An idiot side effect of the postal strike

I have just received today's copy of the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper with a predominately older readership.

Stuffed inside the paper were 200+ pages of advertising inserts. Catalogues from John Lewis and all sorts of companies trying to sell me stuff for Xmas.

Most of this material would have descended through my letter box in dribs and drabs; instead I receive it all in a single pile. Have the advertisers gone mad. What do they think the effect is of being deluged with advertising material? Believe me, more means less. I am certain that companies must be experiencing a massive drop in effectiveness by switching from the post to newspaper distribution.

If somebody suggested that promotional mail was only delivered once a week then there would be uproar – this is what is effectively happening. Nuts. Dick Stroud

Mockery + price fighting - a positive strategy or fight for survival?

This posting has little or nothing to do with the 50-plus but a lot to do with marketing and hopefully has an amusing twist.

There is store chain in the UK called Dixons. It is from an old era when you could get the best discounts on the high street. Times have changed but memories persist of its rather dowdy stores, even though the company has evolved from bricks, to bricks and clicks, to clicks and clicks.

The recession has made it OK to shop for rock bottom prices and the new Dixons ad campaign is relying on this emotion to overcome our hesitancy to deal with a somewhat shop soiled brand.

The campaign mocks the affluent culture of two of the UK’s premier stores, John Lewis and Selfridges, by suggesting the consumer use them as an expensive showroom and “Then go to Dixons.co.uk - the last place you want to go”. You can either see this as inspired advertising that has tapped into the post-credit crunch consumer psychology or a last ditch attempt to keep trading.

Some wag from the advertising world created a spoof version that appeared in Campaign, the Ad World’s trade mag. Something to make you laugh and think. Many thanks to Reg Starkey for telling me about the campaign and the spoof. Dick Stroud

Getting attention the wrong way

I have just come upon a promotional item produced by the United States Parcel Postal Services that attempts to sell the use of direct mail as a means of reaching Boomers.

The data it contains is a few years old and not really that much use (i.e. 95% of Boomers sort through their mail the
day they bring it in, 79% bring in their mail the day it’s delivered, 50% say they look forward to discovering the mail each day).

What amazed me was the imagery used. What could they have been thinking about? Dick Stroud

Over-50s told to cut back on booze

This article is from The Publican. If you go into Manchester, or most other UK towns, on a Saturday night you will encounter the unedifying sight of yoofs of both sexes who are paralytically drunk. Over the weekend, 90% of all admissions to hospitals’ accident and emergency department are inebriated kids. There is an epidemic of liver disease amongst young adults resulting from excessive consumption of alcohol. Things are bad, bad, bad.

The response of the UK Government to this problem is fascinating. Rather than target its marketing efforts to sort out the problem it balances them with an equal amount of attention aimed at the kid’s parents. Because it doesn’t want to be seen to be singling out one group of people for special attention it defuses its message by broadening it to the people at the other end of the age spectrum.

During my recent visit to the US I witnessed a similar response by Barack Obama to the videos of his lunatic pastor. Rather than condemning the guy or maybe sympathizing with him for his mental instability, he defused his condemnation by saying that his white mother had also made racist comments. It is an interesting communications ploy. In my view it is totally ineffective but that is a personal opinion.

Coming back to the drunken older louts. Have a look at this dreadful poster ad that is accompanying the campaign. I don’t blame the advertising agency for relieving the fools at Manchester of their money but surely they could have come up with something a bit better than this. Dick Stroud

A photograph I never expected to take

I have just returned from New York.

Firmly clutching my newly acquired zillion pixel Sony camera I could not resist a snap of the Dove pro.age poster ad in Times Square. This is a sight I never expected to see.

I seem to remember reading a marketing textbook by some shmuck, marketing guru, that older women models - let alone of the naked variety – should never be used to promote cosmetics. Dick Stroud