Phil Bernstein is… Balloon Boy!

This has nothing whatsoever to do with advertising or marketing. But when you’re married to someone who can design a costume like this, you just have to tell the world about it. Thank you, PDXKnitterati.

An Awkward Moment in Online Advertising

Full disclosure to start: KXL Radio is a competitor of mine in Portland, Oregon. They’re good people, but when the Internet Gods offer me this kind of opportunity, I’m not about to pass it up.

This appeared on KXL’s web site on Monday afternoon. What makes it especially interesting is that Tina Larson (Monarch Medical Weight Loss Center, at the top of this screen shot) is married to KXL talk show host Lars Larson (Oregon Weight Loss Surgery, at the bottom).

Hat tip to Adam Orth of 1190 KEX, who brought it to my attention.

Medical Facility Ad Fails the “So What” Test

I’m one of the dwindling few who still reads a newspaper every morning.  The generation behind me may not know how to operate a newspaper, but for me it’s as much a part of breakfast as the cup of coffee.

Since I toil in the persuasion industry, the advertising is as important to me as the articles. So when I opened the paper on a recent Sunday, it hurt to see this:

West Hills Health and Rehabilitation spent a significant sum of money to let Portland know that it is… “deficiency-free.” For the casual reader, this raises several questions. For instance:

• Shouldn’t “deficiency-free” be a minimum standard for this sort of operation?
• Are we, perhaps, setting the bragging bar a little low?

Whenever you make a claim in your marketing copy, you need to imagine your prospect sitting across from you, arms folded, asking,

“So What?”

It’s possible, I suppose, that the state inspection is extremely challenging, and that “deficiency-free” is actually a tough standard to meet. Maybe the designation represents a real benefit to patients. Perhaps West Hills has some important qualities that make it an attractive choice for those in need of rehabilitation services.

If so, that information doesn’t appear anywhere in the ad. And there’s nothing in the copy that gives the consumer any reason to look into the subject any further.

It’s your job to make sure that your message is one that your target will care about — your prospect doesn’t have the time or the attention span to figure it out for himself.

This copy fails the “So What” test. How about yours?

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Phil Bernstein’s Act Goes Nationwide

After nearly fifteen years as Portland’s Finest Media Rep, I’ll be moving to a new opportunity soon:

Beginning in January, I’ll be a Senior Consultant with the firm of Jim Doyle & Associates. In this role, I’ll be traveling throughout the country, helping TV reps to sell more effectively by developing better advertising campaigns for their clients.

There’s an expression I heard often during my recent visit to Vietnam: “Same-same, but different”. I’ll be using many of the skills that I’ve developed over the years — thorough needs analysis, positioning, copywriting, and sales — in a different way.

Instead of meeting with auto dealers, aesthetic-medicine practices, and funeral homes in Portland, I’ll be meeting with auto dealers, aesthetic-medicine practices, and funeral homes all over the country. It’ll be TV instead of radio. And rather than working alone, every call and proposal I make will be in conjunction with a television account executive.

And “Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog” will become “America’s Finest Advertising Blog.” Because my ego hasn’t gotten any smaller lately.

I’ll be with Clear Channel through the end of November, 2009 — so if you’re in Portland and want my help on a radio campaign before I go, there’s still time. Call me at 503-323-6553, or email me here.

Does Your Name Tell Your Story?

There are probably lots of ice cream trucks cruising through Manhattan on any given summer afternoon.

But there’s only one Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. As a marketing tool, the name has three important things going for it:

• It is so far from the expected that it forces  people (i.e. potential customers) to pay attention.
• It establishes a genuine point of differentiation. That differentiation doesn’t have to be the product itself to be significant, which is likely similar to ice cream you can buy elsewhere.
• It implicitly accepts the risk that some people will be offended. Some people will refuse to buy ice cream from this truck because of the name — owner Doug Quint is willing to sacrifice that business in return for a (presumably larger and more loyal) customer base that will seek him out. (For more on this concept, go here)

Thank you to Zach Newman for tipping me off to the NPR story on this.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Portland Job and Education Fair at PGE Park

The next Clear Channel Portland Career and Education Fair is Monday, August 17 at PGE Park. We’re doing it in conjunction with a Portland Beavers baseball game.

The Job Fair starts at 11am, and the first pitch is 1:05pm. The first 500 people through the gates with a resume can attend the Job Fair and the game free. After the first 500, anyone with a resume will receive a $15 infield ticket for only $5.

Details, including an updated list of schools and employers, are at this link.

As of this writing, here’s a list of exhibiting schools and employers:

• • Albertina Kerr Centers
  • Apollo College
  • Bonneville Power Administration
  • Clear Channel Radio
  • Concordia University
  • Evans Glass
  • First Investors Corporation
  • Multnomah University
  • New England Financial
  • Oregon Army National Guard
  • Penguin Windows
  • Warner Pacific College
  • Washington State Vancouver

If you’re a recruiter looking for good employees, or if you represent a school looking for studients, we still have room for exhibitors — if you’re interested, give me a call at 503-323-6553, or email me here.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Auto Repair Advertising Case Study

Barbara Bell owns Bell’s Velvet Hammer, an auto collision repair business in Vancouver, Washington. For years, Bell’s Velvet Hammer has delivered high-quality repair and restoration work to Portland/Vancouver area drivers. The shop has also been an integral part of the local community.

When Barbara Bell wanted to use the power of an endorsement to tell the Bell’s Velvet Hammer story, she chose Paul Linnman of 1190 KEX Radio.

In the video below, she discusses how she chose Paul, the relationship they’ve built, and the results the campaign has delivered.

If your car’s been in an accident in the Portland/Vancouver area and you need it fixed right the first time, Bell’s Velvet Hammer is the place to go. My thanks to Barbara Bell for allowing me to tell her story.

 

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Never Anger a Customer Who Can Sing

I once heard Marketing Consultant Paul Weyland remark at a seminar that if you have an unhappy customer, “You need to either make him happy, or kill him and bury him in the backyard.”

United Airlines did neither with this passenger.

I don’t have any way to evaluate the particulars of this story. But apparently Dave Carroll of the band Sons of Maxwell flew United  a while back, and something bad happened to his $3,500 guitar.

Carroll responded by making the video below. He posted it on July 6; in less than three days, it’s been viewed more than 255,000 times, and has generated nearly 3,000 comments — very few of which are sympathetic to the airline.

Two more videos are in the works. Enjoy this one, and ponder: how much will United Airlines’ inability or unwillingness to make one passenger happy cost them in damaged reputation and lost business?

 

UPDATE 7/28/09: According to Business Week, the video has now been viewed more than 3.5 million times. United Airlines has made a $3,000 donation to charity at Carroll’s request, and says it will “do a better job” deciding when to bend rules on passenger compensation for damage.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Branding Still Has Value

Branding’s gotten a bad rap lately. In an economy that has made marketing money increasingly difficult to come by, it’s not unreasonable to want a measurable return from every single dollar invested.

Because branding campaigns generally don’t have a measurable response mechanism — or even an offer to respond to — it’s easy to conclude that they don’t have any effect.

Sometimes they don’t.

And sometimes, a paragraph like this one jumps out of a Wall Street Journal article:

On a recent afternoon, at a supermarket in Chicago, Laura Gilligan confronted a salad-dressing aisle filled with dozens of varieties spread across two dozen brands. After staring for nearly a minute, Ms. Gilligan, a computer-company manager, chose Kraft Foods Inc.’s cucumber-tinged light ranch. “There’s too many choices,” she said. “I just went with Kraft because I know Kraft.”

What caused her to choose that dressing? It wasn’t a coupon, or a direct-mail pitch, or an email, or a pay-per-click ad. Kraft will never be able to figure out what “worked”.

And yet, something did. Faced with “dozens of varieties spread across two dozen brands”, shoppers often just grab something familiar and throw it into the cart.

What “worked” was the years, and dollars, that Kraft invested in building the Kraft brand.

This doesn’t mean that the direct-response advocates are wrong. But they aren’t completely right. Even in today’s economy, there’s real, tangible value in good branding.

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

What’s a Commercial Supposed to Do?

There’s quite a hoo-ha in progress over this year’s Radio Mercury Awards — the judges decided not to award prizes in several categories, including station-produced spots. Much of the discussion centers around the criteria, and what constitutes a good commercial.

Among the most compelling takes is that of Scott McKelvey,  Director of Creative Services for TargetSpot. McKelvey’s thoughts recently appeared in Tom Taylor’s Radio-Info Newsletter. I’d link directly to it, but the only place I can find the quote is in my email box:

I submitted a commercial for an award for the first time about 10 years ago while working for a New Jersey station. The New Jersey Broadcasters Association, to their credit, required a letter from the advertiser that said the entry was effective. The advertiser sent the following: ‘Thank you for entering our commercial for an award. Even though it didn’t work, we thought it was really funny and creative, and we appreciate the time and effort you put into it.’ He may as well have said, ‘Thanks for wasting my money, jerk.’ This was my wake-up call. Unlike established national brands that spend millions to build market share and top-of-mind awareness, local advertisers need to see ROI. Does this mean commercials for local advertisers can’t be creative or funny? Absolutely not. But it certainly is not a requirement and should never be the goal. The goal should be to sell the product, whether that leads to an award or not…

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Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.