World Copywriting Blog

"Smell Me and Get Thirsty!" Experiment: Will New Campaign Sell Like Mother's Milk or Make Consumers Toss Their Cookies?

I have long stated that San Francisco is the "new factory."  New ideas abound here.

Now for the dirty little secret about new ideas:  The good ones last.  The bad ones - most of them - die a-bornin' and you never hear about them.

So it didn't surprise me when an article in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle told about a "first" in American advertising: Smelly ads (literally) in bus shelters.

While the technique has already been tried in London, U.K., it hasn't happened in the U.S. of A., and won't until this coming Monday.

What I'm referring to is an on-the-nose innovation from the California Milk Processor Board, building on the campaign originally developed by San Fran agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and aromatized by New York's Arcade Marketing.  While you might think the Milk Board folks have too much time and money on their hands, some decision-maker somewhere approved a new twist to the "Got Milk?" campaign:

Five San Francisco bus shelters, as an initial test, will be inobtrusively plastered with scent-emitting strips that give off the aroma of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies.  Starting Monday.

The Chronicle's Rachel Gordon explains the thinking:

It's the brainchild of marketers for the California Milk Processor Board, who are hoping the captive crowds waiting for a bus will be enticed to go home and grab a glass of milk after they take a whiff of the artificial scent and are cued visually with "Got Milk?'' advertisements to be posted in the shelters.

How you want to look at this depends on where you're coming from.

From a classic direct-response point of view, this is ridiculous.  What action are you asking for here from your prospect?  If anything, it's to buy cookies.  But people at bus stops are on their way to work, or on their way home.  After a long day's work.  They don't want to fight the crowds at the store.  Etc., etc.  Besides: how will buying cookies increase sales of milk?

From a traditonal non-integrated branding perspective, this campaign is typical... brilliant... and pointless.  What is being branded here?  Does this mean now that people will always want cookies when they want milk?  Suppose cookies aren't available?  Suppose a rabid milk fan doesn't like chocolate chip cookies?  Will this reduce the market by one formerly loyal consumer?

You can see by the questions I ask why I don't have much of a fan-base in traditional ad agencies.

However, here's an idea, just to make the world a safer place for cookies.  And milk.

If there were a coordinated campaign in San Francisco grocery stores with little stands of free cookie samples, or for-sale whole cookies, near the area where milk is sold... and the strips were stuck under the stand for added aroma-power... that might make this worth doing.

If the idea even works in the first place.

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

The Incorrigible Dr. Harlan D. Kilstein - Look what he's done now

Harlan Kilstein is nothing if not controversial.

Well, his latest stunt simply takes the cake. And he's roped me into it.

What would you say if, in a moment of weakness, someone talked you into doing something you never would have agreed to in your right mind?

I don't know of anyone else who could snooker John Carlton and me, in the same breath, and offer to give away "a million-dollar sales letter" as part of the package.

Actually, if anyone else other than me were involved, I wouldn't be griping.  I'd be crowing!

See what I mean:

http://www.copywritingexpress.com

David Garfinkel

Lessons for Results-Focused Copywriters from the World's Most Profitable Innovators

Let's get one thing straight.  Creativity is death to results-oriented copywriting.  Innovation is not only the breath of life, but the wellspring of wealth.

What's the difference?  Creativity is coming up with wacky, sometimes even amusing, diversions that take all attention away from the reasons and emotions a prospect would want to buy a product.

Innovation, on the other hand, is building on proven methods, adding new elements and trying new forms of presentation, along with folding in what customers are telling you about what they want and don't want, what they like and what they despise.

In a way, of course, that upticks sales.

This became all the more apparent, and interesting, in light of a report issued Monday by Booz Allen Hamilton, the worldwide consulting firm.

The findings of the study were a direct-marketer's dream, because the message that came through loud and clear was that the values and priorities of direct marketers - in conducting campaigns and writing advertising copy - were and are identical to the values and priorities of the companies who are winning the innovation game in the world's biggest markets.

The bottom line of the report: the companies that were chintziest with lavish spending -- those that made the biggest effort to get the most out of their r&d buck -- were the ones that produced the highest revenues from their innovations.

There was also a commonality among the companies - including Silicon Valley leaders like Google, Apple and flash media maker SanDisk - of sticking to three principles:

• they have predictable, repeatable processes for generating and tracking new ideas
• they have a smart selection mechanism for deciding which ideas to fund, as projects, and
• they have explicit steps to take projects from production to market.

Like smart direct marketers, these companies also paid unusual attention to what their customers were telling them -- and acted on it in what they put in their products.

Can a copywriter do the same thing?  I think so.  If you disagree, let me know why.

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter
Co-Founder, The Copywriters Guild