The Association is an award-winning, creative, full service, solutions company - providing film, video and new media for successful marketing and advertising campaigns.
This is a series on marketing solutions. Often the simplest solution is the best. Here’s one you might find interesting.
Never driven a Ferrari? Has the rich Corinthian leather of Lamborghini never touched your what’s-it? Don’t be dismayed. Both cars are so loud you can barely hear yourself think.
And about the only thought you have is, “I hope the girls are watching and are really impressed because my hearings nearly gone.”
In fact, Lambo drivers usually hang out at biker bars because they’re the only people who talk loud enough to a Lambo owner to hear.
That aside, however, brings us to our story.
For several decades Alpine and Lamborghini were positioned together. Alpine was launching a new technology and wanted a full-blown TV commercial shot on 35mm. The agency, Kalis and Savage, derived the creative storyboard in which a Ferrari challenges a Lamborghini to a race. When the light turns green the Ferrari blazes off into the dark night.
The Lambo? Well he’s more entranced by the music flowing our of the new DDDrive speakers.*
So, we set it all up. Who won? Ferrari? Lamborghini? Well, I suppose you could say Alpine won…because the commercial won multiple awards.
Take a look…
*The DDDrive speaker was an experimental speaker in which magnetic flux was poured into an acrylic mold so that the magnet in the speaker would have greatly improved accuracy in the flux fields created.
This is a series on marketing solutions. Often the simplest solution is the best. Here’s one you might find interesting.
Marketing is about making something appealing. It’s kind of making the sow’s ear into a silk purse (although I’ve never seen that done successfully but it’s an attention getter.) This articles about a chopper and a hog of sorts.
McDonnell Douglas was introducing their new MD 500 Explorer helicopter, which was designed for the Medivac market. It was a complete re-design from the sleek helicopters in the 500 series. It was well…fat and slow. The bigger cabin made room enough for stretchers and medical personnel but it certainly lowered the score in the sleek and sexy department.
So the marketing problem we faced with was how do you make a boxy, sluggish helicopter appealing?
Our creative department came up with the idea of positioning it with another chopper, i.e. the Harley Davidson Electro Glide.
We got a vintage Electro Glide and fueled up the Explorer and off they went into testosterone territory.
Click here to see the award-winning video that premiered the Explorer at the Helicopter Association Internal convention:
This is a series on marketing solutions. Often the simplest solution is the best. Here’s one you might find interesting.
Problem: How can McDonnell Douglas show how quiet it’s new helicopter is?
Creative Solution: Have it land and take off without awakening a sleeping man and his dog.
The scene: Historic Old Tucson (scenes of many Western movies).
We cast an old guy to dress up like a old prospector. He’ll be rocked back on a chair taking a nap on the front porch of the cabin. At his feet will be his trusty watchdog, ‘Snappy’, who doesn’t miss a thing.
The helicopter will land in the background and then take off again and we’ll see if they can do it without waking up wither the prospector or the doggie.
Now why are we jumping through all these hoops to show how quiet this helicopter is?
Well, because McDonnell Douglas spent a godzillion dollars developing the No Tail Rotor helicopter. The NOTAR. Removing the tail rotor eliminates the danger to people walking around behind the helicopter. Conventional helicopters have rapidly spinning blades at the end of the tail boom, which spin so fast they virtually disappear. Hence, lots of people walk into them and get the vegomatic treatment.
So the NOTAR is the big thing we are pushing cause people are people not vegetables.
Another big plus is that people complain about police helicopters making so much noise when they are overhead. The NOTAR system virtually eliminates that problem since the main noise from a helicopter is the tail rotor, not the big blades above the cabin.
So, here comes the shoot day. The weather’s good. The prospector looks sleepy. The dog is ready to go, although to me he looks a little “tight”, like a swiss watch that won’t wind any more.
The dog wrangler says that the dog’s not about to freak out, he’s just shivering in the early morning cold.
So, we radio in the helicopter. Here he comes. Roll camera. The helicopter lands. The helicopter starts to lift off. The dog jumps.
Take Two. We radio in the helicopter. Here he comes.
Roll camera.
The helicopter lands. The helicopter starts to lift off. The dog jumps.
Take Three. We radio in the helicopter. Here he comes.
“Roll camera! Steady everybody.”
The helicopter lands. Somebody sneezes. The dog jumps.
Take Four. We radio in the helicopter. Here he comes.
“Roll camera! Steady everybody.”
The helicopter lands. Nothing moves. A lizard a half mile a way. Skitters down a rock. The dog jumps.
Take Five. Dog jumps.
Take Six. Dog yawns.
Take Seven. Dog wags his tail at his owner who’s madly trying to make the dog keep her head down.
We have a “conference” with everyone EXCEPT the dog owner.
“Have we got a clean landing?”
“Yes”.
“So let’s get a clean take off.”
“It won’t work. The helicopter won’t land in the same place. So we have to restage the landing and takeoff until we get a good one.”
We motion over the dog owner.
“What can you give the dog to calm her down?”
“No,” she responds.
“Do you have a staple gun?”
No one laughs.
“She’ll get it this time,” she promises.
Okay.
“Take godzillion and five.”
We radio in the helicopter. Here he comes.
“Roll camera! Steady everybody.”
The helicopter lands. The dog doesn’t move.
The helicopter takes off. We watch the dog.
The dog doesn’t move.
We notice small pools of Crazy Glue around the dog’s legs and ears. The fur is strangely matted with clear laquer*.
We’ve got the shot!
“CUT !!!!”
The dog tries to smile but her lips won’t move. The wrangler comes up and we turn our backs not wanting to see what she did to immobilize the dog.
We wake up the prospector, pay him fifty bucks and send him on his way.
Anyway, it is a very quiet helicopter. Check out the finished spot.
Please be advised that no animals were harmed in the production of this commercial.
Click on the link to see our final cut of the spot:
More and more business people are realizing the value of social networking. But often they don’t know where to start, what to do, or what to expect as a result. That’s where Trevor comes in.
Since not all companies are the same, the first step we take is a free review of their current social media presence and their overall marketing strategy. Trevor then helps them develop a custom strategy and trains them in it’s implementation. New Social Media clients were added to The Association family this month!
Locally we had Priscilla’s Gourmet Coffee and Tea (best caffeine in Burbank); Meehna Goldsmith, Timepiece Specialist from Los Angeles; and Dr. Joseph Kametz, D.C, from Glendale. All of them are receiving one-on-one training and strategy implementation from Trevor.
No time to figure out Social Media? Email Trevor today a trevor@theassociation.tv and find out how simple Social Media can be to implement for your business.
Pretty much every business is going to attempt marketing and advertising to some degree. There are those businesses that survive just through referrals, and maybe that’s all they need. But lately I’ve been hearing more and more that what used to work for business development isn’t working as well anymore, regardless of the method.
Postcards, mailings, TV ads, newspaper – Traditional Media just isn’t cutting the mustard anymore. So what does that mean for the future of business development?
First off, Traditional Media may not be as effective as it once was, but that doesn’t mean it should just be canned. From a “holistic’ perspective, it does have its place in the overall scheme of things. Traditional Media is great for creating awareness and driving interest about any topic. But realize that, because of the Internet, consumers have a voice in the marketplace they didn’t have before. This voice is expressed through blogs, comments, Facebook, etc., and is picked up by new potential customers with the help of a quick Google search, and serves to validate (or not) your marketing message.
If a company is doing a bad job delivering what it promises, it is unlikely the world of social media will be very kind without first addressing that issue. But that is an Operations matter and not the subject of today’s article. Perhaps the next article.
So, potentially a business needs to continue their Traditional Media approach while also engaging in social media and online networking to ensure the consumer has enough information with which to make a decision: to purchase, or not to purchase?
Whether your business has been around for years or just got started, there is a way to increase the effectiveness of both Traditional (mass) and New Media (digital) efforts. It’s very simple, but escapes the attention of many business owners.
Take the blindfold off.
Yep. It’s that simple. Let’s look at this from the perspective of two gunmen at target practice. They both have the same model gun, bullets and targets. One of them, however, is blindfolded. Assuming they have the same level of skill, which one of them is going to hit the targets more? Obviously the one without the blindfold.
The way to remove the blindfold is to conduct market research. But not just any kind of market research. I mean emotional market research.
Sometimes market research is conducted, but all that is obtained is facts and figures. What you need are the “buttons” that when pushed, get an emotional reaction, and communicate directly to the heart of the consumer.
A fatal, fatal mistake is to assume that you know exactly what your customer needs and wants, and that you know how to communicate to them on an emotional level that will speak to their mind on the subject. Did you ask them? If not, you just might be off an inch or too. However, we are looking to hit a bull’s-eye, not just get kind of close.
Case in point: One of our clients, a skilled and trustworthy attorney, had a 2-3% conversion rate for his Pay Per Click campaign before market research was conducted. All of his marketing, both paper and online, spoke a very conservative message: “I am an attorney”
Market research dug deep and revealed his potential clients didn’t trust attorneys. They also weren’t conservative about the issues they had, they were angry! So the existing marketing efforts missed on two levels. Potential customers couldn’t “see’ the advertisements because they couldn’t relate to them on an emotional level, and an attorney was the last person they would seek out to resolve their valid cases.
The solution was to re-brand the attorney as a “Consumer Advocate” and change the imagery in the advertisements to show angry and upset consumers. Instant success! Conversion rates rose as much as 8%!
Market Research can save a business thousands and thousands of dollars if it’s done correctly, and the data is usually valid for at least 10 years. How much more income would your business have if your existing marketing was 8% more effective? Take 10-20% of that figure and invest it in Market Research, and see your results soar accordingly.
Make every move an effective one. Get market research done for immediate use, and use social media to create a permanent “feedback loop” so you always have up to date information (the good and the bad), and the door to success will open. If you feel like you don’t know what to do, you just might not have enough information to make a decision. Done properly, Market Research will give it to you.
It’s common knowledge in Hollywood that you don’t want to work with kids or dogs. Too unpredictable. But we don’t believe all that and that’s why we have such a good relationship with Little Tikes, the iconic brand name for kiddy toys.
This December we shot two spots simultaneously, both to be shown in Toys R’ Us stores. One was for the Little Tikes Outdoor Grill and the other was for the Little Tikes Mudpie Maker. We had a ball. Ten kids running wild making plastic hamburgers and real mud pies. Somehow Director Theresa Soullliere kept everything together and we got some very energetic spots out of the mayhem.
A new comedy, “The Dick and Jane Show” rolled out on the web, grabbing 30,000 views in its first weekend online. Starring Elvis Winterbottom, our own Katie Dean, and Houston Graham, Episode One introduces a couple from another place and time – sort of like the neighborhood portrayed in the movie, Edward Scissorhands.
Elvis is into his meerschaum pipe and Katie into her popcorn balls.
Expect the unexpected as you check this out for yourself on YouTube! “The Dick and Jane Show”- Episode 1
We were glad to help Katie Dean launch “The Dick and Jane Show”. And we’ve shot webisodes 2, 3, and 4. We’ll let you know when they’re on the web.
We’re smiling about a new set of TV spots we produced for local Lemon Law attorney, Norm Taylor. In their first run, the spots aired 5 times and produced 216 leads for Norm in the Los Angeles area.
So we averaged about 43 leads each time a spot ran.
The cost per lead (CPL) is at a low, low $13.88. Amazing when you consider some law firms pay $350 and up for a lead!
Here is one of the spots which features a woman in distress on the freeway in her broken down “lemon” car. We used a green screen process to combine the woman’s shot with night time busy freeway scenes. It worked out great, check it out:
How did we achieve these fantastic numbers?
Well, it starts with knowing the target audience. Our research specialist, Tracy Locke, in her surveying of the target audience, discovered unbelievable intellectual AND emotional data. Thus, our Creative Director, Rick Rogers could conceive TV spots that connect with the viewer not only on an intellectual level but on the emotional level, as well.
Connecting on an emotional level is what triggers people to take action. We motivated them emotionally and intellectually. The phone rang. It’s that simple.
If you want your phone to ring in 2010, if you want leads coming in the door, you’ve got to pick up the phone and call us.
When I was a kid, if someone asked you if you wanted a cookie you’d say ‘yes’. But with the web, the term “cookie” has a new meaning. It is bits of text embedded in Web browsers that remember the sites you visit and help advertisers target you for pinpoint marketing. Some people don’t like marketers knowing all about them. These people know how to get rid of the cookies but there is a new cookie called a “Flash cookie”, that eludes the normal ”delete cookies” procedure.
The Flash cookie, according to a recent article in Forbes magazine, takes a special procedure to remove it. First, open any Flash application (like YouTube), then, right click (or control click on the Mac). An Adobe Flash Player Help window should open up that looks like this. It just took a few minutes to take away the Flash cookies and set my privacy settings to keep Flash cookies from piling up again.
It’s the time of year for New Year’s resolutions. Lose weight. Straighten up. Fly right. Stop this. Stop that.
But why not decide to START some things this year? The Association can help.
Our purpose, here at The Association, is to increase marketing results for our clients.
We have a broad spectrum of “results-oriented” specialists available for your marketing campaigns – Social
Networking, Pay Per Click, Web Videos, Animations, TV commercials….
But will a new campaign work? Should you risk your money?
The Ogilvy & Mather* website says, “Creating an emotional connection is one of the hardest things to do in marketing.”
We agree. That’s why we’ve got Tracy Locke doing market research. In her unique method of market research, she finds the “golden” data that guides our creative team to come up with campaigns that make the phone ring.
For example, Tracy found out that heart patients don’t trust their doctors. She discovered they only trust other heart patients. So we our TV spots featured heart patients not doctors. She found out that people don’t trust lawyers. So we repositioned our attorney client to be a “consumer advocate”. Both campaigns worked, on the Internet as well as TV.
On the Internet, our campaigns produce 4x the industry average in Pay Per Click (PPC) conversions. What that means is once a prospect clicks on the pay per click ad, they go to a “landing page”. On that page, they either fill out a form (convert) or they don’t. If they don’t convert, your money’s wasted. So, our PPC campaigns produce 4 times as many conversions for your money.
And, on that “old” medium, television, our TV spots are pulling leads at $13.58 each!
This is why we tell clients that our campaigns are investments. They generate revenue, build your customer base and make a great future.
Bottom line: We make the phone ring.
Call us and we can get you on your way to a nice 2010.
That’s our purpose.
Go, baby, go!
*Ogilvy & Mather – an international advertising, marketing, and public relations agency based in New York City and owned by the WPP Group.
