Find this under our long-lasting “Promotion” file. 

Last weekend a creative director friend gave 2 Guyz Londre a November 28, 1969 copy of LIFE magazine.

On page 13 was an Arrow Cordial’s ad with the flavors of “finest mint,” “rich, rip blackberries” and “finish cocoa.” 

Londre can report that this “breathtaking” offer is still working.

They were using the subhead: “Up until now (or in November 1969) the only way you could smell the real fresh aroma of the fruits, herbs and spices that go into every Arrow Cordial, was to open a bottle. Now all you have to do is scratch.”

Londre did some Internet research today and found “Created in the early-twentieth century using secret family recipes from Europe, Arrow® is the #3 best-selling cordial line in America. The product line includes a full array of flavored schnapps, sweet and sour Smackers and brandies, vodka, rum, as well as traditional cordials, liqueurs and creams.

For many advertising campaigns, The 2 Guyz would say that the type of product you are selling is one factor in how long an advertising ad or campaign takes to work.

Some will say in a week or a month.

Give any campaign at least two to four weeks to see if it’s going to work or not.

One more discovery: The Creme de Menthe or Arrow Creme De Menthe White 30 Proof 750ml 12-In is now Peppermint.

The old banner has finally come down and been replaced. It probably took the 2 Guyz’ relentlessness…and Covid-19.

The 2 Guyz on Marketing say, “Thank you.” For multiple reasons.

“THIS TOO SHALL PASS” is the new message with a phone number

The 2 Guyz Larry remembered the on-air radio contest in 1991 on the once famous Ken and Barkley Company radio program. It was back when radio personalities were media stars of the city, and wielded a lot of clout.

Larry decided to go in 2018 with a former student and have a hamburger from Hamburger Habit at 11223 National Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064.  Over the years Londre had always doubted the use of this banner which says “Best Hamburger.”  But more than his quest for the perfect burger, he is a lifelong collector of marketing and advertising stories.

So many things were wrong with the posting of the old banner.

Well, it was once judged best by a radio show, so that much is true.

Was the claim true for the past 20 years? Probably not. Does anything stay “best” that long?

But most importantly, it’s been too darn long to claim the results from a 1991 radio station promotion!

Both of The 2 Guyz on Marketing teach and work in marketing, advertising and promotion. In our classes, this brings up issues of advertising ethics, honesty in advertising, and sound business practice (or lack of).

Sales promotion includes several communications activities, under “Promotion” in the nine P’s of Marketing, that attempt to provide added value or incentives to wholesalers, retailers, or consumers to stimulate immediate sales. These efforts or activities attempt to stimulate product interest, trial, or purchase.

Ultimately they are trying to sell more hamburgers and fries.

Sales promotion is the process of persuading a potential customer to buy the product. Sales promotion is designed to be used as a short-term tactic to boost sales.

Larry and his former student agreed that it was NOT the best hamburger even within three blocks of National and Sepulveda.  For many reasons it was not appropriate to use the banner.  I would bet no one who was part of their “hamburger“ study” even works at KABC anymore. I would also bet they have changed suppliers, ingredients and employees multiple times, too.

Legally, the FTC gives us the “6 Month Rule,” which basically states a “new product” is new for six months.

An advertiser cannot promote a new product is “NEW” forever. (That’s why a lot of products do smaller innovations more frequently, so that can continually “legally” claim to be new, or “new and improved.”)

But simply it’s not good to say you “were”, if you “are not”.  And even if you “were” back then, 29 years is just too long. 

ALL THINGS DO PASS.

It seems like everything is closing down.

Londre, one of the 2 Guyz on Marketing, saw an article that used the line from a Princess Cruise executive: “We need to get out of the headlines.”

Princess Cruises, part of Carnival Corp., has cancelled all of it voyages for the next two months. Two of their ships, the Diamond Princess and the Grand Princess, have been front and center of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. These ships have had to quarantine thousands of passengers.

The U.S. State Department has advised Americans not to take cruises. Bookings have plummeted.

Larry and his wife and I have cancelled three cruises in the past six days.

Larry has taught for 45 years. At select times he’s communicated and presented on the concept of demarketing. What is it?

It’s the use of advertising and PR to decrease demand for a product that is in short supply.

We are be seeing, for sure, “The use of all communication to decrease demand for a product that is in short supply.”

One more definition from dictionaryreference.com: “Advertising that urges the public to limit the consumption of a product, as at a time of shortage.”

It’s not about limiting consumption, it’s about a pandemic and safety.

The title was “Built to Scale: A master class in what it takes to win in entrepreneurship.” Or building scale on a new business venture. 

One of the speakers said: 

“Brands Are Becoming People, People Are Becoming Brands.”  

For 20 or 30 years 2 Guyz Larry been saying that students in class are building their brands. Each one of them. How they do in class; how they interact with team members; how they are working; how they study…it is all personal brand building.

Each student is building their own brand. I had impact when I would say that and had good teams for the team presentations.  I was looking for accountability.

I believe that all people are their building brands.  

But when I asked the speaker to give me an example of a company becoming a person, he said “emotion.” Forgot the companies.

OK, that was a partial answer.

I thought about that. A little later I walked up to him and said “You’re right and you made me think.

I also said there’s a marketing concept of “brand personality.” 

Grey Advertising had trademarked the term “Brand Character.” They sold that idea to clients. 

Grey Advertising was one of the advertising agencies mentioned in “Mad Men.” The 2 Guyz both worked at Grey.

We describe and teach that “brand personality” is a set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name. 

A brand personality to us is something to which the consumer can relate to. It’s got a personality. The product or service. Microsoft has a different brand personality than Apple. 

We teach that an effective brand can increase its brand equity by having or communicating a consistent set of traits that a specific consumer segment or target could recognize.

These traits could help sell. Done wrong, they could also hurt sales.  

“I don’t buy it”, said Londre one of The 2 Guyz.

The networks can find or commission research to say anything they want.

The 2 Guyz know and teach that there are different audiences watching, Fox, MSNBC and CNN.  Under “People,” in the 9P’s of Marketing, we teach that you can break down an audience into several characteristics, including demographically, geographically, behaviorally, psychographically, and with technographics.

Psychographics is the science of dividing into groups on psychological /personality traits, lifestyle, or values. People in the same demographic groups may be very different in their psychological profiles.

For different products and services, advertisers have always bought environment or the environment of the show. It’s one of the aspects of media planning and buying.

Londre doesn’t buy it that: “Viewers without fail say they don’t penalize a brand for sponsoring something that the company may not stand for,” as the president of NBCUniversal ad sales recently said.  

Not surprisingly, the sample size was only 18 for their hour-long interviews. Really, 18 respondents? (We also sometimes teach marketing research, and 18 is hardly projectable for a viewing population of over 100,000,000.

Viewers “…understand the distinction between editorial and advertising,” according the evp of ad sales for Fox News. He went on to say that “…viewers appreciate the commercials they know help put Bret Baier and Chris Wallace on their TV screens.” Really? Do they?

In this hyper-charged political environment, is it that easy to divorce oneself from feelings when news programs, on both sides, are slinging mud and questionable news stories, certainly ones with definitive political points of view?

This sounds much more like a PR campaign to sell more advertising in their shows.

How do networks make money? It’s by selling TV spots. They care about eyeballs. No more, no less.

How do we measure marketing, advertising, and PR strategies and tactics? Well, we often argue about what is great, but we rarely (if ever) argue about what’s bad. Very simply, marketing that makes us cringe.

Bad marketing is more than just wasted time or money. It’s lost opportunity. The 2 Guyz Larry created the 9 P’s of Marketing (Planning, Product, People, Price, Promotion, Place, Partners, Presentation, and Passion). There is so much that goes into good marketing, that’s it’s easy to go astray. Unfortunately, for some, it’s easy to turn not-so-good marketing into bad marketing.

Bottom Line: Some ads should have never run, some press events should never have happened, and some brands have just taken terrible turns for the worse.

A major lesson learned: If anyone in a client meeting or in the approval process should have said, “No way,” listen to them, and take another look at what you are doing.  

So, for your marketing “guilty pleasure”, we present to you, the 2019 Baddie Awards!

cringe  •   /krinj/   verb

bend one’s head and body away from an ad or promotion in fear or in a servile manner.

“they cringed away from the ad and thought negatively about the brand, for almost forever.”

1. (tie) Juul

Juul’s “Product.” Mint was their most popular showing mint’s huge popularity among underage and teenage vapers.  Mint accounted for about 70% of Juul’s sales in the U.S.  Juul Labs has immediately stopped online sales of their mint “Products” in October, it was last month that Juul Labs announced that they would stop the sale of flavors other than tobacco, mint and menthol.

1. (tie) Santa Anita Race Track

Santa Anita Race Track, with its 37 racing and training deaths of horses. Do we need to continue a sport which horses die at a rate of 1.68 for every 1000 starts?  Think about track and field and human. How is this acceptable to entertain bettors and race track goers? During the 2019 season, there were 493 horse racing fatalities. Enough is enough.

3. Political Ads

Any 2019 political ad, since most are not believable. We can’t wait for 2020. That’s sarcasm.

4. Cheez-It Pizza

The stuffed Cheez-it pizza from Pizza Hut. It gets on our list because of how it looks. 

5. M&M’s

M&M’s running the “Spy” spot in their cinema advertising, running over and over and over. This cinema spot appeared on last year’s list and is on again. Still running. Enough is enough. Frequency of obnoxious ads makes them worse.

6. IHOP

IHOP’s Happy Mother’s Day to ALL the moms out there!” They tweeted a bizarre image of a towering pile of pancakes seemingly stacked inside a woman’s body, via an ultrasound. Inappropriate image and promotion. “If you have pancakes in your tum tum does that make you a pancake mum mum?”

7. Movie Pass

Last September 14, 2019, MoviePass was shut down. MoviePass, the subscription service that spent enormous amounts of venture capitalists’ money subsidizing movie tickets in a bid to upend the theater business model, is officially died. Last year Movie Pass said it had 2,000,000 subscribers at $9.95/month, letting movie goers see a movie a day. 30 movies a month. When it seems unbelievable, it usually is. Too much demand. Couldn’t sustain and had to take out loans. Dropped from 30 movies a month to 3, plus limited access to wide-release movies during peak demand. Not the same deal. Couldn’t generate any more investor money. DOA.

8. Tesla

Tesla’s Pickup Cybertruck Press Conference. Tesla is cool. Elon Musk is cool. But who told them to demonstrate breakproof glass by throwing a rock at it…twice?!?!? And doing without being 100% sure it would work. That was a PR gaff that will be remembered (and enjoyed) by many years to come.

9. Facebook

Facebook. Facebook makes over $50 billion a year. They have more than a billion users. Yet they just can’t seem to get this whole “security” thing together. This year we learned more about Cambridge Analytica and their access to all of our private data, data breeches, fines (some $5 billions of fines from the FTC alone!) Facebook…we like you, but we don’t need you to survive. You must protect our data better, or we will leave, and many are threatening to do so in anticipation of the 2020 elections!

10. Boeing

The 737 Max Scandal has really tarnished Boeing’s once rock-solid image.

The Boeing 737 MAX is a narrow-body commercial aircraft series, the fourth generation of the Boeing 737. FAA has said it again, and again: Boeing’s 737 Max is not ready for certification.

The 2 Guyz will be putting out their worst ads and marketing for 2019 soon. We call them the “Baddies.”

At the top of the list may be all political ads.

But first a thought or two on all ads, and then on political ones for candidates and ballot issues.

P&G reported $7.1 billion of advertising spending, last fiscal year. Their chief brand officer at Procter & Gamble, one of the largest advertisers in the world said that ads are often irrelevant and sometimes “just silly, ridiculous or stupid.”

It was also reported that P&G added that “… 70% of people say they don’t like advertising.” 

There was a time when more people believed in the media.

The 2 Guyz teach Marketing and advertising. We teach that brands cannot make false claims, but politicians and propositions can make false, ridiculous claims.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is in place to protect consumers from false or misleading advertising from brands, making deceptive claims and ads illegal.

But under our 1st Amendment, politicians can run whatever they want, in the media and specifically on the networks, social media, Facebook and YouTube. 

The First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

And as a nation we are protected from false advertising claims unless they ae political. ones.

The question is how many hate political ads?  It has to be higher than 70%. Maybe 90+%. The sad point is we will have a ton of ads, which are silly and ridiculous between now and next November.

Most of us hate election cycles and all the lies, misleading messages, and lack of ethical standards.  Unless you are selling advertising space and time for a living, then this is the bull market for you.

It’s the media that likes advertising spending. More ads means more revenue. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!