Painting a Town: Graffiti vs. Advertising
People have various opinions of graffiti. Many would say it is nothing more than vandalism and a disgrace to the side of a building, sign, or wall, others may see it was a hidden work of art in an unlikely place. Jacksonville is a great downtown area to analyze this. Traverse downtown and you will see incredible paintings on the side of Burrito Gallery and Chomp Chomp, as well as “tagging” at the top of some of the tallest buildings. Many artists’ motives will vary, but more often than not an artist’s main goal is to turn heads. To capture the attention and cut through all the noise of the day is the ultimate win for a street artist.
Advertising strives to accomplish a similar goal. On average, a typical American sees over 3,000 ad per day. Cutting through the clutter is an art form in itself. A lot of graffiti tagging can be washed away, or painted over. Why? Due to the fact that it has no right to be there, where advertising on the other hand, has paid placement. This allows really terrible ads to have a flight time for as long as they are funded. There are times we have all wished we could wipe away a bad ad and simply tell someone “You’re doing it wrong…”
Advertising and graffiti are two art forms that come from highly different motives, but end up having similar goals. Although many graffiti artists want to make a statement against corporations, who tend to be the biggest advertisers, both parties want to paint the town in one way or another.
Copywriting 101
To begin, copywriting is NOT the same as copyrighting. The particular service I’m explaining is where sentences are broken down and reformed to be as effective as possible. So, what does that mean? I’ll give you an example. If you own a candy store, and you say:
1) “XYZ Candy Store has awesome candy for sale, at low prices!”
You get the point across that you have candy for sale and that they are awesome. However, you can re-word the same idea this way:
2) “Save money on awesome sweets at XYZ Candy Store!”
Instead of saying everything that YOU do, aka feature-driven advertising, explain how it will benefit the consumer. The first says that the company has low prices, but it is up to the consumer to find the link between their needs and the low prices. By leading the sentences with “Save money” you address the consumers’ need, and effectively increase the chance they will read, remember, or even act on your advertisement. There is a lot of power in words and how they are used.
Many times people will load their websites and advertisements with feature-driven content, rather than explaining how their product or service is beneficial to the consumer. This leads to less engagement, higher bounce rates, and becoming lost in the mix of thousands of other ads we encounter daily. In my opinion, it makes you sound like a “ME MONSTER”, as one of my favorite comedians would say.
It is important to create the link to your audience answering the fundamental questions:
1) Why should I pay attention to this?
2) How does this benefit me?
So where is it important to have strong copy? Everywhere! You website, social media, advertisements, and anywhere your potential customer may be searching for info on your business. If you have a burning desire for feature-driven content, keep it to About Us and Bio pages. Create the link to your consumer, and see how the power of words can help you get the most out of your ad dollars.
Great Creative, Great Results – it’s half the battle
I read an article this morning about a not so new direction Coke is taking with some of its advertising. A campaign launched today in the U.K. that depicts a split screen of two men aired. One is a 1950's man, and the other is a man in present-day. It shows a day in the life of a “man of their time”. Essentially, the 1950's character had a much healthier lifestyle – including hard work daily, smaller portions, healthy snack options and far less stressful activities. At the end of the day the 1950's man can enjoy a Coke guilt-free. Coke has been rolling out healthy living efforts and trying to inform the public on obesity, and habits than can lead or even help to curb unhealthy living and poor health due to weight gain.
Coke has been airing and displaying these types of lifestyle ads for a little while now, and I do think it is some pretty good creative at that, but why haven't I seen any? The question begs, due to the fact that when I watch TV I am actually waiting for the commercials to start. When I read the latest issue of Rolling Stone – you guessed it – before reading my musical flavor of the month article – I check out the full page ads, in detail, and reflect on them. My point is that if this is such a hot button for Coke, why is it so scarcely positioned in the market? I would think an all out war on bad lifestyle choices as it relates to nutrition would be a focal point for the beverage giant. I may be wrong here as well, but the last time I checked the U.S. was in worse shape than the U.K. – so why not give the first impressions of this approach to the U.S.? Of course it is possible that I am just eager to see some great creative!
At the end of the day, success for any ad campaign relies heavily on placement and media strategy. You cannot leave this essential element out of the equation. I think Coke should take a look at it's media funnel and remember what needs to be at the top of a successful campaign. There is also a chance that I am jumping the gun here and this is part of a broader strategy, but never forget the vital role of a success media strategy!
Food for thought: (pun intended) Why does this strategy seem to be taking front and center for so many “unhealthy” companies? Instead of showing a guilt-free Coke, why not talk about sugar and processed foods and what this has brought to society? Just a thought, a little off the topic, but worthy of brief discussion nonetheless.
We Have Pests!!! We actually want this one!
We are very pleased to announce Brandon Pest Control as our newest client to the roster. Brandon has been serving Northeast Florida for nearly 20 years and it is one of the most recognizable brands in the market, and the state. In addition to our excitement for working with Brandon as a company, we are looking forward to working with Brandon the termite dog! Our goal is to grow our client roster to be as diverse of an ad agency as possible, and this is a new category that we are looking forward to servicing.
Stay tuned for more information to come with the Brandon account, as we begin work on the next steps of growing one of the great legacy brands in Jacksonville…some very exciting things are on the horizon for Brandon!
In addition to Brandon, we welcome these new clients, in what has been a great summer for the Mad Men team! First Coast Technical College, Witt’s End Racing, Jacksonville Running Company, Plansummer.com, Russell McCormick, Florida Real Estate Company, Sweet Pete's, Handy House, Classic Cottage, The Salty Fig and many more! We are excited to see the growth of the Mad Men Family!
Penguins & Pandas
Having had a meeting with a client last week about SEO, I decided the topic of the conversation was a perfect subject to share. You may have heard people use phrases such as “panda updated” when referring to SEO practices. So, what does it mean?
Panda Updates
Panda updates are changes to Google’s algorithm, which penalizes sites that use thin content web pages on their site. An example of a thin content page would be a page stuffed with keywords having little to no actual value to a reader. These sites were created for the sole purpose of skyrocketing SEO.
Now, there have been multiple updates to the algorithm since the original update. When the update launched back in February 2011, it affected about 12% of all sites in the index. The update was to protect original authors’ content from scrappers. (Scrappers take content from another site and had the ability to outrank the original author.)
So now that you have a brief understanding of Panda updates, you may be thinking “Aren’t there Penguin updates too?” Yes, there are!
Penguin Updates
Penguin updates are slightly different than Panda updates in the fact that they flag sites for different issues. Mainly, the Penguin changes search for typical “black hat” SEO techniques, but as well as “gray hat” techniques. Stuffing a page with nothing but keywords and no real content value is a sure way to be flagged by Google, but it was harder to flag sites using linking techniques on valid websites in order to create a net of spam. This is where the Penguin update came into play. The update affected only about 3% of all sites in the index, but it was a noticeable change for many web site owners.
These are very basic concepts of Penguin and Panda updates, but hopefully it is informative to you. Fortunately, we understand the concepts on a deeper level, that we can ensure your site is panda and penguin friendly! I’ll quote what our client said in the meeting that sparked the idea for this blog post “I’m going to leave the Penguins and Pandas to you, and I’ll just focus on my business. Ok?”
So leave the SEO animals to us, and get back to work!