Advertising for children.

In New Zealand, the transport industry is more than just businesses with trucks and trailers.

It is a tight-knit community of hardworking individuals that pass on their skills and knowledge to their families and friends – from generation to generation.

The New Zealand Trucking magazine features a kids’ magazine called “Little Truckers Down Under”. This year, we’ve had the pleasure of working with TR Group to put together advertising that resonates with both the adult and children readers of Little Truckers.

View fullsize

Click to view a bigger image.

TR Group is a proud supporter of I AM HOPE and its cause to raise mental health awareness and provide free counselling sessions to Kiwi kids. The first advert is focused on spreading hope and simply being kind to others – a timeless message that everybody needs a reminder of. With this comes a nod to mental health awareness in kids as they navigate the early stages of their lives.

View fullsize

Click to view a bigger image.

The second Little Truckers advert focused on the environment and how every single human in the world has a responsibility to keep our home habitable for generations to come. It has easy tips for sustainability that any kid or grown-up can follow – while simultaneously showcasing the hard work TR Group does in their commitment to a sustainable transport future. This is important because the children who read this will be the ones driving fuel-alternative vehicles.

View fullsize

Click to view a bigger image.

The next ad focuses on the connection between generations of truckies and how extraordinary a career in transport can be. TR Group is a company that prides itself on its people, and what better way than to ‘start them young’. This ad communicates how dreams can turn into reality and a career doing what you love, surrounded by the trucks you love, is a possibility.

View fullsize

Click to view a bigger image.

This takes us to the latest ad, paying homage to the truckies who deliver everything we have – from toys to food and everything in between. This showcases how trucks affect everyone’s life, bringing a sense of gratitude towards these big rigs and their drivers. It’s important to deliver this message for kids to be aware of how essential trucks really are. Often they’re seen as mere vehicles, but really, they are vessels that keep the world moving.

The Little Truckers Down Under adverts for TR Group has been a delight to work on, and we have another one on the horizon. We are grateful to TR Group for allowing us to do what we love as they communicate to kids and adults alike, empowering children to have the right mindset about the industry while waiting for their turn to take the wheel.

New Experiences in Advertising

The only purpose of advertising is to generate sales.

However, in this connected multi-channel world, getting the numbers is nowhere near as simple as it used to be.

No matter who you are or what you sell, your competitors are only a click away, and this ‘Rule of Google’ applies to all.

What worked in the past simply isn’t as effective now, so you need to take a new approach to your advertising to lock down the strongest market position possible.

Effective advertising comes from creative thinking, clever planning, careful budgeting and a long-term commitment. The problem is that there are so many options out there, which means it’s all too easy, and often extremely costly, to get things wrong.

If your messages don’t appeal to, or fail to reach your target market, then they’re worthless. The best advertising message in the world is irrelevant if it doesn’t convey the benefits your customers need or want.

It will always be your customers who decide the worth of your advertising and not you. That’s why it’s vital that you create an advertising plan with a foundation built on modern advertising principles that respect your customer’s inherent right to reject and ignore your messages.

Before you even start planning your advertising, you need to forget (and please say that you have) all about the Product, Price, Place and Promotion mentality that ruled last century’s advertising.

The Four P’s made sense in a world dominated by newspapers and televisions, where marketers could easily reach big, obedient audiences and where product differences lasted.

But today the consumer has control and unlimited choice, audiences have scattered to new platforms, and product differences have meaning for days, not years.

So you need to move towards the Four E’s.

Think of Experience rather than Product, Everyplace rather than Place, Exchange instead of Price, and lastly, Evangelism and not Promotion.

Disregard product advantages and focus on how your customers experience your retail business. Why would they purchase from you instead of your competitors?

Why do they shop online instead of in-store? What influences their buying decisions? How do they use your product and how do they stay linked to you after their purchase?

Thanks to the Internet, consumers can buy products, even the ones you sell, everywhere, so all you have to differentiate both your company and your stores is a unique retail experience.

Once you know what this experience is, you need to consider how you’ll communicate it through your advertising.

Then focus on how you can reach your potential clients when they’re most receptive to engaging with you, rather than interrupting them to grab a fleeting moment of their attention while watching TV or reading a newspaper.

Your advertising must be flexible enough to meet consumers on their terms; today, that’s everywhere and anytime.

Want to know what’s increasingly more important than price to your customers?

Their time. What are you prepared to exchange for this so that you can grab a share of their wallets? You need to offer more than low prices, especially when you consider the real value of your customers – what they bring to you in revenue over their lifetime.

Picture twenty years of interactions with one customer rather than twenty minutes on a single sale and you’ll start to see the bigger picture. In all likelihood, this long-term brand-based thinking is the most important aspect of your advertising and marketing plan.

Retail promotions used to revolve around price drops or constantly pushing product benefits. That’s old hat now that the lowest price is probably online, and the product benefits no longer last.

How can your brand become so inspiring that your customers actively seek it out, choose to engage with it, and then share their enthusiasm with others?

Evangelism is incredibly powerful today because it marries the oldest form of advertising – word of mouth, with the newest – social networking. However, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed or the occasional blog post isn’t enough to create a real sense of involvement.

Frankly, it’s 2022, and you have to stand out to succeed.

If you don't embrace the most up-to-date advertising methods in your strategic planning, then you may as well not bother planning at all.

On the other hand, if you can get the Four E’s approach entrenched into your company’s culture, you’ll soon see how it filters through to and positively influences every aspect of your marketing and advertising efforts.

More importantly, you’ll see the results in your sales figures, and that’s the whole point of the exercise, isn’t it?

Creating effective advertising.

There are four important steps in advertising that you need to be aware of if you want your advertising to be effective.

In this blog post, I'm going to give you insight on what to look for when you want to advertise your product or services. You'll learn some of the best tips and tricks to embrace while you're trying to make decisions on how to market your business. Effective advertising is essential for businesses and organisations that want to get noticed, gain customer loyalty, and generate leads and sales.

1.     You need a big idea.

Most advertising experts agree that good creative concepts rate high on the must-have list. If your creative concept, or the “big idea” as it’s often referred to, is lacking, then no amount of marketing or brand development will help your business.

The big idea is what captures your potential customer's attention in the first place. It gives you a chance to build your brand recognition with them and convey your message — which can lead to greater customer loyalty!

So, how do you know if your big idea is any good?

1.  Do people understand it?

If you look at the concept and think, “I don't get it”, then this is most likely the case for most other people too. The big idea should have told a story or given the user an insight into how to use the product or service. If there are no clues in the concept, it's probably not very good.

2. Does it make you feel something?
Good advertising concepts should give you an emotion; happiness, fear, excitement – something to stir the blood! If the concept doesn't leave you feeling anything at all, then it’s time to start again.

3. Is it memorable?
Memorable concepts tell a story, often with subliminal messages and symbolism. If yours is boring and uninteresting, then people will forget about it after ten seconds of looking at it.

4. Does it create an experience?
Experiences make people feel something, whether they have gone through something similar in their own lives or not. Good concepts touch on experiences that everybody can relate to in one way or another.

 2.     Understanding your customers.

Next on the list is understanding what people want and how your product or service can solve their problems. People don't want to buy products; they want to solve the problem the product or service will solve.

Both advertising and marketing methods should be focused on the benefits and needs of customers. Understanding why prospective customers need your product and what it will mean for them to buy it versus another similar option – that's real marketing.

But customers also need to understand how important the benefits are — is it something customers really want? For example, consumers might like the idea of buying free-range eggs because they believe that chickens enjoy better living conditions. However, they may not be willing to pay much more for this benefit.

 3.     Tell better stories.

The way you tell a story will ultimately determine whether your audience will listen to you or not. There's no such thing as "bad" advertising, only bad storytellers. It's all in how you tell the story that makes it effective or not effective.

Why storytelling works:

1. People have always loved stories. The best way to get your point across is to start off with a good story, even if it isn't directly related to the product you're selling.

2. People don't care about your products; they care about themselves. If you want people to pay attention to your advertisement, make it about them and not about you or your company.

3. Advertising should be entertaining and educational at the same time. If people are enjoying themselves, they'll pay more attention to what you're saying, and if they learn something new, they'll remember it for a long time.

   4. Measure the effectiveness

Advertising is expensive and the only reason to advertise is to get results. Selling products and services is the true measurement of the success of an advertising campaign.

There are several ways to measure the effectiveness of advertising. Among them are:

1. Increase in sales. This can be measured by several factors, including gross sales, increase in market share, and increase in profits.

2. Increase in customer traffic. This can be measured by monitoring foot traffic into a retail location or website traffic for online stores.

3. Increase in brand awareness, recognition, and recall. There are many techniques that can be used to measure these factors, including simple name recall techniques and brand association techniques.

In conclusion, do great work. Measure your success. These are lessons almost any creative director will tell you and it's a testament to how valuable measurement can be for businesses.

Most types of marketing can be quantified in some way, even if it isn't easy. Sales leads won't magically generate on their own every time you advertise, so don't only use that as a barometer of success.

Find ways to track goals (e.g., sales leads, web traffic, brand reputation) and then hold those metrics up against ROI projections to see if you need to make changes or reallocate your budget going forward.

When putting together an advertising campaign, remember why Seth Godin calls marketing a real job because it is one that requires measurement and discipline.

Learning from Advertising

It wasn’t that long ago that I was based in Auckland working in advertising.

It doesn’t seem possible to me now but I was working for New Zealand’s largest (and only real) business newspaper.

My role? Advertising Agency Account Manager, which basically meant that I spent most of my time convincing ad agencies to spend their client’s hard-earned loot in our paper.

While I had clients all around the country, the majority of my business came from agencies around Auckland, specifically those dotted around the city fringe and CBD, which is where the big players tend to be based.

To say I learned a lot in that high-pressure role is an understatement.

Working with agencies has been described by a more poetic individual than myself as “Trying to herd cats with a piece of wet spaghetti”. That’s about right. Navigating the egos, agendas and occasional not-so-subtle crazy streaks isn’t always easy, but there are some great people out there, and I have to admit that I had a lot of fun, wining, dining, and drinking endless coffees from the bottom of Quay Street to the top of Mount Eden, and through Ponsonby and into the great ad hub of Parnell.

As in any industry, mixed in among the good folk, there was a smattering of serious no-hopers, and of course, the usual 80% of people just doing their jobs with no particular zeal or inspiration. As I saw often enough, and continue to observe from my LinkedIn feed, unless you founded the agency, or are very senior indeed, a job is just a job, and a client is just a client.

Picture this: a young media buyer might be pushing me to the limits on Monday to get the best deal for her client (Luxury Car Company A). But she could be pushing me just as hard on Friday that same week in her new role at a new agency that holds the directly competing Luxury Car Company B account.

And of course, a creative who lives and breathes what he does on a certain account can transfer that passion and loyalty to another account at another agency at the drop of a hat combined with the chance to put another $10K on his paycheck.

I’m not entirely sure how this endless game of musical chairs can be good for the client, but then again, the clients themselves chop and change their agencies a lot.

They’re looking for a fresh perspective, more innovation or just a new broom sweeping clean. In some cases, the change is motivated by nothing more than a new marketing face at the C-Suite level who wants to stamp their vision on the company (and to bring their agency buddies along with them).

I’ve also worked on the fringes of the consumer electronics game since 2006, and I’ve not only seen advertising and PR agency representation change repeatedly in this space over the last ten years, but I’ve also seen a number of supplier/distributor changes. Brands that have been represented by a certain local distributor for decades have suddenly switched allegiance to a new distributor, which can sometimes trigger a domino effect as other brands and suppliers shuffle around to fill gaps and create equilibrium again.

At the end of the day, it’s usually more or less transparent to the consumer. After all, the ads out there are pretty much “same same” as they say in Thailand, as are the products and services themselves. 

As long as punters can buy what they need and want, when they need and want to, they simply don’t care. So what does it matter which agency handles which account, or which distributor handles which brand?

Generally, it doesn’t, but I’ve seen some casualties and collateral damage along the way.

I’ve seen agencies lose accounts from sheer complacency, and I’ve seen clients fire great agencies and take on total muppets, which had to hurt them in the long run. I’ve seen technology companies lose key agencies and get hammered in the process, and I’ve seen brands lose out big time by switching from an established agent to one who promised much and delivered little.

Again, the consumer didn’t really notice or care but you’d better believe that the people at those companies did.

This brings me to the moral of the tale. If you’re thinking of change, whether you work at an ad agency and are looking to move, or you’re a senior agency suit thinking of firing a client, or even a bigwig at a client thinking of firing an agency, you need to be sure that you understand what you’re doing.

Raw emotion plays no part in these choices, and change for change’s sake is a truly awful way to run a career or a business. Logic and reason have to be your base, along with a keen sense of your long-term industry relationships. Run the numbers, think through the options, and do your due diligence as deeply as possible because if you don’t, if you’re just going with your gut, you might just end up regretting it somewhere down the track.

Playing a game of musical chairs and relocating your agency suits and creatives into different seats in different suburbs of the big smoky city just because everyone else is doing it is infantile. Think 10 years down the track, not next year and make decisions that’ll serve you, not your ego.

This brings me to the actual moral of the tale and the whole point of this post. How do you go about finding and hiring an advertising agency? Well, you apply exactly the same approach as mentioned above. There has to be a genuine synergy between your company and the agency, which is admittedly an emotional thing but it’s also all about people. Have you met all the people who’ll be handling your account in a major way? Wait, you’ve only met the senior team and your suit? How does that make any sense?

Meet the people. This is critical even if it’s a small agency and the staff complement is limited. Ask the questions that need answering – like where is your account on the totem pole in terms of revenue generation? Because that’ll tell you a lot about how much care and attention you’ll get.

Challenge the agency people to surprise you. After all, you don’t want more of the same ideas, do you?

Then put the people aside and look at the work. See what the agency is doing out in ad land, and not just their big high profile accounts. Who else do they represent? What aren’t they showing you?

Speak to their current and former clients. Find out the secrets and see what the skeletons in the closet look like.

Yes, this all sounds like a lot of work but think about it like this: you’re entrusting these guys with the colossal responsibility of making your company a lot more money, and differentiating your brands in a market where the consumer is at saturation point. You need a long-term relationship, not a ship meeting in the night routine. If you’re not 100% confident, don’t go there.