs and many other contexts that are part of our lives, but not necessarily expected mediums for advertising.
Like subway cars.
I boarded a subway in New York a few weeks ago, and the entire car had been converted to an advertisement for the HBO series “Deadwood.” Even the color of the seats had been changed to be “in campaign.”
We all know that the average person gets hit with more than 3,000 selling messages every day. Well, that subway car and the show it was promoting represented the one message I remembered that day.
Later I learned that HBO paid around $100,000 to cover the interiors of three subway cars. Lifestyle touch point marketing doesn’t take the place of more traditional media, but it sure can complement it in compelling and memorable ways.
And speaking of memorable and compelling, viral marketing campaigns are spreading across the Web like, well…like a virus.
Get a consumer to pass along a marketing message to a friend, and you’ve got a great chance to win that friend as a customer.
Clever viral messages are communicated regularly via the Web, e-mail, and cell phone text messages. And like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.
Viral marketing is especially powerful with women. Women are three times more likely than men to tell a friend about a positive shopping experience. And women absolutely dominate consumer spending in this country. So if you find a way to get women communicating about your product or service, you’ve got a sure winner.
Check out BrawnyMan.com, the Web site of Brawny paper towels. Click on “Innocent Escapes” and you’ll have the opportunity to watch short films with titles like “Your Hair, It’s Perfect,” “That Thing You’re Going Through,” and “Feeling Lonely.” All of them star the Brawny Man, who speaks directly to the female viewer. They’re wryly funny, and more importantly, they all offer an opportunity to “Send to a Friend.”
Smart ads, creative media planning and buying, lifestyle touch point marketing and viral marketing are all vital components of successful communications today.
Without unique approaches to your unique customers, you will be tuned out, turned off and TiVo’d.
David L. Rawle is chairman of Charleston-based Rawle Murdy Associates Inc., a marketing, advertising and public relations firm. He can be reached at drawle@rawlemurdy.com.
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