How hard are your ad dollars working?

Posted on May 3rd, 2007 by Spike and currently 4 commenting.

I took a short road trip up to Charlotte, NC last week to connect with my mom who was on a southeast tour with her senior singing group from my hometown, Dallas. Yes, us Jones’ are a multi-talented bunch.
So I found myself in a Southern Baptist church with a Southern Baptist preacher who ” interestingly enough ” talked about branding.

He stared off his talk by throwing out taglines and had the congregation yell out the corresponding company. Which ones did he choose?

Always low prices.
Expect more. Pay less.
It’s all inside.
We get it.
And, of course, Just do it.

But you know what? The congregation stumbled on all of them except Nike. All those ad dollars. All those ‘impressions’ and campaigns. All those media buys. And that target audience didn’t have a clue as to the difference between Wal-Mart’s tagline and Target’s.

I had to smile a little. Sure, taglines are important to a point (and sometimes to a fault). But they aren’t going to solve anything. That’s the easy stuff. There’s gotta be some substance there besides a clever tag. A conversation.

When will the big boys learn that?

P.S. The other interesting thing the preacher said was when he was talking about evangelism and how it’s the spreading of good news. That’s a cool way to look at customer evangelists – not as those who are out shouting from the rooftops about your company, product or service, but those that believe they are spreading the good news of their love.

• Tweet
• RSS
• EMAIL
• more
  

  BlinklistBloglinesBlogmarksDiggdel.icio.usFurlMa.gnoliaNewsVineRedditStumbleUponTechnorati