citiseconline print ad - build reputation, build wealth

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citiseconline is one of the country's online trading stock trading company. it's relatively new and it has been successful with it's clientele having grown very well over the months. they recently released an ad for a new product - "COL EasyInvestment Program".

it's actually a confusing ad.

first, they call it a "program", it's not a product or a service but a program. so this is not like a mutual fund where you give your money to the investment firm and they invest your money for you, you can just forget about it and wait for it to earn.

this is how most people understand what a "program" means - its like enrolling in an exercise program in a gym and when we follow that program, we lose or maintain our weight and become healthier. the better we stick to the program, the better the results.

the headline ("Learn how to build wealth - the easy way!") and the footer ("Learn how easy it is today!") talks of the same thing - that it is some kind of a learning program, very similar to what happens when you enroll in an exercise program in your gym.

but that is not what it says in the body copy. in the body copy, it sounds like a mutual fund type of product - you choose Premium Growth stocks selected by "seasoned financial analysts", give them P5,000 for it.

they have in the ad a picture of juanis barredo. i think when most readers look at the picture, they will have three questions - who is he? why is he in the ad? what's the point?

that leads to a discussion of target audience. who is the target audience of this ad? citiseconline is a relatively new service and from a marketing standpoint, the logical target audience for them are primarily individuals who are not yet stock investors and secondarily individuals who use live stock brokers and other clients of other online stock brokers. the former is a very large audience - while investors in the philippine stock market have grown significantly in the past months, the number of investors are still on the over-all very small compared to other markets. it is a largely untapped market.

with most of the readers of this ad not citiseconline clients and an even much greater number who are not even stock market investors, it means the chances that the target audience will know who juanis barredo is, is anywhere from nil to 0.1% of them at best.

the purpose of including pictures of people in ads is to enhance the selling power of the ad. i agree that putting someone who is an "expert" or an "authority figure" can make the product being sold more attractive, but if that "expert" and "authority figure" is not known to the target audience, what then is the value of including that person in the ad?

that is i think the greatest weakness of this ad. juanis barredo is known only to citiseconline clients. barredo conducts seminars and talks for citiseconline clients who want to learn technical analysis of stocks that can help in being better stock investors. but if you are not a citiseconline client, you will have no clue who barredo is nor would you know his credentials. in fact i think even among citiseconline clients, barredo is probably known only to a few - those who have attended their free seminars.

the other related weakness and something that also adds to the confusion is the stated title of barredo - "Head Of Investor Education". that title matches with the headline, footer and the "program" label of the product.

but that title does not match with the body copy. the body copy talks of "Premium Growth stocks selected by seasoned financial analysts". being "head of investor education" does not necessarily mean "seasoned financial analyst".

for barredo to give power to this ad, they need to build up his reputation in the ad. we need more information and a sale on how good barredo is as a financial analyst, if he is one.

as the headline suggests, for this ad to build wealth for COL, this ad needs to first build a reputation for barredo among its target market - the general investing public.

it's a WAWAM!

the importance of understanding the target audience

tv shows like the american idol is very much like products that advertise - they are going after an audience. both need to understand the demographics and psychographics of their intended target audience. the need for an audience demands a need for understanding them.

the difference lie in the flexibility one enjoys or its limits on what it can do to it's product. in a sense, tv shows have a little more flexibility in altering their product than consumer brands. they can reformat, from minor to major like change stars or hosts, change story plots, etc. consumer products do not have that luxury of change flexibility.

tv shows can be very unforgiving too. the tv ratings immediately tell you if you are doing something right or something wrong. consumer companies may not have the same kind of speed in getting feedback.

for reality shows like the american idol, the smart contestant is the one who takes audience demographics and psychoigraphics to heart although in the real world that might be too sophisticated or too complicated for most of the contestants. that function in some ways is being performed by the judges who more often than not not just give comments on the performance itself but also on what the audience think.

david cook's american idol win - a study on demographics and psychographics

david cook won the american idol in a landslide win and an upset given the heaps of praises archileta got from the judges during the previous night. cowell said it - archileta wins the night. but that's not how it happened. and it wasn't just that final night, archileta more often than not got good praises from the judges almost the whole season while cook a few times got bad reviews from the judges.

personally, i think cook won american idol because he was a much more entertaining singer than archileta. while archileta had an excellent voice and was extremely consistent throughout the season, cook had a much more significant entertainment value. archileta i thought was on the verge of being a boring performer. archileta is almost like watching a cd played while cook was a performer who was alive. i also think the voice quality of cook had more character - raspy at some points, powerful in some and endearing and tender when needed. archileta was one-dimensional compared to cook who was more multi-dimensional.

that aside, the article below i think is a great study on what a marketer or advertiser can get out of studying demographics and psychographics of a target market. this was of course unintentional on the part of cook, he was not specifically targeting them, but the available data mentioned in the article is a very compelling study in target marketing consumers with the use of demographics and psychographics. it showed how two very different and unique sets of viewers can swing towards one of two choices.

cook, the brand in this article had a wide appeal but what eventually got him the votes were the older set and archileta lost on the absence of the younger set in the american idol audience. the preferences and needs are very different, including signals that connected the audience and the product.

it's an excellent study of the consumer psyche.

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'Cougars 4 Cook' sign was our first clue
By ERIN CARLSON – 1 hour ago
NEW YORK (AP) — "Cougars 4 Cook."

There it was, on a poster in the "American Idol" audience last week, after David Cook belted Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in the Key of Emo. And that slogan — not to mention the woman who hoisted it — speaks to the 25-year-old singer's popularity with, ahem, women of a certain age.

Maybe it's his edgy-yet-mainstream appeal, sly grin, sparkling hazel eyes, facial scruff, love for crossword puzzles, love for his mom and brothers. Or perhaps it's the way he broke down in tears after his final performance, a rock-anthem arrangement of "The World I Know," which he rebelliously defended from Simon Cowell's criticism.

Somewhere down the line, the Midwest-raised former bartender became a sex symbol for scores of women who are practically old enough to be his mom. And clearly, they voted.
Linda Sharp, smitten as a schoolgirl, voted 473 times for Cook after Tuesday's final performance show. The 42-year-old married mom used her land-line and cell phone — as well as her three daughters' cell phones — to show support for the singer.

"The biggest thing: He's legal, and that goes a long way," said Sharp, who's from Austin, Texas. "He's 25. That's old enough that we can openly ogle him, and we can drool over him, and it doesn't make us feel like we could be his mother."

The same couldn't be said for 17-going-on-13 David Archuleta, the kid from Murray, Utah, whose booming, mature voice belies a youthful innocence and humility that, at times, bordered on painful to watch. Cook, by stark contrast, was increasingly self-assured as the year wore on.
Sharp writes "Idol" recaps on her blog "Don't Get Me Started," which attracts the soccer-mom set, who've praised the various talents of Cook. After she posted the "Risky Business"-inspired "Guitar Hero" commercial starring Cook, one commenter said: "Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Need I say more?" Another wrote: "Have I died? Is this heaven? I'll take it!"

Apparently these women weren't just smitten with a younger man, they were motivated, too: In a landslide victory, Cook, from Blue Springs, Mo., beat Archuleta by a margin of 12 million votes out of the record 97.5 million cast by viewers.

"American Idol" had slipped in the overall ratings this season, but Wednesday's finale was seen by 31.7 million people — about a million more than the year before, according to Nielsen data — suggesting the show swiftly gathered momentum after it boiled down to man vs. boy.
And the biggest viewer erosion in season seven was right in Archuleta's voting bloc. Ratings fell 18 percent among women aged 18-34; and 12 percent among teenagers 12-17. Also apparently in Cook's favor: Viewership has risen among people aged 50 and over, and the median age of an "Idol" viewer, once in the mid-30s, is now up to 42.

"I'm exposed to the Jonas Brothers and the `High School Musical' crowd and all of that, but as cute as I might think they are, they do make me feel maternal — not hot," Sharp said. "So watching David Cook, I think that's been a huge appeal for thirty/forty/fiftysomethings that 'We're not dead.' We might drive the soccer minivan, (but) we're just picky about what perks us up."

Apparently, they can be picky about hair, too. Michael Slezak, a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly magazine, said Cook became "almost unstoppable" after getting rid of that unfortunate comb-forward haircut in the middle of the seventh season.

"If someone had told me 14 weeks ago that David Cook would turn out to be this season's sex symbol, I wouldn't have believed it," Slezak said. "He had this hideous mop of hair and he looked a little schlubby and, you know, he was just a very average kind of guy with bad hair ... . Getting that side-part during Dolly Parton week was possibly his best strategic move of the season, even more so than his rearrangement of 'Always Be My Baby.'"

With Cook's makeover came growing confidence on stage — and tears. The grainy-voiced rocker recently wept during a show while his older brother, Adam, who is battling advanced brain cancer, sat in the audience. He cried during his hometown visit and the two-part finale.
"Another reason women really dig him is he's an emotional guy and he's not afraid to show it," Slezak said. "It's hard to resist the appeal of a grown man crying tears of joy and not trying to hide it."

Anne Ward, 50, of New York City, said she impressed by Cook's "brotherly relationship" with Archuleta and the humility he showed when he didn't react to Cowell's acid-tongued commentary. Also: his frontman mystique.

"Here's this guy who sings so great, he crosses genres, and he's vulnerable, but yet, we didn't know a lot about him. And he's sort of soulful when he sings," said Ward, who has downloaded almost all of Cook's "Idol" songs.

Ward, a longtime fan of the show, said Cook "looks like a man, and he acts like a man," and knows how to milk the camera — but not in an overt, smarmy way (think Constantine Maroulis in season four). She was initially wowed by his musical skills, but didn't "feel the sex appeal factor" until his emotional performance of "Music of the Night" during Andrew Lloyd Webber week.

"It's almost like a courtship," Sharp said of gradual allegiance from other contestants to Cook. "It's been like this slow burn, and all of a sudden our internal 16-year-olds got ignited."
The icing on the cake, Sharp said, was Cook's finale duet with ZZ Top — and the "Guitar Hero" commercial aired during the finale, an homage to Tom Cruise's pants-less lip sync to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" in "Risky Business."

"We're the ones that salivated so heavily over Tom Cruise in `Risky Business' that he really slid to superstardom on a trail of our spittle," she said. "So to see David Cook — who we're firmly in love with — put into those two things ... I mean, it was just a gift. It was a present."
Archuleta did the exact same spot with similar choreography that aired later in the telecast, but it lacked the feral energy and intuition that Cook brought to the role. Cook looked like he knew what he was doing — but the would the angelic Archuleta really rock out in his skivvies if his parents left him home alone?

"They're both very talented, but it really boils down to what does it for you: A sexy hot man or Webkinz come to life?" she asked. "Is your cell phone studded with glitter, or do you just have a regular cell phone like I do?"

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iwlT6ScPejtf0sICQ69bAFWmz0AgD90QVNSG1

kia motors print ad - what the hell is that ad?

this is a 2nd hand (pre-owned) kia car that's for sale and posted in the internet. it's year model is very close to the year if not exactly the same year the kia print ad here was released. so the kia in the picture is most likely the model the new kia model in the ad is supposed to replace.

kia at the the time of the print ad was one of the first car brands that offered an almost mini-car with very spare accessories and features. to good effect, at that time, kia had the lowest price among all the cars in the country. and that is exactly the reputation, what kia is known for in the market at that time - lowest price car in the market.

that reputation is obviously something kia and its agency knew about and was probably one of the main consideration they had when they developed the print ad. that's a good thing. knowing your brand's reputation or brand image when you do a new ad, specially for a new car model is the right thing to do.

note that this ad was published years ago. when i first saw the ad, i was dumbfounded. no, in fact i almost fell off my chair nearly spilled steaming hot coffee on myself. with my mouth open, still looking at the newspaper ad, i told myself, "what the hell is this ad??!!". years ago, i did not yet have the word WAWAM!, but it sure does fit this ad. by the way they had very heavy placement on this ad. again, what the hell is this ad?

we have talked about creative teams who have become very lazy, that all they did was put sharon cuneta on the ad and did nothing else in the tv ad. the creative team in this kia ad is of a different kind - this creative team fell so much in love with their ad concept that they forgot everything else.

actually, it's a ad full of comedy errors. i think it's an ad that started with very good intentions and in their pursuit of these intentions, they were unable to see the quicksand they put themselves into.

the ad is all about honesty and realism. i can imagine the creative team passionately making the presentation, they probably made a big point on the importance of starting off with the then current reputation of kia cars. and i bet they said it's like a zen ad - simple and direct to the point, qualities of honesty and realism. they wanted so much to focus on it, that they said, it will be a simple layout - just words, plain ones and set in a plain black background, the epitome of honesty and straight talk. ok, we got that. and the clients obviously bought it. that sounds really great. the agency was most probably able to bring the clients to cloud 9 and while in a hypnotic trance approved the ad without knowing that - THEY ACTUALLY FORGOT ABOUT SOMETHING.

and that something is a most basic question of any advertising campaign and marketing plan - WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE?

it's a very strange print ad. ads are supposed to make people want to buy the product or service. and to do that, ads usually present the product in the best light possible. for those that can, some even claim superiority, being better than all other brands. or some select a certain benefit the product can give that is meaningful or attractive to the target audience. there are many ways to do it, those are just two.

this print ad doesn't do that. in fact what this ad did was the opposite - it admitted the kia car is NOT the best around. this thought in the ad is one of many comedy of errors.

why did they do that? the ad campaign concept is about honesty, their end tag says "We tell it as it is." and within that ad concept, they did just that. but in the process of doing it, they forgot to make a sale. not only did they not make a sale, they admitted that compared to other cars, they have nothing to offer that's better than others. huh? what? this is probably the first ad in the history of advertising that is trying to sell itself on the basis of not offering consumers something better, in effect, they are offering consumers something worse than others. that's just the first part of the print ad. things get screwed up even more as you read the rest of the ad.

the lead-in asked, "Are Kias the best cars available?" and the answer to that lead-in is, "Maybe not, but our new Kia models are definitely better than before." ah, the ad is saying this new model is much better than the existing ones, so that means, the target audience of this ad is - current owners of kia cars! that is a fatal mistake! another comedy of error.

i am saying the target audience is current kia car owners because that kind of proposition is meaningful only to current owners of kia cars. it has no meaning at all to owners of other brands and first time car buyers because they do not have any point of comparison, they do not own a kia! if you don't have a kia car experience, the line, supposedly a "superiority claim" will sound greek to you.

it can be argued that that kind of proposition can appeal to car buyers who previously looked at a kia but got turned off by it. well ok, that is possible. but here's the problem there - those who looked at a kia and got turned off before may have already decided to buy another brand at that time! that's also one of the reasons why it's a fatal mistake - car replacement frequency in the philippines is not very frequent, people tend to hold on to their cars for a long time.

so now, you have a print ad that in its pursuit of honesty as an ad campaign concept, zen and all, developed a proposition that sells itself on an inferiority positioning versus other cars, and in the process may have unintentionally limited it to a very small target audience, the few number of kia car owners and on something that is not at all meaningful to other car owners and new car buyers! this obsessive pursuit of honesty has pushed this ad to a confusion of who the real target audience is and removed a proposition.

but that's not yet the biggest problem of this ad.

as mentioned earlier, i think the ad agency started this ad campaign with very good intentions. one of the most important good intention was they really wanted to present kia in a position of superiority or at least on an "er" claim, as in "better" claim/positioning. they knew they could not claim superiority versus other cars, so they looked for something else that allowed them to do so and that is against themselves.

that ad campaign concept is often seen in p&g and uni-lever advertising where they start the ad with the talent saying "i found a detergent that is better than Tide Detergent, i found New Improved Tide Detergent!" then goes on to make a sale on how the New Improved Tide is better than the old. it's a smart way of communicating product improvements and create that "impression" of superiority without needing to claim it for real.

but that kind of concept works only for products where the purchase cycle is short and often. it does not work with cars where the purchase cycle is many years. people buy detergents on a daily basis, but people buy cars after many years.

and combining that concept with an obsession on honesty really did them in. superiority claims against your own brand work well only if you detail in the ad the ways your new improved product is superior over the old one. they did nothing of the sort in this ad. i think the ad agency thought the honesty ad campaign concept prevented them from doing that. in their minds, those two ideas became contradictory, like an oxymoron for kia cars. besides, it wasn't zen enough.

honesty is a good thing, but it might not be something good to use in an ad, not in the way they did in the print ad. product superiority is much better to use in ads than just plain honesty. it's simple really, one of the top 10 rules in advertising is to make a sale and to do that, give the consumer something to bite on to, something better than that of the competition. none of that happened here.

the bottom line why this is a WAWAM! - this is a print ad that did not have a proposition and one that did not have a target audience! in other words, this ad shot itself in the foot! not zen at all!