"If you can't outspend your competition, outsmart them."

Dana Johnston,
Founder: Branding Tools

Branding Tools is a full service advertising/pr agency,
serving entrepreneurs in large and small businesses.

Old Navy tv ad campaign misses the boat
by Dana Johnston 10.31.2010

How do you make an apparel chain store and its product lines look so cheap a customer's self esteem would suffer by shopping there?

Make make stiff, plastic, shiny faced mannequins the "stars" of your cheap looking commercials, write totally stupid dialogue that no one cares about, clutter the visuals in the commercial and make sure you don't focus on the quality and great style of the clothes.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Advertising Age's 2009 Agency of the Year, is the agency responsible for this fiasco. What were they thinking?

According to Seeking Alpha (10.07.10) although plenty of retailers reported higher sales in September 2010 compared to September 2009, Old Navy "reported a dismal -4% traffic decline" in September 2010 versus the year earlier. Now there's a shock.

Compare with the following. Where would YOU shop?

Unless you have Very Deep Pockets, or oblivious shareholders, business to business, technical or industrial advertising HAS to be creative.

Ads intended for technical or professional audiences are all too often less creative, less arresting and just plain lacking in strength of message or appeal when compared to consumer advertising.

This is a huge mistake.

Someone who works as an engineer during the day is still the same sophisticated, demanding consumer who sees Nike and Budweiser commercials at night.

With the average person bombarded by over 3000 selling messages a day, if your message doesn't stand out, you're wasting your time and money.

You can't bore someone into buying your product or service, or force them into paying attention to your product's differences and benefits.

At the very least industrial and technical marketing communications should be fresh, and interesting to experience. At its best the messages are riveting, possibly amusing or ironic, and they are memorable.

If that doesn't describe YOUR advertising, you will probably have to change your ad agency, change your corporate marketing management, change your budget...or all of the above.

Here's what we're talking about:

Arresting...appealing...ironic.

Ads created by Branding Tools's founder, Dana Johnston.

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