Category: Marketing / Advertising

Darkening Skies

Marketing / Advertising

Saw this over at Kenny’s place, and it resonated with me:

While marooned in Siberia a hotel room over the past four months, I watched probably more “regular” TV shows than I’ve watched in more than twenty years past.  And over time, I suddenly realized that the above meme is quite correct:  there aren’t any.

I mean, yes there are a few White people around, but you have to really look out for them.   And if not solo acts, they’re as often as not part of a mixed-race couple, or a figure of fun and ridicule.

“Oh Kim,” I hear the progressive wokists gloat, “now you know how the POC  [persons of color — I know]  felt all these years, when ad agencies never cast Black or Brown people in ads except as part of a stereotype-filler.”

And if these oh-so smart, hip creative types (mostly, it should be said, based in New York, L.A. and Chicago) want to redress a long-ago grievance, that’s fine.  But it cuts several ways.

Do you think a Chinese consumer is going to respond well to a commercial featuring Black actors?  Or an Indian consumer to an ad featuring a mixed-race couple and their coffee-colored babies?  Or, for that matter, a White consumer — oh wait;  that’s because all Whites are raaaaaayyyciss and POCs can’t be.

Uh huh.

Having been in this game myself, I also know that the reason behind casting Whites was that that particular demographic group was where the market (i.e. the money) was.  And if I can be honest:  in time, I (and many, many others of my ilk) may come to treat advertising precisely the same way that Blacks and such used to treat all-White TV commercials:  as something to be ignored.

Ignore that message at your peril, Madison Avenue.

Just What We Needed

Entertainment, Marketing / Advertising, Two-Minute Hate

This is going to end well:

A UK technology company is inserting customised product placement into films and TV shows – even those that were originally released decades ago.
London-based firm Mirriad inserts products or signage, like a branded beer bottle on a table to a clothing advert on a giant billboard, into streaming content.

I know what you’re thinking.  But:

The company used its experience to make inserted ads look as realistic as possible – so viewers would never know they weren’t present in the original shoot.

Uh huh.  I can see it now:

Not to mention:

or:

And even in our favorite classics, like The Devil In Miss Jones :

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Walking Back-Pedaling

Marketing / Advertising, Resistance

It appears that Coca-Cola has been somewhat stung by the criticism leveled at it by their silly support of bad practices, criticism such as:

…created by Yours Truly.

So now they’ve started reversing / backpedaling / retreating:

Coca-Cola, whose CEO denounced the Georgia voting bill, is now striking a conciliatory tone after coming under pressure from conservatives.
The soda giant, which is based in Atlanta, was absent from a list of more than 500 corporations and individuals that signed a statement condemning any election legislation that would “restrict” voters from having “an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot.” The missive was placed as a two-page Wednesday ad in the New York Times and Washington Post, with the effort being organized by the Black Economic Alliance.
Coca-Cola said in a statement to the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that the company “had not seen the letter” initiated by the alliance but is “certainly open to hearing their perspective.” It said it has supported the right to vote and that it will assess how to support voting rights.
“We believe the best way to make progress now is for everyone to come together to listen, respectfully share concerns and collaborate on a path forward. We remain open to productive conversations with advocacy groups and lawmakers who may have differing views,” the company said. “It’s time to find common ground. In the end, we all want the same thing – free and fair elections, the cornerstone of our democracy.”
Coca-Cola’s Wednesday remarks are notably less confrontational than its previous statements on the Georgia voting law.

Translated from corporate weaselspeak:

“Even after the New Coke fiasco, it appears that we still haven’t figured out that our primary market is conservative people, who seem to have a problem with a law which allows their own votes to be negated by a truckload of fraudulent votes.  Who knew?  Anyway, we’ll mark time on this one because we depend on these assholes to maintain our market share in the super-sweet battery-acid drink business.”

Message to all the other giant corporations who are diving into the Sea Of Wokedom, from conservatives like myself:

We may only be about 75 million in number, but we can still do damage to your company by using your products less and less, or else withholding our business altogether.

Screwing Up The Brand (2)

Marketing / Advertising

Following on from yesterday’s post about Stella Artois peeing in their own soup comes yet another example of marketing silliness:

Country star Luke Combs has apologized for appearing with Confederate flags, saying he is now aware of how painful that flag is.

Ummm Luke, bubba:  the Confederate flag may be painful to some, but it is not painful to your audience.

And just so we’re clear on the concept:  that “audience” would be the folks who buy your albums, attend your concerts and wear your T-shirts;  and in a pure head count they probably outnumber the flag-hating weenies by 25,000 : 1.

Now I don’t know if continuing to display the Stars and Bars at your concerts would disenchant folks in the crowd — just in passing, I bet your next concert will reveal an absolute sea of Confederate flags in the audience — but I’m pretty sure that a whole bunch of your fans are going to be mightily pissed off that you took a knee towards the Politically-Correct Set.

And the problem with doing that is that these woke bastards are never satisfied, especially after you do it once.  Expect your lyrics to come under scrutiny from now on:  references to cheating women will be labeled “gender-hatred”, singing about booze will be considered as encouraging alcoholism, and forget your pickup truck, that gas-guzzling ozone-destroying monster.

And if a country singer can’t sing about love, booze and trucks, there’s fuck-all left for him to sing about.

Oh, and a postscript:  just wait till the vegans see this pic…

I should also point out that until I wrote this post, I’d never heard of Luke Combs.

Screwing Up The Brand

Marketing / Advertising

One of the things that drives historians (well, this historian anyway) crazy is that people just refuse to learn from history — no matter how much precedent there is for a situation where doing X results in Unpleasant Consequence Y, we just go ahead and do X anyway, expecting that the outcome won’t be total shit and that anyway, Times Are Different.

Example:  when Coca-Cola tried to change Coke into New Coke back in the mid-1980s — because The Market Has Changed, And We Need To Move With The Times — a storm of furious resistance from their loyal consumers forced them to recant and relaunch Coke as Classic Coke, going back to the same old formulation of super-sweet battery acid that the world had come to know and love.  (New Coke, eventually, went the way of its erstwhile spokesman Bill Cosby.)

The Coca-Cola fiasco should be taught in business schools everywhere, and should be an integral part of any company’s training in marketing.  It’s not the first time it happened, of course;  but it was one of the more illuminating examples of leaving your established brand alone, and all the more notable because it involved a mere carbonated soft drink, surely one of the most irrelevant and disposable products ever invented.

Clearly, the Coke fiasco has either been forgotten or willfully ignored, because:

Stella Artois owners Budweiser Brewing Group UK&I say they’ve lowered the alcohol content in its canned, draft and gluten-free versions to capitalise on the popularity of “wellness trends”.
It last cut ABV from 5% to 4.8% in 2012 citing “evolving” drinking trends in the UK.

Let’s not forget the role of the bean-counters:

But the move is said to have saved previous brewers AB inBev up to £8.6million a year in duty, according to alcoholpolicy.net.

And the result?

The latest reduction has left beer lovers fuming and sparked a surge in one star reviews across supermarket websites from customers.
…
In a scathing review on Tesco’s website, the person wrote: “Today I cracked open a can of Stella 4.6% and thought I had Covid, since I could not taste anything.”

I have no dog in this fight:  Stella Artois has always been my supporting argument when I state that contrary to popular belief, the Belgians know fuck-all about making a decent beer*.

It appears that they know fuck-all about marketing the foul stuff, either.

*As I recall, the Belgies were the first to start adding fruit flavors to their beer, which just proves my point.