Marketing Mojo LLC

From a chair in the marketing department, it’s too easy to look only at the world that, well, you can actually see.  The problem is that – while your optics on other parts of the company may be zero – those other zones may be your greatest weakness.  And they’re operating in the webosphere 24/7.

You know, for example, that your company has plants in the Far East or does business with farms, but – unless you’re on this or that executive committee – your true knowledge of the goings on out in the field is extremely low.

Low, that is, until a video hits YouTube and becomes a sensation. That great campaign your team has been lovingly preparing for six months? Forget about it. No one would believe it, and everyone’s in crisis mode, anyway.

Not having a broad handle on your organization’s practices in the farthest reaches of the value chain might have been acceptable 10 years ago, but –  in the age of social media – companies have to be more aware of their soft spots: the activities that are vulnerable to miscommunication, misinterpretation or true mishandling.

How your company handles farmed salmon or trucker hours or car seat testing isn’t in the CMO’s purview, but you better believe that it sits on every marketer’s desk, every day, like a ticking time bomb.

Tick, tick, tick.

There are also plenty of examples where marketers have voluntarily entered the social media jungle, unprepared for the attacks that even a child could have told them might come.

It is smart marketing  – not “negativity” – to have an unblinkingly honest view of your brand and to protect its vulnerabilities. Every brand in the world has ‘em. McDonald’s in the US and Waitrose in the UK (hashtags #McDStories and #waitrosereasons, respectively) are both recent examples of powerful brands putting a toddler in front of a Twitter truck and expecting her not to get run over. Maybe she won’t, but do you really want to find out?

Of course, most of the challenges that brands face in social media aren’t new. People have always groused about poor service or “hated” this brand or another. The difference is that now every consumer is one tweet away from telling the universe about it.

Take the case of Progressive Insurance. When New Yorker Matt Fisher’s sister died in a car crash, Fisher wrote a scathing blog post. In one week, Marketwatch claims the company lost 1,000 customers, with another 1,600 saying that they would never do business with the insurer. Plus the news coverage was unbelievable.

Now, was Progressive wrong in this case? I have no idea. Do any of my friends have any personal knowledge of this particular situation? Nope.  But that didn’t stop them from tweeting and retweeting while the story was hot.

NBC News said it best: “the “lessons from [the] Progressive screw up” are that “when it’s Twitter vs. lawyers, take Twitter.”

The insurer settled the Fisher family’s lawsuit within three or four days.

In essence, social media simply amplifies your strengths and weaknesses. It creates a level of transparency that forces advertisers to live by what they say.  Or else.

And by the way, could a consumer just be “out to get” your company and stage some awful stunt that gets picked up worldwide? Yes, and that’s happened. In the meantime, you endure a week of hell, claiming your legitimate innocence, while the brand gets shredded.

So – what to do? Brands need to prepare for and anticipate the downside. A food company may want to think about how its ingredients are selected. A QSR might want to do the same. A shoe or computer company will want to think about its manufacturing policies and whether there are any parties that would relish revealing a damaging factoid.

This is not paranoia and, as I said, it’s not negativism. In my opinion, it’s actually the greatest thing you can do to protect what you care about. Everything’s easy when everything’s good. If the organic material hits the fan, how will you protect your assets and the consumers who believe in you and who need to understand what happened? What message do you want to communicate, and how, when and who will do it?

Don’t wait to figure this out. Sit down in private with your agencies and your leadership and create a plan for what you’ll do when a true or not-true-but-fast-moving event occurs. Know what you’ll do in the short term, and determine whether there would be any possible adjustments to the marketing message or the business overall in the long term.

The truth is that most brands aren’t doing heinous things, but there is a wide gulf between that truth and what actually might happen to you on the Web. Every week, I see a brand looking like a deer in headlights after some goof-up on a social network. When will we get it?

Prepare for what you should assume will be the inevitable. It doesn’t mean it’ll happen, but – if it does and you’re ready – the payoff is the preservation of brand value, your company’s reputation, your employees’ commitment and much more.

The bottom line is that living in a castle and thinking your brand is just fabulous is a mistake. Everyone’s got vulnerabilities. That’s business.

A version of this post was first published HERE by M&M Global.

I’ve written a lot of posts on social media (like HERE and HERE and HERE). Piles of marketers, consultants and others opine on a daily basis about the thrilling, exciting, shiny new world of social media.

But here’s the thing: social doesn’t change any of the fundamental principles of communications and consumer engagement.

If you wouldn’t telemarket or mail an offer that doesn’t seem particularly relevant for the recipient, why put common sense in reverse, for example, when it comes to mobile?

There’s no switch in the consumer brain that makes an offer attractive, relevant and helpful simply because it’s delivered on a new device, or in some other sparkly new way.  There IS one big difference in social: now consumers can instantly tell millions of others how bad your marketing is – how “clueless” you seem to be.  And that should make us more (not less) careful about inaccurate targeting or just out-and-out NO targeting.

I chose the title of this post because of a Ron White quote I borrowed for my Ten Tips for Marketers: How to Avoid (or Deflect) a Social Blunder write-up back in February, and that’s this: “you can’t fix stupid.”

Don’t let social cloud your (or your agency’s) judgment, wise friends.  I say this because I care: social doesn’t fix stupid.

P.S.  Readers know that I’m partial to a couple cartoonists and like to share their work now and then.  On my second blog,  it’s David Jones‘ Adland.  Here, it’s Tom Fishburne’s Brand Camp. Enjoy.

Readers know that I’m partial to a couple cartoonists and like to share their work now and then.  On my second blog,  it’s David Jones‘ Adland.  Here, it’s Tom Fishburne’s Brand Camp.

This entry pays homage to Fishburne’s hero, Maurice Sendak, who passed away in early May 2012.

Enjoy.

How is it that company after company trips itself up in the social media space?  GoDaddy.  Aflac.  Chrysler.  Nestle.  Kenneth Cole.  Qantas.

On and on, over and over. And it’s not just about how to avoid a problem in the first place, but also how to handle an issue once it arises (which in and of itself can generate scorn or admiration from consumers).

There’s lots of advice on the Web for marketers hoping to protect their brands from a social media bruising, and I’ll offer my two cents here with 10 tips for avoiding social media’s banana peel.

BEFORE…

1. Be honest about your brand’s vulnerabilities when deciding to use social media and its tools.  It is smart marketing – not “negativity” – to have an unblinkingly honest view of your brand and to protect its soft spots.  Paging McDonald’s, come in McDonald’s…

2. Have a contingency plan ready.  It’s not a question of how brilliant you are.  Things just… happen. Especially in social media.  You simply cannot anticipate every person’s reaction and what s/he might do or say.  See:  Chapstick. Or Gap.

3. Marketers strive to make their messaging relevant and timely.  I have often thought about how I might make a brand’s message relevant at holiday time (interesting Christmas themed surveys, etc.).  Some topics, however, are too serious to be co-opted by a marketer.  Natural disasters?  No thank you. Deaths?  ‘Don’t think so.  I don’t care what the rationale is. This. Is. A. Bad. Idea.  Poster child: Kenneth Cole.

4. Please be sure your left hand knows what your right hand is doing. Social media is not an activity unrelated to the rest of the company and its activities or circumstances.  My fave example: Qantas [A great tweet from @kiwi_kali:  “Somewhere at Qantas HQ a middle-aged manager is yelling at a Gen Y social media ‘expert’ to make it stop.”].

AND IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN THE STEELY GRIP OF A SOCIAL MEDIA MESS…

5. Respond quickly.  You are “right” and others are in the wrong?  No one cares. Your brand is now being used and abused on the Web?  Don’t insult your customers in response.  End a social media crash-and-burn fast with an apology, if that’s appropriate, or some other move that will disarm the bomb.  See: Nestle v. American Red Cross by @hanelly.

6. Once the immediate crisis has passed, circle back with critics that really matter to you and your business – preferable offline. Take the conversation out of public channels to keep from fanning the flames and to give the critic the attention that s/he deserves.

7. Protect your brand assets.  I harken back to what I learned long ago at Citi Credit Cards – the name and the physical product are precious.  One never bends, breaks or otherwise violates the actual plastic in ads or anywhere else.  Just because the Web isn’t as tactile, per se, doesn’t mean the rules of brand stewardship do not apply.  The Netflix fumble over “Qwikster” was inexcusable, in my opinion.  The company threw away years of brand equity, picked a name, in particular, that didn’t have a fabulous past, AND failed to register the @Qwikster Twitter handle.  That was already registered to a dude whose avatar was Elmo the Muppet smoking pot. Can you say “fireable offense?” Totally rad, dude.

8. If one staff member or representative goes off a cliff, don’t beat yourself up too badly – it doesn’t mean that social is “bad.”  Tell your CEO that (to borrow a famous line from comedian Ron White) social media doesn’t fix stupid.  See:  Best Buy and Chrysler.

9. Do whatever you need to do to ensure that history does not repeat itself. One social media screw-up is plenty.

10.  If it’s humanly possible, make lemonade from lemons.  Domino’s (see #8 above) did a phenomenal job of transforming a stupid human trick into a positive corporate opportunity.  This isn’t always possible, but a little humanity and sincerity can go a long way. In Domino’s case, living through this episode was most certainly a mile marker on their road to using social to fundamentally change the company.

This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but it’s a start.  Now get out there and don’t let your CEO kill any animals on video!

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A version of this post was originally published by the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG).

“Why can’t you be more like your big sister?”

Does this approach ever work? Not too often. What such a comparison can do is produce a sibling that spends years trying to be someone he’s not, losing ground, rather than trying to identify and build on his own strengths.

I have this same sensation when I read articles heralding the arrival of the latest new Web or mobile retail phenomenon, or a new daily deals site, or a site where you can subscribe to your own mix of coffee or underwear.  These are all wonderful, but must digital advancements mean a fast death knell for brick and mortar stores?

It certainly hasn’t in banking.  When I was at Chase in the mid-90’s, many believed that online banking would spell a painful death for branches.  Profitable customers wouldn’t have the time or inclination to actually go somewhere and all the “good” business would move online.  Branches would be left to old ladies with passbooks. The first was new and good; the latter, old and tired.

What happened was very different, and banks that neglected their branch networks – letting the locations get old and crummy – ultimately had to scramble to restore their luster or lose business.

It seems to me that the same thing is happening in retail:  many stores have decided that they are “less than,” that they’ll never again be any good and that they should focus on the hopeless task of trying to be more like the Web.

Now don’t get me wrong: there are advantages to making stores more “Web-like” – Pacific Sunwear gives salespeople iPads so they can create outfits for shoppers and order out-of-stock items fast, and Brookstone is using tablets to demonstrate robots that can be controlled by an app and (soon) to deliver remote checkout. Ron Boire, Brookstone’s CEO is moving quickly on these initiatives because he’s concerned that “improvements in e-commerce will accelerate consumers’ migrations to the Web.”

But at a more strategic level, merchants that singularly obsess about being more like their Web siblings will fail – while they simultaneously stop investing in labor and let stores go downhill.  Good luck with that.

No, if bricks & mortar is going to thrive (or at least exist for awhile) it’s got to get its own mojo back.  That’s right: stores need to go out there and kick some Internet a*!@&!.

I mean, come on: If rolling over and playing dead is not an option, let’s get excited.  Let’s roll around in it.  Who are your real customers? When was the last time you actually listened to any of them? What experiences can a physical location deliver that either cannot exist or are “less than” online?

Apple has certainly delivered a new-world version of retail magic.  Its stores command the highest revenue per square foot in retail, and it’s about to open its largest location in the world in New York.

While folks claim that no other retailer could do what Apple has done, Ron Johnson says it’s the basics of experience that made the biggest difference.  In Apple’s case, one of the key elements of this experience is that salespeople don’t work on commission, so they can honestly recommend the best solution for a consumer and build a relationship – not a one-off sale that may leave a shopper unhappy.  Johnson urges all bricks & mortar entities need to “start from scratch and figure out how to create fundamentally new types of value for customers.” He openly states that the specific ways he plans to do that at JCPenney may be different than Apple, but the principle of uniquely “enriching customers’ lives” will remain the same.  Here are some tiny examples of brick & mortar stores actively searching for Web-proof transcendental moments:

Best Buy is now standing at the center of a changed universe.  Shoppers come visit to check out gadgetry, then check prices and buy on their smartphones while standing in the aisles.  Individuals new to cameras or DVD players can learn all they need to know online before ever setting foot in a store (so long impulse buying).  Form factor itself is eliminating the need for “place”: music and movies stream where you are, rather than you having to go to them (RIP faves Blockbuster and Tower Records). The question is, what is the retailer going to do about it? How can the chain deliver a sense of intimacy and comfort that will always be missing online? Can it boost its angels-devils strategy to increase the likelihood of getting the “right” shoppers in the door? Are there benefits that might only exist in the stores, like a richer version of the buy back program? How about incentives to wander?

Also in a high-price, high-anxiety category, Foot Locker is applying an “intimacy” tactic at the door.  A shopper accosted by a “How may I help you?” may mumble something and end up standing in front of a display not knowing what to do.  Having associates ask “What kind of shoe are you looking for?” has been a subtle change, but one that the company’s CEO says “is more likely to start a conversation” and result in a sale and increased loyalty.

Old Navy’s target is moms in their thirties.  The chain made the aisles wider, which is nice, but its new stores have “quick change pods” (or changing rooms) in the center and spread out for easy try-ons.  That’s awesome.

Nordstrom groups merchandise together so shoppers can see and try on whole outfits (which they do). Try that online.

These are all small steps in the right direction.  The bottom line is that there is no single solution: finding key consumer moments of truth takes a commitment to truly observing the shopper’s life and transforming the resulting insights into powerful moments of delight. The Web’s a killer, but it is not an option to put your head down and surrender. Sometimes, nothing beats a personal touch: stores need to go back to their roots and reinvent this crucial advantage for contemporary times.

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A version of this post was originally published by the Marketing Executives Networking Group.

For the last 3 years or so, I have ordered holiday gifts online from Dancing Deer. My mom and I send a little something to the doctors, friends and associates who make our lives a whole lot better throughout the year.

I have also told a number of friends about the site and the (good) quality of Dancing Deer products.

Such loyalty produces frequent emails from the company, particularly around holiday time.  I take the time to look at them all.  Based on the particular promotion and the number of days ’til Christmas, the offers can differ: free shipping or 20% or 30% off your purchase, for example. From the numerous emails and codes available online, Dancing Deer has trained me to wait to for what I think will be its “best” offer.

From my previous experience, that looked like it’d be a 30% off promotion expiring on December 4. The website copy reads, “As one of our most valued customers, we invite you to participate in this exclusive private sale.” I kept track of this email in my inbox, conscious every day that it was there somewhere.  Being a natural procrastinator, I collected all of my mother’s requests on the last day of the promotion and sat at the computer for around 45 minutes selecting products and pecking in the delivery information and gift messages for eight recipients.

Just before I submitted the order, I thought I’d take a quick look at the Web to see if there were any juicier codes available.  Now, I love this game, and will sit for 30 minutes or more looking for codes for high-ticket items.  This was not that.  I spent maybe 5 minutes… and found a code good for 10% off plus free shipping which trumped the “valued customer” discount.

This, gentle readers, bummed me out (not like world hunger bums me out, but you know). I spend time with this brand throughout the year, I recommend it, I put important gifts in its hands, and for what? So they can waste my time by thanking me with a “special offer” that any consumer could easily beat with a publicly available code?

I loathed the idea of calling the company, thereby wiping out the convenience and solitude offered by the Web, but I did.  I explained my position to a representative, and asked her if, under the circumstances, she could do any better for me than a deal that was available to anyone with a pulse.  I’ve written entire posts about customer service  (so I won’t dwell on it here), but let’s just say that having a random person named Emily fail to look up my record and remark that 10% plus free shipping was “a pretty good offer” didn’t do a whole lot for how disappointed I felt.  I asked for a supervisor, who listened to my story, apologized and found me a better code (thank you, Matt A.).  The End.

In the business of marketing, a lot is written about identifying and taking care of your best customers.  I kinda hoped it would be obvious that this should include offering these shoppers actual benefits, but perhaps not.  A company that is inauthentic and careless with loyal customers is perhaps worse off than one that does nothing:  Dancing Deer raised my expectations, made me feel good for giving it my business and then kind of sucker-punched me.

That’s no way to treat gingerbread-addicted family.

As a marketer, as a consumer, as someone who appreciates genius and beautiful design – as a human being – I was tremendously saddened by the death of Steve Jobs.

Every homage to him, every video, every shrine feels right and well-deserved.  But there is another side of Steve Jobs that is important, as well.

Steve Jobs was a failure.   Not once but several times over.   How about the Apple III?  It was so poorly designed that Apple suggested owners pick it up and drop it a few inches when it stopped working.

Or Lisa?  Now that was a spectacular failure.  Though significant in many respects, the grossly overpriced machine survived for about 18 months before it  was discontinued.  Apple ultimately dumped 2,700 Lisas into a Utah landfill to capture a tax write-off on the unsold inventory.

That was, of course, after Apple had spent $50 million on developing Lisa.

Oops.

But of course, the ultimate Jobs “failure” was getting unceremoniously shoved out of his own company in 1985 by a more politically-astute John Sculley – a big-company executive.

And after getting dumped by Apple, NeXT didn’t do so well, either.

On and on.  Over and over.

“We Americans have a terrible habit of distilling stories of our great men and women into simplified and boring sound bites of success while ignoring the long, crooked, difficult, brave roads they took to realize that success,” says Augie Ray, author of a wonderful blog post called The Failure of Steve Jobs and Walt Disney.  “We like to believe that success is what defines the American spirit, but the truth is the opposite:   failure is what defines the people who achieve greatness.”

I’ve been thinking about how many of us could or would have “come back” from the truly crushing (and very public) failures Jobs endured.  Thrown out of your own company?  A spectacular product failure?  His story is obviously unique, but size these disasters down to something that could happen to any of us and ask yourself what you would do.

How would you feel? Could you still be a leader, a seeker?

This is a dislocating time for many, and everything seems weird.  I would advise the average executive as follows:  be certain of what you care about, do something about it, and stay focused on what’s really important.  Know your story.  Believe in your story.  And just keep going.

When talking about getting booted out of Apple, Jobs once said, “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.  Don’t lose faith.”

No one could have said it better or with more credibility.

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A version of this post was originally published on the Marketing Executive Networking Group‘s blog, MENGBlend.

I was in a client meeting when an earthquake shook New York City a couple weeks ago.  We all stared at each other for a few seconds and waited for the building to fall down. When it didn’t, we went back to business.

Back to the same agenda, for sure, but not before the New Yorkers in the room had conjured 9/11.  The few, quiet comments didn’t turn into a conversation – no one wanted that – but the sickening feeling was there, in the room with us, as fresh and raw as ever.  Interestingly, the morning actually started with someone remarking that the beautiful weather reminded her of that lovely clear day almost ten years ago.  In New York, good things remind us.  Bad things remind us.  It’s just here.   All the time.

I personally was not in New York on 9/11.  I was in San Francisco, and the flight freeze meant I couldn’t come home.

I felt awful.  I wasn’t there when my city got hurt.  I wasn’t there when friends died.

When I finally did make it back, I took the 6 Train down to the Financial District alone.  I think it was September 21.  When I climbed out of the subway, I discovered a planet I did not recognize.  Crowds were everywhere.  People were crying.  Others were clutching photos of loved ones for whom they were still searching.  The sidewalk was thick with people, milling around, shouting to get each other’s attention, taking pictures, and generally contributing to the chaos.  I took five or six steps and just froze.  When I stopped, I could finally see the gray particles floating in the air, landing on my shoulders and in my hair.  It took me a few seconds to realize what they were.

It was the end of the world, and all I could do was stand there under a big scaffold, staring in the direction of a smoking hole in the ground.

I don’t know how long I stayed immobile, with the flakes wafting down on my sweater.  It must have been a minute or two because, as in some slo-mo movie scene, a cop seemed to emerge from nowhere.  He walked over to me, put his hand on my arm and said, “Are you OK, miss?  Do you need help?”  And then he stood there, waiting, as if I was his only concern in the world.  He maintained eye contact and just – waited – with the kindest look on his face.

Snapped out of my daze, I immediately said I was fine, embarrassed that I’d taken this guy away from others who were clearly in greater disress.

I have never forgotten that moment and never will.  That cop had everything more important to do, but he saw me through a huge mass of people.  He took a couple of seconds to care.  He put a human face on the inhuman.  I think he saved me, in a fashion, right there on the sidewalk.

I’m not saying that I haven’t paid attention to reality in the last decade, but that experience changed my view of the New York City Police Department brand, just a little bit, forever.

I have written before about tiny moments of truth that can make a huge difference.  Small gestures of grace, seemingly disconnected from the main event, which land with such a force (because the consumer expects so much less) that they have a material if not permanent impact on a brand’s ability to truly connect.

Look for the individuals who can do this for your brand.  Take care of them. Because in a stressful moment, you are not there, your CEO is not there, your PR is not there, your advertising is not there.  But that lone person is.  And for a customer, he or she may be all that makes your brand human:  something it seems the entire world could use a little bit more of right now.

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A version of this post was originally published on the Marketing Executives Networking Group‘s blog, MENG Blend.

Sometimes great minds think alike, don’t you think?

As my clients can attest, I have become obsessed with the story of corporate-marketing-executive-turned entrepreneur Susan Nethero.

During her years working at Xerox, Time Inc. and other companies, Nethero grew tired of the fact that a product she absolutely needed – a product that manufacturers knew she needed and would pay (a lot) for – was never available with the characteristics and benefits she wanted.  That product was the bra, and Nethero eventually became dependent on European offerings because they came in more sizes.

But then she did the magic trick of turning observation into insight, realizing that millions of other women must be as frustrated as she was. Nethero’s chain of Intimacy stores opened in 1992 and, today, she has 15 stores and $36 million in annual revenue.  

Because many women walk around in the wrong size bra (like Nethero had), the key to the entire Intimacy experience
is the professional bra fitting required in all the stores. Why is it not optional? Because the right fit is the brand’s vital differentiator… allowing Nethero, among other things, to charge $90 when the typical department store bra is around $45.

If that sounds like a lot, it’s not.  Any woman will tell you that – compared to working out or plastic surgery – it’s a small price to pay to look younger and 10 pounds lighter. “There is no way that a brand can easily compete in the high-end market without something uniquely special,” says Marshal Cohen.   “With intimates, comfort and fit are way up high in the chart, and price is a lot less sensitive.  In other words, you want to remove price from the equation.” When Nethero went on Oprah – who promptly instructed her fans to get professional bra fittings in 2005 – Intimacy’s business exploded.

So what if a newbie tries to screw up that equation by turning down a fitting?  What happens, you ask?  What happened was that Nethero took the locks off the dressing room doors.

She took the locks off the doors!

This blew me away. Think about it.  Nethero overruled a customer’s express wish, because Nethero knew something that a prospect doesn’t know yet: that a fitter will make her look and feel fantastic.

I guess they don’t call her the “bra whisperer” for nothing.

How many marketers have you known who had such confidence in their brands’ ability to deliver that they would go up against a customer in order to do so?  What would our bosses say about that? Isn’t the customer always right??

Not if the marketer has 100% confidence that specific aspects of the brand experience are vital to brand performance and ultimate customer satisfaction.

And just as I was pondering this thought, I discovered two esteemed friends and great marketers doing the same.  In “The Customer Isn’t Always Right,” Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, warns that a marketer must listen to the voice of the customer “with discernment” and offers up three instances when “you might want to think twice” about reacting to customer feedback.

The first is the point proven in the Intimacy story:  customers can’t know.  Henry Ford was a big believer in this one.

Second is a situation in which the customer can’t or won’t say what he wants – as in a B2B sales scenario where a prospect plays coy.  And the third is when a customer won’t stop asking.  McKee is sure that Target’s management firmly believes in the chain’s slogan, “Expect More. Pay Less” – up to some point before the chain goes out of business.

Similarly, Stephen Denny, author of the new book, Killing Giants, writes in a blog post that “it’s your job to do your job.” In a world where total strangers seek out each other’s opinions online (in reviews that might not even be real), you are still very much responsible for what you do and who you are.  Brand managers at Nike, Apple and others are “pretty firm that their brand is their business – they own it, they manage it daily and they know it’s important work.”

In one week, the three of us were studying the same angle on what makes a brand a great brand: knowing that – sometimes – you as a marketer must have the gut-level knowledge that your choices are the right ones.  After all, consumers voted for New Coke, and those who saw the Sony Walkman didn’t think it had a future.

Think about the brands you manage and those with which you have a personal connection.  Chances are that at least one of them wouldn’t exist if there weren’t people who believed in it, protected it, grew it… and ignored a lot of focus groups along the way.

P.S. CTPB = Contrary to popular belief.

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A version of this post was originally published on the Marketing Executives Network Group blog, MENGBlend.

I blame Oprah. Or at least I want to blame Oprah for an icky, funky (and not in a good way), goofy seemingly-exploding category in the ad world.

Allow me to take you back five years. It’s hard for medical shows not to use words that are, you know, normal words describing parts of the body when these words are forbidden by the standards and practices folks. And so it was in 2006: Grey’s Anatomy needed a word to use during a childbirth scene, and thus the word “vajayjay” premiered on television. [The only thing that was actually born, of course, was the stupid word, vajayjay.]

And then? Nothing, really. Even with Jimmy Kimmel, and 30 Rock, and Tyra Banks all using the word… meh. Everyone seemed to go about their business. Vajayjays stayed wherever vajayjays are supposed to be. Then Oprah I-Utter-Your-Product’s-Or-Book’s-Name-And-You-Are-Set-For-Life Winfrey used the word to describe her own vajayjay, and her friends’ vajayjays, and vajayjays in general (here a vajayjay, there a vayjayjay, everywhere a vajayjay) and that was it.

You could say it was the vajayjay heard around the world (beginning with Oprah‘s 45+ million viewers).

Since then, it just seems to me that we have more and more truly wacky advertising for sex aids, health and beauty aids, self-heating, uh, whatever – you name it. We’ve always had condom ads, then it was the ED ads (Q: When the moment is right, will YOU be ready? A: Maybe, but why are our bathtubs in the backyard?), but now? Whoa.

I was just sort of snorting through all these weird ads and getting on with my life when Fleet Lab’s new viral campaign for Summer’s Eve came along. Alas, I could be silent no more. Witness just a tiny sample of these (and other) ads for yourself:

1. SUMMER’S EVE: THAT’S VAGINAL

This is not my fault.

2. TROJAN: THE NEW TRIPHORIA VIBRATING, uh, MASSAGER

I have all sorts of questions about this ad, but I guess the biggest one would be… is it good that a “massager” blows your hair back? Would I want said “massager” to blow my hair back? Are there settings on the thing? Slow \ Medium \ High\ Blow Your Hair Back? The mind reels.

3. TROJAN: FIRE AND ICE CONDOMS

This ad is so hilarious, it could be a Saturday Night Live spoof on condom commercials, which I’m sure was part of the planned fun. My question here is similar to the one I raised with the Triphoria: less about the crazy ad, more about product characteristics and benefits.

FIRE and ICE? Who is supposed to be enjoying something described as having been “dipped in IcyHot?” It scares me, frankly.

*Sigh*

Such is the state of advertising today, my friends. So crazy, it’ll blow your hair back.

P.S. Check out this spoof of the Cialis “When the moment is right” ad. Hilarious.