Monthly Archives: August 2008

In the book, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, authors James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II point out that consumers want authenticity. As a result, advertisers fall over themselves to let customers know that their product is real.

How do they do it? By liberally sprinkling the word real throughout their ad copy. (Notice that in most cases, the use of the word real is redundant.)

But does the mere fact that an advertiser proclaims a product to be real translate into customer confidence and increased sales?

…when potential customers encounter advertising or packaging copy that proclaims the  authenticity of an offering or the business that offers it—they head the other way. The very act of saying some thing is authentic immediately leads consumers to doubt said authenticity. (p.42)

Let’s examine the headline in this ad for Minute Maid Lemonade:

Real refreshment
starts with real lemons.

Real refreshment? What’s real refreshment? Is there such a thing as fake refreshment? They mean refreshment.

We learn that real refreshment starts with real lemons. Not just lemons, mind you, and certainly not those fake lemons you see see in the grocery store, sitting smugly in the produce section, mocking you for not knowing the difference between them and their real cousins. Fake lemons know you can’t tell the difference. Minute Maid knows this, too. That’s why they helpfully let you know their lemons are real.

As if this wasn’t enough to reassure us that Minute Maid is authentic, the copy goes on to say:

With the delicious taste of real fruit, it’s easy to see why Minute Maid is America’s favorite lemonade…

Ok, I’m not making this up. As I’m writing this, I have iTunes playing. It’s set to shuffle. The song that just came on: It’s Real by John Lennon.

John Lennon knows.

Talking to consumers about mucous isn’t very interesting. The folks who manufacture Mucinex solved this problem by turning mucous into cartoon monsters.

This ad could have used a boring diagram that showed mucous causing sinus pressure. But representing mucous as funky monsters is much more memorable.

Besides being visually uninteresting, this ad for Benadryl mixes metaphors. Do they want to say that people who take Benadryl can lie in a field of grass without having allergies or do they want the reader to figure out the pause button metaphor and the message: YOU CAN’T PAUSE LIFE?

The two images presented here, lying in a field and a pause button don’t seem to go together. The connection seems forced. It leaves the reader seeing this:

People in a field: Benadryl: pause button.

This isn’t much of a message.

This is an ad for a men’s cologne called Cool Water. The ad says:

DAVIDOFF
Cool Water
FEATURING JOSH HOLLOWAY

Featuring Josh Holloway? Do colognes now come with their own cast of stars?

If this trend catches on, here’s what we can expect to see soon:

BIRDSEYE FROZEN PEAS
Starring Brad Pitt

Cheez Whiz
Featuring Ashlee Simpson

Coming this fall from Paramount Pictures…
George Cloony, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts
in
BUD LITE
Directed by James Cameron

I talked about time travel in this blog in the past (when else?). Thanks to my friends at TechBargains.com, I found out that time travel is now a reality. Simply book a flight through Expedia.com, pay with your MasterCard, and they’ll give you a $100 coupon good for future travel.

I’m going to 2475, the year of the Great War Against the Lobster Creatures From Proxima Centauri. It should be a hoot!

According to the web site milkdelivers.org:

The National Milk Mustache “got milk?” Campaign is one of the most recognized and respected advertising campaigns, having earned a place in advertising history.

The campaign is so successful, it even has it’s own Wikipedia entry. I have no doubt the got milk? campaign will continue long after we have all passed on to the great hereafter, with ads featuring people who have yet to be born.

Having said that, I would like to offer this one bit of advice to America’s Milk Processors and their advertising agency:

If you’re going to tout the notion that milk can help people maintain a healthy weight, maybe you should dress the celebrities in clothes that are flattering and slimming.

I’m just saying…

“My name is Mike. I like my shoes. I like to wander around and wave to strangers. It confuses them. Sometimes I grab onto signposts and walk around in circles for hours. It makes people laugh. I like it when people laugh. Sometimes people are mean and I don’t like it when people are mean. Sometimes I stand really still and pretend I’m a statue. Sometimes I pretend I’m a space alien and I speak Martian. I like birds. Sometimes I talk to the birds. I tell them about my shoes. The birds like my shoes. I like my shoes. Sometimes I hear voices inside my head. They tell me to do things. I like to scream at cars that go by. And I like my shoes.”