Quick. If you were paging through a magazine and came across this Breville blender ad, what would your impression be in the first five or 10 seconds?
I arbitrarily suggest that time span because I'm convinced it's when the battle for prospective customers' attention is won or lost. In those first few seconds, a reader decides “Here's something I should get or know about right now” (when the ad encourages action of some kind), or “Here's something I should keep in mind” (favorable attitude formation, better known as brand-image advertising). An ad also might use a combination of the two approaches.
My first impression was that Breville's ad might be promoting a teenage horror movie. We see an unpleasant-looking (to me) young man sticking out his tongue. Superimposed on this is a pattern of blue snowflakes falling. But wait, there's more.
In the upper right-hand corner there's a small picture of…a blender! That provides a valuable clue. But it's not immediately clear that the subject of the ad is blenders. Nowhere does the word “blender” appear in readable type. Someone looking for a gift idea might easily pass it by. And in the lower right-hand corner there's Breville's brand name — which you probably never heard of, although it's very popular in its native Australia — followed by a clever play on words, “Counter thinking.”
But what has the cadaverous young man tasting snowflakes with his tongue got to do with Breville and its blender?
To solve that mystery, we need plenty of time and our trusty magnifying glass to read the following words of text in the ever-popular tiny type so favored by art directors:
No two snowflakes are exactly alike. Even when they come out of a blender. It's one of technology's little miracles. In just seconds, the Breville blender transforms ice into pure snow. A piece of magic made possible by its Hemisphere Bowl/Blade System. Because the unique shape of the blade and jar eliminates all blending dead zones, it can make smoothies with absolutely no lumps and cocktails with the finest flakes of ice. From here on in, every day is a snow day.
So there you have it. The mystery is solved. It's an ad for a blender so powerful and effective it can turn ice cubes into snow. The copy is not too bad, although it doesn't stand up too well under close scrutiny. Is it really true that the finely ground particles of ice produced by the Breville have the same geometrical symmetry as actual snowflakes? And is it really important that no two of these flakes are alike? Do other blenders grind ice into snowflakes which are all exactly alike?
But it's the copy strategy that's most questionable. The ad is neither sufficiently action-generating nor attitude-forming.
If you search for blenders on Google's Froogle site, you will be offered a choice of a couple of hundred makes and models, ranging from a Hamilton Beach Blendmaster for $17.99 to a one-gallon commercial blender for $781. Along the way, you'll encounter such familiar brand names as Waring, KitchenAid, Hamilton Beach, Oster, Braun and Cuisinart. Wow. Against such competition, what chance does a $199 blender from this little-known company have?
Theoretically, one answer would be to launch a powerful brand-image campaign. But to make a dent in public consciousness would cost big bucks. Maybe $50 million-plus a year, more than the size of the potential sales increase might realistically justify.
Or Breville could require that every advertising effort pay for itself and more in direct sales. But that would then run the risk of offending Breville retailers by seeming to compete with them for sales.
The $50 million-plus image campaign might be used to promote an image of Breville chic, since its appliances are smartly designed as well as efficient. Perhaps showing a Breville blender on the kitchen counter in one of a series of multimillion-dollar celebrity mansions. Or positioning the brand as more fashionable than Waring, Oster, Cuisinart and the rest.
The direct sales ad, on the other hand, might be very crisp, persuasive catalog copy and illustration à la Williams-Sonoma, and could include a strong pull for ordering on Breville's Web site, despite the possibility of alienating its retailers yet again.
But there's a third way, the one I've chosen for my makeover — to combine brand building and product positioning with persuasive catalog selling.
My makeover positions the Breville as the leader among blenders with a flat claim of superiority and uniqueness coupled with a startling picture of a Breville blender seeming to produce an entire mountaintop of snow.
The copy's tone falls somewhere between that of the original ad and a Williams-Sonoma catalog description. Boldface lead-offs assist quick, easy reading of persuasive details.
And it softly asks for a response — which the original ad failed to do — and just as softly promises an opportunity to order online. The direct sales revenue thus generated would at least partially repay the cost of each insertion, allowing more insertions without more net expenditure.
Note the difference in the two approaches to illustration. In the original, the close-up of the young man tasting falling snow has at first glance absolutely no connection to blenders. It wasn't even clear to me at first why he was sticking his tongue out at me. Rebellious youth? The illustration is an example of the common (mistaken) idea that first you should shock the reader with a “stopper” of a picture, no matter how unrelated, and then strain to draw a connection to the ad's basic message.
But the best illustrated ads use graphics to reinforce the verbal message and dramatize the unique selling proposition or unique brand personality.
In my makeover, the product's positioning as “the peak of perfection” is reinforced by the photo of a snowcapped mountain peak, and the blender's distinctive snowmaking capability is dramatized by the blender seeming to pour out a mountainside of snow.
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THOMAS L. COLLINS (thomas.l.collins@verizon.net) has been a direct marketing copywriter, admaker, agency creative director and co-author of four books on marketing. He is currently an independent creative and marketing consultant based in Portland, OR.
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