Toyota is not playing nice!

Today I will be talking about a campaign that has got my blood boiling: the Toyota Venza campaign. Here is one of the commercials playing every few minutes on tv and here is the other.

It is perfectly ok to decide to target a specific age group for a product, as Toyota is clearly doing in this campaign. However, you should never (almost never) do it at the expense of another age group. Toyota is clearly making fun of a generation, a pretty large one at that. You can target an age group while still leaving the others the option to buy. This alienates a sector of the market, not just for this one car but for all their products. Why am I going to go buy a car from a company that thinks my generation is a joke. This ad makes me defensive and does not leave me with happy feelings towards Toyota.

My lease is over in a few months and you can be sure that I will not be checking out any Toyotas!

For the big companies out there your overall brand name is more important that just one product. Don't ruin your reputation just to push one car.

Oh so much wrong with this

I couldn't find the exact ad but here is one from the same campaign brought to us by Cadillac.

The campaign uses a discussion on windshield wipers to demonstrate that Cadillac builds quality cars. They have thought of everything, even making sure the windshield is strong because when you are going 190mph "a simple raindrop becomes a powerful force," or at 190mph "normal" windshield wipers could be ripped off a car.

I can see what they were aiming for but honestly all I could think about during the entire commercial was "who is driving their Cadillacs at 190mph and they should probably not drive that fast in the rain."

If all you can say about your car is that your windshield wipers will stay down at 190mph, maybe you should rethink things.

Thanks for reading!

Let's cover the page in ads

When you are a respectable news organization, do not do this. Actually, no one should do this! I Could't believe my eyes when I logged on to CNN and saw this catastrophe. Wallpapering a website with an ad doesn't make me want to click on the ad, it makes me want to run in the opposite direction. I only stayed on the page long enough to take a picture and then I was out of there. And you know what I can't remember what the ad is for!

Moral of the story: if it hurts to look at, I'm not going to look at it!

Amazon Kindle

So who has seen the new Kindle ad? I have to be honest I was pretty proud that they finally used words in their ad. Up to now it had been just ads like this. I'm not even sure what point they are trying to convey. You are going to convince me to buy a Kindle by showing me...well I can't even finish that sentence because I don't know what they were showing me.

Then they got a bit closer to providing an argument in this ad, but it was done so passively it didn't really prove a point. And so finally we get some dialog and an iPad in their latest ad. Problem is they did it all wrong. Why does the girl have sunglasses on? Can you only read a kindle in the sun with glasses on. Would the guy with the iPad be able to read his book with sunglasses on?

Should amazon even be targeting Apple? Here is the thing if I'm technologically inclined and have $500 dollars to spend I'm going to by an iPad because it does so much. But if I'm not interested in all the iPad can do and just like reading books I am going to buy a Kindle. It's like  comparing an all-in-one printer, scanner, fax and copier to a simple printer. You can tell the guy who wants the all-in-one that the stand alone printer will print better, but it probably won't change his mind if he wants all the utility an all-in-one offers.

Maybe Amazon should focus on converting people who are still buying print books. I mean its good for the environment and its a lot easier than carrying huge novels around. Plus you never have to go without a book. Now those are arguments for buying their product that I can swallow!

See you soon!

5 times is enough thanks!

Ok so this bugs me more than almost anything (in the ad world of course).


We have entered a new "era" if you will, in which people now watch TV online. It's pretty amazing if you ask me. I watch almost all my tv shows and news clips online. One of the major draws to this is of course the considerably fewer commercials. Advertisers love it because they think that if they show you their commercial and only their commercial during every break you will definitely remember their product. What did we learn in school: REPETITION=RECALL!

Here is the thing, watching the same ad five times in 10 minutes because I watched five 2-minute clips (on CNN for example) drives me up a wall. Or let's say you are behind on a show and decided to watch 2 or 3 episodes in a row. You might see the same ad 15 times in a row. I don't care if it's the best ad in the world (which they usually aren't) No one wants to hear or see anything that many times in a row! By the 4th time the ad is literally making me cringe. So what has the amazing marketing team accomplished? Recall-Yes, Associating the brand with extreme annoyance-Most definitely.

I also do not understand why sites allow advertisers to do this. If you annoy everyone coming to your site, I bet eventually people will find a way around watching the commercials. (Sidereel.com anyone?)

Thanks for dropping by!

Avery Labels

I want to start of by saying that I believe not all recall is good recall just like not all press is good. If a commercial is annoying or makes me angry I could very well remember it but just like food that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I'm not going to want and buy that product.

Perfect example of this...
The Avery Labels commercial (which you can check out here) makes me cringe, and I'm not even into fantasy football. That spot leaves me with all sorts of negative feelings. I'm not currently in the market for sticky tabs where the whole back sticks, but if I were I think I would have to go with the 3M ones.

First blog post = complete!