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When Advertising Fails – Part 4

I find that as a Marketing student I seem to pay more attention to organisations’ ads and marketing strategies than the lay person would. That’s why I find it especially amazing when even I have poor brand recall from an advertisement I just watched/saw/heard/etc.. What I’m finding more prevalent than ever are ads which do not coincide with the brand identity. That is, you could play an ad and put any old brand logo at the end without changing the ad or its resulting effectiveness.

However, this one confused me:

Another instalment to the When Advertising Fails series is a full page display found in yesterday’s Herald Sun (Wednesday, August 4, 2010).

The ad features a green ruler of some kind twisted into the shape of a question mark, along with the text What is success?. What confused me is that nowhere on the advertisement is any brand mentioned. Couple that with the fact that a full page ad in the Herald Sun could be costing them up to $40,466.58 this ad is on hell of a waste of money!
To answer the question: definitely not your ad!
I realise that I’m going out here on a whim and criticising an ad which may/may not be effective. The one thing I would say is positive is that it caught my attention with it’s simplicity and lack of direct brand promotion. What I’d love to see is a follow up campaign to this ad, building on the surreptitious nature of this one. Maybe they could create some ground swell and have a big reveal at the campaign’s conclusion? Although I don’t think this is very likely.

So for now, I’m going to assume it’s not part of an overall strategy and award it:

Advertisement Effectiveness: 2/10 (for lack of brand identifiability)

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Update (05/08/10): If anyone knows who the agency or brand behind this campaign is, please let me know in the comments section below!

Update (02/09/10): I’ve been following this campaign over the past few weeks and so it turns out, the client is CareerOne. There have been follow up advertisments in newspapers and television commercials. I even saw a banner ad for the campaign on YouTube!
It also turns out that CareerOne is owned by News Limited (known as News Digital Media in the digital space), which explains the ability to publish full page newspaper ads without fear of the budget. I still feel this campaign hasn’t been effective though. This judgement is based on the campaign’s poor execution.

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When Advertising Fails – Part 3

In a recent developer conference, Apple previewed it’s new iPhone OS 4 (some really cool stuff coming, definitely worth checking out). At this event, they announced that there are now over 185,000 Apps available on the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch, including an additional 3,500 iPad Apps. This event took place on April 8, 2010.

Yesterday (April 22, 2010) I caught a glance of a Telstra brochure which was an insert to yesterday’s Herald Sun. On the back page was an advertisement for iPhone. As always, it was well designed and visually stunning, however it was vastly incorrect on a major detail – the number of Apps:

Sorry Telstra, but your lack of attention to detail has landed you this edition of the When Advertising Fails series.

As a side note, the App Store has had in excess of 100,000 Apps for almost six months. It was originally announced in an Apple press release on November 4, 2009!

Advertisement Effectiveness: 5/10 (for lack of attention to detail)

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When Advertising Fails – Part 2

The second instalment to the When Advertising Fails series is somewhat shocking to me considering the organisation who produced it.

The newspaper print ad was taken from the Melbourne Herald Sun on Labour Day this year (Monday, March 8, 2010) and features an awareness campaign about driver fatigue. It was produced by the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) and what disappointed me specifically was that TAC campaigns are usually very hard-hitting, emotive and effective. They’ve dropped the ball on this one.

Fatigue may kill on the roads, but a bland advertisement definitely fatigues your brand.

Advertisement Effectiveness: 2/10 (for lack of impact)

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When Advertising Fails – Part 1

Welcome to the 1st post of When Advertising Fails.

The following advertisement was taken from my local paper a few weeks ago, the Whitehorse Leader. It illustrates how a low budget can cost greatly in effectively delivering your message. The lack of budget being the lack of colour in the ad.

Below, is how the Fire Danger Ratings are expressed effectively on the Country Fire Authority (CFA) website.

The lesson to be learned: don’t skimp on the budget when advertising. Or if you must, at least review the ad prior to it going live. The lack of colour in said advertisement renders it virtually useless.

Advertisement Effectiveness: 3/10 (for lack of proofreading)