buying philippine stocks online, citiseconline's print ads - lost twin found, but unknown still!

citiseconline, one of the country's online stock market brokers has come up with a second ad to the one that was previously discussed here in WAWAM!

it's a pool-out from the first one, with the same layout, design and under the same strategy, and that includes the same weakness as the first one.

first, the good news: this new ad was released side by side with the first one. the ad placement of the ads were brilliant! both ads appeared in the philippine daily inquirer, august 19 issue.

the first ad was printed on page B4, that's the left side of the double spread and the 2nd ad was placed on exactly the same level on page B5, the right side of the double spread. that was simply excellent media page placement! the media agency deserves a bottle of champagne for such a superb placement.

that placement made the ads look much bigger than what they actually are and were more effective. the ad placements enhanced the creative design of the ads.

the 2nd citiseconline print ad (double click ad to view larger image)

now, the bad news: the 2nd ad, above, was an exact pool-out of the first print ad (below), and that includes the error of the first ad - weak reason why.

in this ad, they featured a female employee, april lee-tan a CFA and citiseconline's head of research. that's a good contrast and pairing to the first one which had a male, juanis barredo, head of investor education.

the first ad failed because it featured a face in the ad who is not known to the intended target audience. barredo conducts seminars for citiseconline clients on technical analysis of stocks, so if you are not a citiseclonline client and even if you are but if you have not attended the seminar, you would have no idea who barredo is and most specially you would not know how good he and what he does.

the role of barredo in the first ad (print ad, below) is to lend credibility or to provide a strong reason why people or a strong permission to believe on why citiseconline's product is a great one. safeguard soap uses PAMET to bolsters their superior skin germ protection claim. other products use doctors, nurses, professionals or authority figures to help convince the target audience the product can deliver it's promise. you believe the claim because as in the case of safeguard soap, you know that PAMET is the authority on germs. the thinking is that it is easier and more convincing if PAMET says a certain product is good in killing germs.

in the citiseconline print ad, nobody knows what kind of authority or credentials barredo has, rendering barredo's inclusion in the print ad as a no-bearing component. it is not contributing anything to the sale.

that same weakness was put into the second ad. just like barredo, the target audience do not really know who lee-tan is. both barredo and lee-tan are being used as "experts" or "authority figures" that nobody recognize now even know about.

the 1st citiseconline print ad (double click to view larger image)

but i can appreciate what they are trying to do with these twin ads. barredo, the Head Of Investor Education is being used as the "teacher" for investors, with the headline "learn how to build wealth -- the easy way!". lee-tan, the Head Of Research, on the other hand is being used as the "expert", with the headline "with expert advice, we make investing simple." ( but that assumes new investors, who are the target audience, know what a research person does in a stock broker company.)

the thinking or intent seem to be somewhat there, but they are not being delivered in it's full power because of a very weak "reason why". this kind of ad and strategy needs one. citiseconline's first print ad may have found its twin, but they are unfortunately still unknown and ineffective.

read all WAWAM! posts on citiseconline here : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/search/label/citiseconline