letters to the editor

SILLY SUB PROGRAMS

In fact, Ms. Roberts and Mr. Cruise do receive carfare! Plus free housing, all meals, about everything you can think of…and they do (“Vanity, All Is Vanity,” Curmudgeon-at-Large, DIRECT, July).

Point is that this is the real problem: a culture based on a moral slide since JFK stole the election in 1960 through the death of the Democratic Party in 1968, taking in the Clinton years of “Social Elite Movements.”

In our personal relationships, new is better! We take for granted the present wife, voter or customer. Except for recent expansion into new markets (I know) we stopped all media advertising over five years ago. Focused on improving customer relations, we even had to go to a one-to-one program that cut revenue by 33%. Once that bitter pill is down, the focus is then only on the customer: improve the relationship by performance.

When advertisers decide that the magazine’s quality — and its base customer — become important, then these silly subscription programs will end. Saving everyone a lot of time and money.

It’s important to focus on the “offer” being real. And rewards for loyal customers are the key to lower advertising costs. Ours were in the 7% range. With direct programs, we find an extra 4% at the bottom line. In an industry where 1.5% is normal profit, a loyal customer base is worth a 260% increase in sales.

We stole our goal from an old company ad from the 1950s: “Selling products that don’t come back to people who do.” The magazines should consider that.
Ellis Baxter
Audio Forest, Atlanta

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE

Thanks to Herschell Gordon Lewis for his comments on language and usage (“Whom Said That? Me Did,” Curmudgeon-at-Large, DIRECT, June). I would agree wholeheartedly with the confusion — dare I let someone off on this one — over what case to use with prepositions or as the objects of verbs. It sounds pompous. (“Throw it to him and I”?)

I would also like to add a few others.

• Failing to use the subjunctive with the conditional phrase, “I wish I was” instead of “I were.”

• That horrible Apple admonishment “Think different.” Shouldn’t it be “differently,” or do they mean “Think [new category] Different”? Would that take another type of syntax?

• I hate to read poorly proofed prose in public (sorry about the alliteration) when it is misspelled. We often see a slide at the movies for a local spa urging us to “Rejuavuanate” ourselves. Ergle.
  Karen Smith
  Mill Valley, CA

BEWARE OF DOG

(Re: “Playing With a Full Deck,” Pushing the Envelope, DIRECT, July.) Station a dog outside your window to make your cat more “productive”? Now there’s a marketing strategy we haven’t considered! I’ll share it with our merchandising people. Thanks for the idea.
Shawn M. Underwood
Communications Representative, Petco Animal Supplies Inc.
San Diego

STICK TO THE BASICS

Tom Collins’ analysis and criticism of the “Whoop-dee-do” ad for the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau (The Makeover Maven, DIRECT, July) seems right on target. It’s almost a straw man, too easy to tear apart.

I would argue, though, that his makeover leaves much to be desired as well. I assume these are magazine space ads (not direct mail pieces), and that the original intent was to target families with young children seeking vacation destinations.

• Talk to the prospect

  “Whoop-dee-do” is a foolish word choice, agreed. I can only guess that the writer was looking for a “kid” word to immediately position the ad. (“Cool!” might have been a better choice…though I still question the approach.) But the language in the makeover speaks to an older target, the wrong target. We are looking for parents aged 35-45 with kids aged 7-15 (a hot demographic for using hotel services right now). They use a young vernacular and are likely very computer- and Internet-literate.

  Tom’s closing paragraph entirely misses the excitement of a Web site experience, for example, and talks instead about the “space” (as if it were a well-fitting shoe or a roomy pair of pants). Wrong age group, wrong language still.

• The makeover looks like direct mail

  The makeover ad fails as a full-page magazine ad, and I could not recommend it to a client. The layout lacks visual focus, and it is static and crowded. In the noisy marketplace of a magazine, it’s a quick page-turner and a waste of the thousands needed just to buy the space. A direct response piece is different and the makeover may work better in that context.

• It’s too crowded!

  The point of running any image is the dramatic impact it delivers, especially in advertising. Granted, the generic image in the original fails, but the 12 images packed together into the makeover turn into a blur. In this case, three or four carefully chosen larger images, professionally laid out on the page, might have done the best job.

Having said that, let me add that I look forward to Tom’s “Maven” column — and to Herschell Gordon Lewis’ column — with every issue of DIRECT. Thanks for reminding us that the basics remain basic to success.
Henry Kornman

AGENCY RESPONDS

My client and I were most amused by Tom Collins’ recent makeover of our “Whoop-dee-do” ad in the July issue of DIRECT. Of course, we couldn’t disagree with him more, so I am compelled to respond to his remarks.

Let me start by saying all of our marketing efforts are developed based on extensive primary and secondary research. When we began defining San Diego’s brand foundation in 1997, the YP&B/Yankelovich National Leisure Travel Monitor told us that people interested in visiting here are motivated by the intangibles. It is not about all the stuff we have to do in San Diego, it’s about the experience.

Based on this knowledge, Tom’s “makeover” is way off the mark. He paints a picture of San Diego that is trite and expected. And he has broken one of the cardinal rules of the advertising business — always focus on benefits vs. features. Nowhere in the “makeover” does he note any real benefit in coming to San Diego to participate in any of these things he has to offer. (And “Fun Diego!” doesn’t cut it as a benefit.) He asks, “Do people really say ‘Whoop-dee-do’ in moments of joy anymore?” and I counter, do people really say “Aw, shucks”?

A good ad is one that reflects the true personality and qualities of the brand in its copy and art direction. It is one that takes into consideration trends and changing consumer habits. It is one that gives the reader credit for having an IQ high enough to figure out that “70 miles of beaches + world-class attractions = the ideal family room” — and that is certainly more motivating than the “mother of all vacations.”

Perhaps what I find most disconcerting is that Tom chose to take one print ad and judge its effectiveness without even knowing the measures for success. Had Tom done his homework, he would know that, for one thing, we do not consider this a direct response ad — its primary purpose is to build a brand image. For another, this is one in a series of eight ads, each with a different product focus.

Beyond that, the print campaign, known as “Expressions,” is only one small part of our overall marketing program. So to say it is ineffective is just plain ignorant.

The No. 1 objective of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau is to “develop new markets to maintain market share,” followed by the No. 2 objective, which is to “continue to build the San Diego brand.” Based on concrete, objective results, our efforts have been extremely successful.

Ponder this:

• In 2002, San Diego was the only destination in our competitive set to gain market share.

• An extensive marketing impact study revealed that for every dollar we spend, $77 is returned on future travel to the destination.

• The aforementioned study also revealed a 50% unaided recall of our advertising, with 86% indicating they had positive feelings about the ads.

• The campaign won the platinum award for best destination advertising at Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International’s Adrian Awards.

• Web site traffic has tripled over the course of the campaign.

What makes San Diego such a unique place to visit is not that we are “one of the most attraction-studded tourist destinations in the country.” It is that we are blessed with a lifestyle that allows people the freedom to enjoy life on their terms, whether they live here or are simply visiting.

I am fortunate my creative team is not so inept that they do not understand this. And I am equally fortunate not to have a dictatorial client who doesn’t know advertising from her elbow. On behalf of these folks, and others as equally talented, I would suggest that Tom Collins choose his “makeover” candidates more carefully.
Tammy Haughey
General Manager, Di Zinno Thompson
San Diego

Tom Collins replies: I appreciate the time and trouble it took to write your detailed critique of my San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau ad makeover. It was an extremely thoughtful and effective rebuttal and deserves an equally thoughtful reply. I can imagine how both hurtful and laughable it must be for some so-called expert who knows nothing about your mandate and your research to second-guess what you have done and purport to show how it could be done better.

As a preface to the following exploration of our points of disagreement, let me say that I have the utmost respect for your agency’s obvious professionalism. Any seeming sarcasm in my column was intended really more as an expression of my concern about certain flaws in a great deal of mainstream advertising in general, when considered from a direct marketing professional’s point of view.

1. You say your research told you that people interested in visiting San Diego are motivated by the intangibles of “the San Diego experience” rather than all the stuff you can do there. But what would the experience be without all the stuff? If you were to do a television commercial on the San Diego experience, as indeed you may have done, I suspect it would include a vivid montage of all the stuff you can do in San Diego, not just a leisurely shot of people having fun on a San Diego beach. And when I go to the San Diego Web site, what do I find? All that unimportant “stuff” that I provided glimpses of in my makeover. (I agree that my picture captions are a little mundane, and with more familiarity with the product and more room to express it they could do a better job of communicating the quality of the San Diego experience.)

2. You say I have broken one of the cardinal rules of the advertising business, “always focus on benefits vs. features.” First of all, I’m not sure that is one of the cardinal rules — I have seen many effective ads announcing exciting new features of the product or service (with the benefits pointed out where relevant, of course). The benefit I chose for my makeover was “fun,” which appears both in my headline and subhead, and which to me is a basic benefit. The only basic benefit word I could find in your ad was a mention of savings in the planning kit offer. And it does seem to me that “70 miles of beaches” is a feature. (I still don’t understand the reference to “the ideal family room.”)

3. You say the purpose of your ads is to build brand image rather than maximize responses. I really do believe in brand-image advertising when powerfully and effectively used, but it is not necessarily antithetical to maximized response advertising. Take, for example, the direct marketing ads that run almost every week in The New York Times Book Review offering recorded college lectures by The Teaching Company. I would imagine that by this time most readers of the Book Review have a very strong, favorable image of the Teaching Company brand whether they have ever ordered from the company or not. A gentleman in our field named John Stevenson used to speak persuasively about “the other 98%” — namely, those who do not respond to a direct response ad or mailing but are affected by it anyway.

4. I have to be impressed, and I am, by your research showing that every advertising dollar spent has returned $77 in future travel and that your Web site traffic has tripled since the campaign began. You are to be congratulated. Our main disagreement comes down to a difference in viewpoints on advertising research. While I do not question the validity or value of your research, as a direct marketing professional I cannot help but feel it would be strengthened by adding to it our own powerful form of research — namely, A-B split run testing, in which two or more different advertisements are given absolutely equal exposure in the same issue of the same publication and the results measured and compared. This enables us to precisely measure the effectiveness of changing as little as a single word in the headline, something other forms of marketing research can’t come close to. Without that, you have no precise method of testing specific new ad appeals and elements and comparing them with your control ads. So no matter how successful your ads seem to be, you will never know how much more resultful they might be.

In reviewing my makeover, I have decided in retrospect that it should have included a stronger appeal to call for the vacation planning kit, even though visiting the Web site presumably accomplishes most of the same purpose.

But let’s assume I corrected this and our two ads were subjected to an A-B split run test. There should be one of two outcomes:

• Your ad pulls more responses than mine, leaving me without a leg to stand on.

• My ad pulls more requests than yours, while arguably having less brand-building effect. But in the latter case, why would an ad that motivates people more strongly to investigate and which gets vacation planning kits into the hands of more prospects — why and how could such an ad have less brand effect? My argument would be that, on the contrary, it would be doing a better job of building the brand while contacting and cultivating more immediate prospects.

In such a test, my ad might well be the loser. But I’m afraid we’ll never know.

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