It’s not TV, But We’ll Sure as Hell Advertise on It

A quick note about something I found interesting last week. HBO bought some time in the 9:00 hour on NBC last Thursday for Flight of the Conchords spots. This is the first time I can remember HBO buying broadcast time (If I am wrong, please let me know).  HBO and NBC are owned by different conglomerates, making this a unique purchase.
I think it is a great buy.  The demos for The Office and 30 Rock have to be pretty similar to FOC, and 30 Rock is attracting a higher income demo, which assists HBO’s quest for possible subscribers.

You’ve been laid off, now enjoy our commercials…

On Thursday, I was informed that my position with GE Capital would be eliminated.  After a few pulls on a bottle of bourbon with some good company, I decided to turn on 30 Rock, an NBC show that is owned by GE.  I sent a text to a former coworker comparing it to seeing a former girlfriend with another guy.  While Jack Donaghy was high atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza, I was pondering my next move.

Surely, thousands of people will be let go from postions, with word spreading to their family, friends, professional nemeses, and network.  And the company who let them go has a fiduciary duty to their stakeholders to keep turning profits, and that usually includes a mix of advertising and marketing.  But here is the question, should these companies take a brief break from advertising to let the dust settle after major layoffs?

The news of layoffs is going to be negative PR and is generally not helping stock prices (this week’s biggest job-cutters, GE and Citi, both saw share prices fall throughout the week).  Additionally, these job cuts are likely known to be coming in advance and surely in enough time to limit media buys. 

In a must-read post on the Ad Contrarian blog, Sharon Krinsky of Hoffman/Lewis notes that the message must change in a bad economy, but I would contend that the frequency should be briefly altered as well.  Probably only a matter of a couple weeks, but at the same time those two weeks give a company the ability to recover from some of the bad press, stay out of the limelight as a faceless corporation, and even save some money for buys when the dust has settled from the layoff.

RECESSION – F*#% it

I’ll start this post with an anecdote.   In a previous life, I was a Sales Manager for hotel rooms in South Lake Tahoe.  I interviewed for the same position twice, as I was passed up the first time around.  In the first round of interviews, I was asked what I would do for our client if a competitor hotel came in $10 less than me per night.  We were a 4 Star hotel, they were a 3 Star.  I didn’t put enough thought into the answer an immediately answered that if allowable by pricing guidelines, I’d match the competitor’s price.  That’s the wrong answer. 

As businesses operate in this recession, they will have to make choices about their brand and the price people will be paying for it.  Rolex sales are sure to drop.  Fewer people will fly first class.  We might not be requesting the top shelf spirits as much.  But, should a premium brand or service lower prices in order to maintain sales? 

Morgans Hotel Group doesn’t think so.  Owners of San Francisco’s Clift, L.A.’s Mondrian, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Vegas, and six other luxury properties, their “F*#% the Recession” campaign is aiming to directly tell the recession to, well, you know.  A website has been created with youtube videos and even a letter to the recession.  I wonder if that was a Detroit address or possibly office space in the New York Times building.

While the campaign looks appealing and is generating some buzz online, one can only wonder if it will work.  The sentiment of telling off the recession is kind of like yelling at the tv during a sports match.  Proceeding to support a company when one should maybe be saving their money, is akin to paining one’s face to yell at the tv during a sports match.  People are going to be making decisions in the coming months with their pocketbooks on their sleeves.  I just don’t think a campaign that forcefully tries to get people to spend money on luxury goods is prudent, or smart.  If it were me making decisions for these upper-end companies, I’d probably be saving some of those advertising dollars.

The Chief Marketing Officer of Morgans, Scott Williams, recently was quoted in the San Francisco Business Journal. 
“We want to give our guests permission to continue to have fun and to stay with us.  You can bury your head in the sand, discount your rooms, piss your brand away.  But we are a luxury brand and we will act like a luxury brand.  I’m going to look back at this recession and say ‘we didn’t just drop our pants.’” 

I think Williams makes a point here.  However, there is not really a need to create an illogical marketing campaign in order to maintain a luxury brand. 

Is it possible to that the vulgar campaign will scare people away?  I found this interesting quote from a First Lady of luxury, Coco Chanel:
“I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.”

famous person / famous person / famous person / “G”

I’d be hard pressed to think of an advertisement that has made me reach for my laptop and google it so quickly.  Last week, just like many others, I spent a couple minutes searching for the company behind the black and white “G” advertisement featuring dozens of athletes and celebrities.  More than any other recent advertisement, the commercial has been followed by some free public relations via AdAge, Darren Rovell, and the WSJ.  I’m a little late to the party on this one, but I will offer one thought – The  web url shown at the very end is pretty tiny on the screen.  This may have been the riskiest part of the advertisement.  Sure, one could easily find the info after a couple minutes on google, BUT, should the company really let that happen?  Shouldn’t I go straight to their website if I really want to see what the commercial is all about.  When I hopped on google, it led me to the AdAge article.  AdAge probably shouldn’t have the first say on this – right? EDIT – Check that.  The writing at the bottom is not a url, it is corporate entity info.  But still, one could still make the argument that Gatorade could have provided more information to make sure people who did go online would find accurate and correctly branded information.

Otherwise, I think this is a great piece.  Spike Jonze directed it and the work was done by TBWA/Chiat/Day.