rotten bananas

Geico has some genius marketers working for them. The most recent commercial, the one with the cavemen at the party, and the dudes arguing about the one using Geico. The third caveman walks out and says something along the lines of, “Tina’s here, we’re getting back together.” One of the dudes arguing turns to him and yells, “Can you give us a minute?!”

I laugh so hard every time I see it, and I don’t even understand it.

I honestly couldn’t care less that Geico has great service, or that they have the best prices. But, if I needed car insurance, I would probably look there first, because they get me. They are offering me a way to identify with them. I love stupid humor, and they’ve spoken to me.

Now, I know what you’re saying. But Adam, you aren’t a marketer. You can’t tell us anything about advertising. But, that’s precisely where you’re wrong. I may not be in marketing, but I know quite a bit about the effectiveness of advertising, on a different level than the advertisers because I’m the consumer, the target. I know exactly what works for me. Lame jokes and funny makeup happen to be a couple of those things.

If identifying with the target is the key, then being entirely out of touch with the target can be a major hindrance. Take, for example, Sony’s latest campaign for the PSP (Thanks to the Consumerist for mirroring, as the original site was taken down when Sony got busted). They hired a marketing company that created one of those hip ‘blogs’ written by two ‘cool dudes’ who used modern day slang, replacing words with their modern day middle-school versions, such as ’sum’ for some, ‘teh’ for the, and ‘ur’ for your. There were two problems with this:

1. The marketers had no idea about their target audience. Normal teenagers don’t spend all their free time making card, ads, tshirts, and youtube videos about PSP’s. They also don’t type quite that badly. Trying to discern logical thoughts from their posts makes my soul bleed.
2. Sony lied to their consumer base about it.

So, there’s a bunch of old guys that have no idea what your standard high school kid sounds or acts like. No surprise there. The posts actually sound like a 45-year-old man attempting to regurgitate conversations he overheard from his 14-year-old daughter’s room, but failing miserably.

Lying, on the other hand, is gonna be a problem. You can try to deceive your market if you want. In fact, it’s encouraged. This is what McDonald’s is attempting to do with it’s ‘cool black guy/nerdy white guy’ campaign. I can’t find a script right now, but one commercial starts out with the nerdy guy asking for a sandwich, and the cool guy behind him comes in with, “Go for the meal, G!” and it’s just downhill from there.

The point is, McDonald’s is trying to identify with their target audience as well, albeit poorly (At least I think so. Is anyone buying this crap?), but they are trying to make you forget that it’s a McDonald’s sponsored commercial. They aren’t going with the classic, “Here’s why you should buy from McDonald’s today…” ad that dominated the market years ago. Quality and service just don’t cut it anymore. You have to take the listener out of the “I’m listening to a commercial” position that they’re starting in. McDonald’s isn’t lying to you like Sony was, they’re attempting to employ effective marketing strategy.

There’s a host of reasons that I think McDonald’s current campaign is awful, but the most blaring is that, even though they attempt to pull you out of it, the product is so in your face, that you can’t help but remember what you’re listening to. I know exactly what it is. It’s a paid advertisement attempting to lure me into buying a product. Here’s where Geico is different. The beauty of Geico’s caveman campaign is that they don’t insist on their company being the centerpiece of the ad. They are content just entertaining me and making me laugh, and even though they are just barely mentioned or pictured, I remember Geico, and I associate them with hilarity.

Another company doing the same things is GoDaddy. They just had their second SuperBowl commercial rejected by CBS (View here, it’s hilarious.) While the guy is using GoDaddy throughout the commercial, I don’t even notice because I’m too busy laughing at their potty humor. Incidentally, GoDaddy’s URL registration rates aren’t that competitive. A bit of shopping around would find you a better deal most of the time, but I’ve bought a couple domains from them, including this one. I’ve liked the company ever since the first SuperBowl ad. What can I say? I’m shallow.

The bottom line is that while I don’t know the numbers, I know what I like. The proof is in the pudding as they say, and maybe McDonald’s campaign is gaining them a big bowl of urban pudding, but I’m nothing short of annoyed by it. Consumers, in general, are not complicated, or overly intelligent (myself included), but you have to know how to play to their stupidity.

I don’t like oatmeal, but if I saw a Quaker Oats commercial featuring two guys farting on each other, I’d definitely give it a second thought next time I passed their product in the grocery story.