Are you changing the right piece?

I was sitting and watching TV with my husband last night and one of the Volkswagen “autobahn for all” sales event commercials came on. We have a DVR so it is rare for us to watch the commercials, but I am actually entertained by the Volkswagen ones. They are clever, well put together and keep my attention. Unfortunately, my husband informed me (he works for VW) that they are going to be changing from their clever advertisements to a more ‘industry standard’. That means good buy unique messaging and hello car specifications and boring statistics.

Now, we all know that marketing is more than just a pretty graphic and a creative tagline. But, sometimes having something a little creative can help! It differentiates your messaging, and makes people think a little more. The problem is - marketing teams often get sick of their own advertisement before the message actually gets a chance to work. A company will test out a new message, and after a few tries, will give up if it is unsuccessful. This is the case for Volkswagen. They are not seeing the results from the advertisement immediately, so they are blaming it on the images and the messaging in the ad. So they are changing their messaging. But, are they changing the right thing?!? I think not.

I think they are forgetting the basic formula for any marketing campaign:
40% of the success is based on the target market/audience/list that you send it to
40% of the success is the offer that you are giving (see “Fishing without bait” for ideas of good offers)
10-20% of the success of a marketing piece is actually the creative/message

Volkswagen is looking at the 10-20% and making it the 80%. They assume that it isn’t working - so it must be the creative. What about the fact that you only see a Volkswagen ad once in a while vs Honda who bombards you every commercial break! Or what about their offer? There is no call to action - it just ends!

Now I know that this is a very high level example and that 99.9% of our audience will never run a television ad, but the message still holds. Before you discard your marketing piece because the first couple touches haven’t worked - take a look at ALL aspects. Are you targeting the right people? Do you have the right offer? Then look at the creative.

What do you think of the Volkswagen ads? Is there another company that you think has great ads?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Friday Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.