Do we love testimonials at Ad Giants? Oh, yes, we do.

There’s some sound advice in the suggestion that testimonials should be in the customers’ own words:

Your customers will say things you could never dream up on your own. Their comments are often quirky and have a ring of truth that few copywriters can match.

One could make the case that if the copywriter could routinely and believably put words in other people’s mouths, he or she instead would be in Hollywood or maybe Washington or a courtroom.

Incidentally, one of my favorite parts of the post is the word “secret” in the title. (Pssst! Not so much of a secret anymore.) We are drawn to secrets like moths to some of my sport jackets.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.

DMNews reports that Wal-Mart is working with Yahoo to incorporate behavioral targeting into Wal-Mart’s web site.

For example, when a shop­per puts a digital camera into a shopping cart and then takes it out, Walmart.com will be able to deliver an ad for a digital camera the next time that shopper returns to the site.

Does this seem a little counter-intuitive. If these actions were an actual conversation, wouldn’t it sound like this?

Consumer: (camera into cart) Maybe I’ll get this digital camera. Nah, this isn’t the time. Instead I should change my oil and redo the house with energy efficient bulbs. (camera out of cart.)

Wal-mart: Hey! How about this awesome digital camera! It’s shiny!

I understand an attempt to steer ambivalence back to a sale, but cranky or fiercely independent souls might feel that the website is arguing with the customer’s intent in this example.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.

Somewhat oddly, it reminds me of a kitchen in a house I once lived in. The cabinets, due to their unique physics involving air pressure, always had one door ajar. I’d close a door and one elsewhere would peek open. I think of advertising the same way, a system that must stay balanced. Advertising blocked in one medium will escape into another, otherwise there’s no way to monetize the content except for paying for it directly, and as the crowd who felt MP3s should be free for all proved, that’s not our natural preference.

This battle to strip advertising from content was fought on the battlefield of television  years ago with a feature called “commercial advance” featured in a product from ReplayTV. Today, of course, we cannot eliminate commercials from our programming, though we can fast-forward through them, absorbing them as Johnny Five absorbed world history in the film “Short Circuit.”

Now, it’s come to the web, and is it really any surprise? The excellent Advertising Lab blog has a nice collection on ad blocking.

reality |r??al?t?|
noun ( pl. -ties)
1 the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them : he refuses to face reality | Laura was losing touch with reality.

actuality |?ak ch o??alit?|
noun ( pl. -ties)
actual existence, typically as contrasted with what was intended, expected, or believed : the building looked as impressive in actuality as it did in magazines | a mission was sent to investigate the actuality of the situation.

But we know what TruTV is trying to communicate — that so-called “reality” TV is not real. It’s generally scripted in terms of setting and circumstance, even if the people aren’t actors and provide their own chatter. So because the genre was generally misnamed, now we have “Actual” TV — for those times when your actual life just isn’t enough, I guess.

But the point is, television the medium, specifically through the genre of “reality TV” has actually created an Orwellian, contradictory meaning for the word, and TruTV’s sloganeering makes it official.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.

• the importance of a sense of humor, even in the midst of serious business
• the observation that many things can be accomplished faster than email or voicemail if one is willing to walk down the hall and sit in someone’s office for a few minutes
• the fact that the elevator is often the fount of all knowledge.

But the one my eyes rested on longest was this: Associates get tired of taglines and creative executions waaay before consumers do.

This is a restatement of the “If it ain’t broke” maxim in a marketing context, but I think the phenomenon of fixing the unbroken is especially pervasive in the marketing departments of large corporations.

It takes time for an idea (ad taglines or slogans are ideas, after all) to take hold, to become accepted, familiar and maybe even believed. Though I have no research to prove it, it seems to me that we as consumers see a tagline or slogan first as the expression of the brand — what the brand thinks of itself. Over time, we have an experience with the actual product or service and measure it against the idea expressed in the slogan. We talk to people, and if their experiences aren’t universally contradictory to the idea, we slowly accept the idea as part of the brand, and eventually, we might even believe it at some level. Anything repeated often enough — a lie, a claim, an opinion –  gains credibility with repetition in the absence of overwhelming conflicting evidence. And I think all this is largely on an unconscious level.

But those in corporate marketing departments see a slogan or tagline every day. The live, eat and breathe their brand, and it’s only natural that they mistakenly feel, against any logic, that consumers are paying as much attention to it as they are. Add to that the political motivations in large marketing organizations to make a mark with a new campaign, and a slogan’s vulnerability goes up.

Though it’s a shame my friend worked for this company for a decade and still felt the need to communicate this truism, I hope those remaining there keep it in the backs of their minds. Playing musical taglines and slogans can be a tiring, expensive and unproductive adventure.

I’d love to see a whole book of exit interviews, things said on the way out. That could be pretty entertaining.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.

(And now a light moment of satire)

My back fence is now adorned with the unsolicited messaging from the Mexican gang Sur 13 you see here. While there is something to be said for the opportunistic seizure of others’ property as a media vehicle, in the finest tradition of guerrilla marketing, this example arguably lacks key executional elements.

MEDIA: The work here is a campaign extension, really. I’ve seen the exact same message on two other fences and a concrete block retaining wall within a three block area. While hyper-local marketing does have its advantages for some products or services, in this case the media selection actually communicates that the gang does not have vehicular transportation. Though I’ve not seen Sur 13’s positioning statement, I feel certain they don’t care to be considered as only pedestrian criminals. Walk-by violence, while just as injurious, generally features higher apprehension rates, and it’s embarrassing when other gangs have sweeter rides. However, the media placement does get points for irony because the graffiti on my fence faces the $750,000 homes that have been for sale behind me for a year. I wonder how the realtor addresses it to potential buyers: “As you can see, there are plenty of young people in the neighborhood.”

CREATIVE EXECUTION: All hyper-local executions feature token consistency to simulate a campaign feel. The paint is the same color, and the penmanship, if that’s the right word here, is identical. In traditional advertising this might be considered positive, but in this context, the uniformity again communicates an apparent limitation of resources by the gang Sur 13. The viewer might easily assume they have only one person filling all the roles of this ad campaign, and that he’s probably 13 years old and can only afford one can of spray paint. As branding, it’s unimpressive.

THE MESSAGE: While the creative team managed to keep the headline brief, it is incomprehensible to many and depends on public knowledge for any impact. Viewers see “Sur 13″ and if they bother to search for it, they might find the online extension and get a sense of the integrated effort. Unlike the SEO campaign, the fence execution offers no call to action, no exclamation point, no verb, actually. Nor does it offer any visual eye candy, unless you count the aerosol scrawliness. Would a logo be too much to ask? It’s hard to make an effective all-type ad with no verb and no logo, and I suspect the team was not operating from a quality creative brief. What do they want the prospect to do or think? What is the competitive environment? What are current perceptions? What problem is the advertising to solve?

NEXT STEPS: Despite the many shortcomings of this campaign, there could be potential in word-of-mouth impact, and Sur 13 management should consider leveraging that into a brand ambassador program, maybe offering promotional discounts at clothing outlets or tattoo parlors. But first, the executive team should commission a complete ROI and brand impact study to correct the many errors in the current campaign, errors that do not serve to advance the brand image of Sur 13. Management should convene a “Blue Sky,” off-site (in Mexico) meeting to determine alternatives. For instance, the brand could capitalize on the synergy of blurring lines between news, PR and advertising by announcing a program to switch from environmentally harmful aerosol spray paints to friendlier brush-based or pump-spray pigments, building awareness as “The Green Gang.” But that’s further down the road, an example of a long-term strategy. For now, Sur 13 would do well to codify meaningful brand standards to solidify identity; research the violence, intimidation and crime markets; and pinpoint opportunistic tactical messaging in emerging media.

If you have other examples of gang media, feel free to pass them along with your analysis.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.

But that didn’t sour me on real testimonials. They’re the original consumer review and inherently often carry more credibility than the best stuff in a copywriter’s bag of tricks. Just to be clear, I’m not universally criticizing recommendations from compensated brand ambassadors. I can think of plenty of brands I would happily recommend to friends, and if I were compensated for what I’d glowingly praise anyway, it wouldn’t make sense to turn it down — for me. But for the brand it might. And now, some nice words from an Ad Giant client.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.

Beanstalk Talk is the blogging adventure for Ad Giants, a marketing brand management solution built by advertising veterans. Adgiants.com.