August 22, 2005

Oh, great! Now we're getting SPAM stock tips in our comments! Does anyone really think they'll get some sucker to say, "Hey look honey, there's a great tip on an energy stock in the comments section of David Rawle's blog! Let's buy that one right away!!" Yeah, right.

On Target

But on to cheerier subjects...like the fact that Target bought out the entire August 22 issue of The New Yorker magazine. What a great way to make a statement. Every single ad in the magazine is a Target ad. They even got New Yorker cartoonists to do some of their ads.

What's so cool about it is that the impact goes so far beyond the presence in the magazine itself. Heck, we're talking about it, and so are people all over the country.

It's kind of like a Super Bowl ad. The ad is just one piece of the impact. The total impact includes all the contests to name the best ad, the reviews of the ads, the replay of several of them on news and infotainment programs, the endless online chat about the ads, and the online availability of the ads. It goes on and on. The ad placement itself isn't the end...it's the beginning.

And on the subject of Target...Claire wrote about the smart new prescription drug bottles that Target now has, and there was a nice little article about it in Fast Company. A 29-year-old graphic designer came up with the idea in 2001, when her grandmother accidentally took another family member's medicine. The new Target pill bottle has a flat surface, so you can read everything without twisting the bottle...and there's a color-coded ring so each family member can identify their own medicine.

This is just so smart. It's so customer-oriented, so responsive to today's needs. Making lives easier and safer!

More on Matisse

"I do not literally paint the table, but the emotion it produces in me," said Matisse. At the time, that was revolutionary. Cezanne made almost an identical comment about landscapes.

Great advertising focuses on the emotion the product or service produces in its customers. That's the toughest thing to capture...and the most important.

From An Expert

Fast Company also has a great exerpt from Phil Dusenberry's book Then We Set His Hair On Fire.

He talks about the power of insights. "Insights, not ideas. There's a difference. Ideas, valuable though they may be, are a dime a dozen in business...Insight is much rarer - and therefore more precious. In the advertising business, a good idea can inspire a great commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials."

One of Dusenberry's examples of a solid insight was when his agency (BBDO) pitched HBO. They met with the HBO executives who explained their business. The BBDO folks recognized that HBO wasn't a little better than the competition...or even a little different. HBO was unlike anything else. That was an insight. It led to the line "It's not TV, it's HBO" (originally presented as "There's no place like HBO")...and it has led to all of HBO's advertising AND it reinforces the mandate to HBO that they darn well better keep coming up with totally fresh stuff. And they're doing a pretty good job of it!

Dusenberry's guidelines for building a foolproof insight-creation machine:

"Be really tough on the work. Never let them hear you bitch and moan. Judge an insight on its merits. Don't compete with your people. Protect insights from their enemies (i.e., compromise). Let your clients own your best insights."

Our client Piggly Wiggly is the hometown grocery store. It has the friendly atmosphere that makes people feel good. That's an insight. And that insight has been carried out in everything that Piggly Wiggly does, whether it's inside the stores themselves or in the external marketing.

I was in the store near the Isle of Palms on Saturday. I overhear someone say - with truly genuine feeling - "Well, that's great. And how is the rest of the family?" I assumed it was two old friends talking. I rounded the corner, and discovered that the person speaking was a Piggly Wiggly employee, inquiring of an elderly female customer. Then, as Carol and I were looking through the rack of Piggly Wiggly t-shirts, a woman (who was clearly a summertime visitor) told us that she buys a Pig t-shirt for her son every single year.

Think about that. Can you imagine another store where someone would have that kind of loyalty, that kind of affection, that kind of bond? That's the kind of relationship typically reserved for your friendly neighborhood store...and that's exactly the position - and the reality - of Piggly Wiggly.

As Dusenberry says, the insight is precious, and it produces thousands of ideas.