As not seen on TV
My old Dad (he's very, very old) sits in front of the telly complaining that none of the ads make sense to him. I get tired of pointing out that none of the advertisers gives a toss about what he thinks as he's not in their target market.
Who's your target market?
So maybe I'm just not in Ferrit's target market. Or maybe I'm just in a funny mood. But somehow I just can't see the new Ferrit campaign working a whole lot better than the previous one. Please explain to me why seeing the dopey looking guy (is that supposed to be me?) looking dopey should encourage me to rush online and have a look at what Ferrit has to offer. Maybe I just don't get it. Me, and all the other middle-aged, middle class conservative old farts.
It seems that Ferrit has turned out to be the client from hell for the agency, or is it the other way about? Well, someone did a hell of a sell job the first time round, but the second sell must have been a stunner. Anyway, sorry Ferrit guys - I stand to be corrected, but: third time lucky?
Actually this wasn't meant to be a beat up of Ferrit (after all, guys, I've mentioned your name umm... six times in the first 200 words...). But those billboards have been everywhere, lately. Which is, by the way, where I get most of my promotional feeds from, not being a great goggle-box watcher.
And this brings me, by a way of my Dad in Rotorua, to my point. Maybe - well, I assume - that Ferrit's marketers anchored their campaign on a really smart set of TV ads. Viewed in the context of these TV ads, the outdoor (that is, such things as billboards, bus shelters, bus sides) executions make sense, but in isolation these static ads just look silly.
Maybe I'm one of a lonely few who don't watch much TV. I don't think so. I wonder, when the mighty TV ad campaign has been humbled, to say the least, by the multiplicity of competing attention grabbers available to consumers, if it makes sense nowadays to build campaigns that depend on TV.
Monday-itis
Similarly, another campaign that's lately been on billboards and buses perplexed me somewhat, at first. "Love Mondays". I really didn't get it. Maybe I'm just slow on the uptake, but I blamed my TV-lessness anyway. Eventually though, I got it (I think). What a silly thing, to think that anyone, lying in a hammock under a palm tree, could be dreaming of a bunch of files. But if they're talking about the dissatisfaction that so many of us feel about our current jobs, and our dreams of a job that would be, well, a dream job, then they make sense. It's called building a tension for change, or articulating a need, or scratching an itch. Not that the ads apply to me. I love my job. Really.
Will the ad work? Dunno - but it made me look, twice. What's the brand? Dunno. Uh oh...
