A Winning Strategy Loses by Failing to Consider the Human Element
Some folks have a nose for news. I guess I have a nose for bad marketing, as I shared earlier with Does Your Ad Have a Big But? Here’s another example.
We’re driving home from church – it’s pitch black. After a couple minutes I point to the windshield and say, “What’s that?” Somebody had stuck a big advertising flier, or something, under the passenger side windshield wiper. First reaction from wife, daughter, and me – How low. Peddling dry cleaning to people in church. Grr.
Doggone dry cleaners! Just as I’m forgetting everything I learned in the last hour and begin cursing them, swearing I’ll never take in another pair of pants, the flier starts flapping in the wind – loudly. At first I thought I broke a fanbelt. It sounds like Vanna White is in the car spinning the Wheel of Fortune. I have visions of an elderly couple heading home from church, hearing this, thinking their engine blew up, and calling 911. Talk about interruption marketing.
All in all, not very effective. Not putting customers in a receptive frame of mind. When we get home, I see that the flier is from a guy running for the Senate. Seems like a nice guy. He’s promoting family values. Good message for people attending church, but bad execution. Failed to consider people might not notice a flier in total darkness. Failed to consider people find this sort of advertising more cheesy than senatorial. Failed to consider that on top of the nonstop, mudslinging TV ads and never ending telemarketing calls, people might consider this the last straw, consider that church is the last refuge from political campaigning.
Over to You
Do you think this marketing effort won the candidate more votes than it lost him?
How would you have reacted?
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content marketing.
Whenever I find flyers stuck in my windshield, it’s usually of the “call this number for a good time” variety.
Nonetheless, it’s very annoying to have to take flyer off windshield and find a trashcan.
Perhaps the very first time someone hit on the idea of littering strangers’ cars, it was a hit because of its uniqueness. But now?
I wouldn’t vote for the guy. Only because I wouldn’t know who he was, since I wouldn’t have read the flyer.
Just crumpled it up and thrown it away.
Hi Marisa, You’ll be glad to know that the candidate lost big. I’m sure many people share our dislike of “windshield marketing”. Come to think of it … have you ever heard anyone say they like it? It’s far more unpopular than even telemarketing, and yet – it goes on.
Brad,
I’m a little late weighing in here, but do you think that one reason we find it so annoying could be that it’s the same technique used for issuing parking tickets? Subconscious association at work! Everyone who advertises anything really needs to take the psychological aspects of the campaign and its methodology into consideration if they expect positive results.
Jeanne, You’re on to something. It’s like a squad car pulling you over on the highway. A burly policeman swaggers over to your car. You roll down the window in a cold sweat and he asks you if you’d like to buy a ticket to the Policeman’s Ball. Maybe practitioners of this style of marketing are counting on a sense of relief to make sales!
Your police officer analogy would be quite an extreme example–and one that I suspect would leave us with a few other emotions besides relief once it was over! One never knows for certain what these marketers have in mind with some of the advertising tactics they employ; but, if a prospect feels more annoyance than relief as a result of their strategy, I’d be inclined to believe their strategy failed.
Of course, there’s always the tactic of “Get our name out there at all costs, whether in a positive or negative way, because name recognition and publicity are everything.” That could be another technique employed by advertisers who use our windshields as repositories for their ads. The more annoyed they make us, the more likely we are to remember their name. Perhaps we’ll mention their name to someone else, who will do the same, and eventually people will forget everything except the name, which will come to mind when they prepare to vote, make a buying decision, etc. Some people may even admire them precisely because of their blatant advertising tactics!
Hi Brad,
It always amazes me how many businesses/organisations play this kind of numbers game. That if we pay a student a token wage to stick several thousand flyers under the wipers of cars, we’ll convert some people (inexcusable pun), won’t we?!
It’s old school, unimaginative, uninformed, lazy, “click & whirr” marketing tactics. Always great stimulation for me to raise the bar and improve what I do.
Shine on, Brad.
Robin
Robin, I don’t understand it, either. I guess you can make a case for chasing a 2% response if you don’t care how you come off to the other 98%. A one-time direct mail offer might fit into this category. But to chase 2 votes at the risk of losing 98 – that makes no sense to me on any level. Tellingly, political candidates in the U.S. have embraced social media and can be found on Twitter and Facebook in large number. Social media was certainly instrumental in vote gathering efforts among the young in the last presidential campaign, where candidate Obama had a massive Twitter following.
I hate that tactic as well, although for politicians it might make sense. Your choices are limited and so you might get over the irritation before checking the box. I have to assume that’s the thinking behind all the robot calls we now get.
I have to say I can’t remember ever getting a flyer encouraging me to call for a good time like Marisa mentions. My car must be in even worse shape than I thought it was.
Fred, You’re probably right, perhaps more so in a general election than a primary, as this was. Anyway, after the snowstorm passes you should take your car in for a detailing. We don’t want you missing out on windshield marketing opportunities.
I’m with Marisa; I’d probably have tossed it without even knowing what it advertised. Plus been irked because they came on church property to boot! Still, it falls into the “noise” category for life these days, right? When it comes to politics, it seems the social media model of engagement is still working well. If I were a candidate, that’s the one I’d try first.
Hi Robert, Relying on social media probably wouldn’t cut it for most electorates – the majority of voters are more reachable on TV, radio, etc. But there are good ways and bad ways to use any communication medium, and I don’t consider my car a communication medium!
Seems kind of tacky to me, but oh, Brad, I LOVE your cartoon for today! (I mean, how could I not? Being a knitter, sheep-lover and spinner of wool?)
Deb, Glad you like the toon! Feel free to use it on your knitting blog.
I wanted to add the most annoying form of “windshield advertising”…the business card stuck in the driver’s or passenger’s side window. I’ve found that most of the time, they drop down into my car door.
Laura, I hear ya. Maybe they should design cars with little mail slots so advertisers can place their ads inside rather than slap them on the windshield.
Candidates need a way to reach voters. I believe the best way is to post signs on the busy intersections. Those serve as a reminder to look them up and study their backgrounds. It’s tough for them especially since fewer people subscribe and read newspapers. Flyers are definitely not the way to go. Some are taking it to Facebook — smart as long as they inform.
Wish my city wouldn’t schedule so many elections in a year. Wish it’d be a rule to have no more than one full election per year (this would not include primaries or special elections).
Flyer in my windshield = trash without a peek. Don’t bother.
Meryl, Does it seem to you as though we have one, long, continuous election going on? We must have gotten 300 telephone campaign messages in January – no exaggeration. I think a lot of voters are on information overload. This is not healthy for our republic.
Brad,
So, a politician is advertising via use of a windshield. What else do people find on their windshield? The answer – apart from very cheap advertising – parking tickets. Yep, I don’t know what it’s like in America, but over here, if you get something on your windscreen, it’s usually a parking infringement notice or an advertisement for some completely unwanted service.
Now, if I were a politician, I would want my face seen around sporting events, festivals or other fun places which people associate with positive emotions. But the sight of anything on the windshield almost always elicits a negative state of mind. I would not want my face in the same space as the parking ticket any more than any reputable brand wants to advertise in the same space as junky spam.
Associations with places which people associate with positive experiences help to build the kind of positive image which politicians would want. I highly doubt that the same could be said for any association with being in the same space as parking infringement notices.
Andrew, The same holds true here in the U.S. When you return to your car parked on a city street and see a slip of paper under the windshield wiper, you cringe. Nope, this fellow would have been much better off renting a blimp and flying over the state. Blimps are fun, which as you say, is exactly the emotion to go for.
Brad – this same thing occurred in our little town during the last election. Two candidates were running for mayor. One decides that the church parking lot was a great place to prospect for voters with notices on cars.
The next week the priest goes on a rampage about the use of the church parking lot for campaigning. The candidate who thought that was a good idea ended up losing big for the position.
Ken, Great story. I wonder if the politician in question supports the idea of separation of church and state.