Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Every Zip Code

This ad appeared in USA Today. Great placement for this ad; it appears on the page that features state-by-state news blurbs (short paragraphs about the top news under a bold header for each state in the nation). Tomorrow is officially the first day of autumn, but hey - with temps in the 90's here in PA, we're still in "sprinkler" mode. So this ad passes "go." As someone who does a lot of work for Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies nationwide (independent licensees of the BlueCross BlueShield Association), I'm pleased to see this cheerful, simple and well-placed ad, in light of recent and upcoming health care reforms, promoting the brand we all know and trust.

Two Takes On Freebies: Redbox and Mars Chocolate

Redbox giveth and Redbox taketh away. 

Maybe you've seen their big red boxes outside your local grocery store, where you can rent DVD movies for just $1 (take that, Blockbuster and Comcast Pay Per View!). It's also where you can get FREE movie rentals every Monday of the week. Or should I say was ...

For quite some time now, on Monday mornings, Redbox would text message people who registered their cell phones online with a FREE Movie promotional code. The code was only good that day to save the normal $1 fee on your Monday rental. Well, yesterday, Redbox alerted their loyal customers, via the email shown above, that their FREE Movie Mondays rental promotion is ending on May 11th. But to be the good guys in this bad economy, Redbox is going to keep the promotion going through the summer, on a monthly basis (not weekly) starting on June 1st. How nice is that?

Actually, is there anything better than FREE? It's "the strongest word in the English language," according to many direct marketing professionals. And it sure makes for hard-to-resist offer copy when you can say, "FREE Trial Offer, no strings attached." 

In an About.com article, "Creating Powerful Promotional Marketing Coupons, Contests & Samples Drive Sales for Business," Darrell Zahorsky has this to say about the topic ...

"Do free samples work? Giving your product away for free may seem profit limiting but consider the case of Seth Godin. Godin released a book called 'The Idea Virus' in 2000. Unlike other authors, he did not charge for the book instead gave it away for free as an e-book. In less than 30 days over 400,000 copies were downloaded. This created a buzz about the book and even through free, people bought the hard cover; making the book #5 on the Amazon best seller list."

And Redbox isn't the only one who gets the power of free samples and is giving stuff away this summer ...

The Mars marketing team is running a FREE chocolate on Fridays promotion with their Real Chocolate Relief Act (and getting a little governmental on us with that name). They've even developed a graphic "seal" for this official business initiative. 

The Mars ad that ran in yesterday's USA Today says, "Every week through September, Mars is giving way 250,000 free* real chocolate coupons for your favorite Mars brands. Authentic chocolate made with 100% cocoa butter. Enjoy one on us today and, for more free* chocolate, visit realchocolate.com on Fridays." 

The promotion, per the ad's disclaimer, will run 5/8/09 through 9/25/09. (I'm checking the website now, and having trouble linking ... is it my browser or the Mars site?) 

A few months back, I wrote about Mars' Dove chocolatiers franchise. I'm extremely impressed with what the company is doing to move forward - in this economy, you'd think FREE samples might be a bad idea, but Mars is going gung-ho with the idea. You can read more about the Mars FREE chocolate Friday giveaways here.

And don't forget to get your freebies! (My favorite Mars brand: 3 Musketeers. Movie: the latest comedy will do!)

Clever Aflac Duck Spills The Ink In Space Ad Spread

Aflac is to accident and hospital indemnity insurance what GEICO is to auto insurance. They both have catchy, odd names that are very untraditional - not your typical "American National Life & Home" type of thing. And both are highly advertised national brands with a strong "mascot" strategy to generate awareness and recall for their products (GEICO has the animated gecko, and Aflac has the white duck).

Recently, Aflac took out a bunch of space in USA Today to run a series of ads, each promoting various benefits of having Aflac's protection and reasons to go to the Aflac web site. The ads were numbered #1 through #5, each with the heading "get the Aflacts" on a white piece of paper held up by the familiar Aflac duck (does he or she have a name, I wonder?). The first ad said, "Aflac is different from health insurance; it's insurance for daily living." Aflac does sell life, dental, vision and other types of insurance, but these ads are focused on the company's accident and hospital indemnity products. Nevertheless, while their 4-color ads were very eye-catching, simple to read and quickly communicated key benefits, what was truly outstanding was a bit of clever creativity ...

Ink splashes! 

Next to the 4th ad in the lower right corner of the spread, Aflac media buyers bought the lower left quadrant and filed it with benign, fake newspaper text (at the very top of the copy you can see the word "Advertisement") - and over the type, they splayed some blue ink, as if it dripped from the duck's pen in the ad above it. 

Nice creative touch that helps make these strong copy and graphic ads stand out even more!

Is this a trend?

Click on image to view larger.

Here's another "copy-driven" ad. All type, no graphic other than the Boys & Girls Clubs of America logo. If you visit the organization's web site at www.bgca.org, you'll see a very attractive and highly visual home page. There's plenty of visual fodder on the site around which to build a space ad for this organization. Which leads me to ask are we seeing a trend of more copy-driven ads nowadays and why? To save on photo fees? It behooves a direct marketer to create ads that stand out from the clutter - and especially in newspapers where you have a sea of type with scads of articles on virtually every page, why would one shun a photograph or some other attention-getting graphic?

But the ad shown above, which appeared in the business section of USA Today yesterday, sure does start off great. What a fabulous headline:

"IF YOU THINK NOW IS A TOUGH TIME TO BE IN
BUSINESS, TRY BEING A KID."

Then come over 30 lines of Courier type, some of which I greatly admire.

This Boys & Girls Clubs of America ad does a few things right, as opposed to the copy-driven ad for Hyatt Place featured in a previous post.

At least the type in the Boys & Girls Clubs of America ad is easy-to-read black. And while Courier tends to be a highly legible font, it is a bit lightweight for the grainy newsprint paper. (You have to consider the paper an ad is printing on when designing it.) 

And while the copy in the Boys & Girls Clubs of America ad is well-written, I would have cut the opening and started the ad with the sentence in the 2nd paragraph:

"When a local youth agency fails, there are no severance packages. No bonuses. No second chances. Just scores of children with one less haven to turn to during non-school hours."

Adding a photo to this ad might have given the message a little more weight. But this is major - the call to action at the bottom should have DEFINITELY been set in BOLD type to help make it stand out and drive response.

What do you think? Could this ad use a visual? Is Courier the right font for this? What about a different kind of layout? Maybe an "open letter" look, where the ad would appear on letterhead, signed by the president of the organization? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Hyatt Place Space Ad Gone Wrong

If you thought this ad was hard to read, then you are not alone. The headline/offer/first sentence is so long that I stopped reading about 1/3 of the way into this ad. It's easy to miss the main message; it's all the way at the bottom, under the logo: "Only 3 days to save 30%. Call 888 HYATT HP or visit HPLimitedTimeOffer.com." 

Yes, bad typesetting can kill an ad. This was supposed to be one of those ads that are "copy driven." After all (thinks the Account Executive/Marketing Strategist/Creative Director), prospective customers for Hyatt Place are educated. High brow. They read long copy. Right? Maybe. So they will read this, right? Maybe not.

Talk about reader-unfriendly colors for the type. I would have went with the burgundy type for the majority of the headline-as-body-text (it's darker, easier to read) and used the lighter "ochre" color for the "highlights." At the very least. But take a look at the Hyatt Place logo. It's chock-full of color:

Why not pick up something more springy, like say the periwinkle, lime green or robin's egg blue? 

Whatever. 

Now there's only 1 day left to get the 30% off. Hurry! Act now! : )

Got a lot of money? Don't know what to do with it?

Buy a town. Not just any town - Garryownen, MT, "one of the most historic sites in Custer Country and a 'must see' for those interested in ... the history of the American West," according to the Custer Battlefield Museum. It's actually for sale ...

As far as space ads go, this could be a little better with:

a) a more "robust" and "engaging" headline

and

b) body copy in upper and lower case, versus all caps which is hard to read.

The layout is OK, resembling a "Wanted" poster, which would no doubt appeal to history buffs and people with a love for the Old West. Anyway, imagine owning this town where The Battle of Little Bighorn began. It would be like owning Gettysburg, PA. 

Wonder how much it's going for???? Have a good weekend all.

NY Credit Unions Put People Over Profit in Ad

With banks losing a lot of credibility over the past few months due to the mortgage debacle, why aren't more people flocking to their local credit unions?

CreditUnionsFORYOU.com isn't missing a beat and begs the question with this ad, shown on the left, which appeared recently in the NY Times. This ad spells out the New York credit union credo of local, not-for-profit financial institutions that are owned by the people who use them - New Yorkers, their customers - not shareholders. 

People who are "looking for a safe and secure financial institution they can trust" are urged to click on the CreditUnionsFORYOU.com web site to learn more.

The tagline written at the bottom of the ad sums it all up very nicely with the words, "Credit Unions. Open To You. True to You." 

If you want to read more about Credit Union marketing, check out this web site and poke around. Some interesting stuff there. And to find a credit union near you, you can click on the CreditUnionsFORYOU.com web site or click here.

Dove Recruits Chocolatiers Via DR ad in USA Today

Are home parties a good source of income? 

This ad in yesterday's USA Today caught my eye. The headline plays to current events - and the pay off is yummy! 

With today's tough economy and jobs being hard to find, the makers of Dove chocolate are promoting their latest "product" - not a new ice cream bar or box set, but rather chocolate parties held by chocolatiers! It's a new twist on the Tupperware ladies of yore that taps into the yearning many a woman (or man) has had to make a living making chocolates. It's so very Martha ... so very Parisian! So very smart on Dove's part. They call it Dove Chocolate Discoveries.

The ad features a testimonial from Jill C. Young, Chocolatier. Says she, "I do chocolate tasting parties a couple of times a week. People get to hang out with their friends and sample chocolate. Chocolate mousse. Chocolate fondue, how about a chocolate martini?" She goes on to say, "Some Chocolatiers work part-time, but I'm in it to build a career. Right now, I earn enough to cover part of the mortgage and keep all four kids on the swim team..."  Sweet! She must be selling a lot of chocolate.

The ad's call to action is either phone (1-866-922-3683) or web. And they're very upfront about the cost of starting the program: $149, which includes training, equipment and products to do four chocolate tasting parties. 

Good ad: Good use of testimonial copy to convey the main selling points of the new program. And great headline! Nice use of photography, too.

Bad ad: The phone number is puny and should be down by the web site too.

So ... what do you think? Think Dove is onto something or peddling down a well worn path were many a lingerie party and Southern Lady Home party and knock-off handbag parties have long trodden? How about the ad - like it, love it?