If you advertise a show by passing out flyers and creating 2.0 website groups, how can you tell which part of the campaign influenced them more? How do you know if it influenced anyone at all?

Anyone who advertises ( espcially for people who don’t do it often ) can sometimes become discouraged with certain methods or campaigns because they don’t result in positive attention. You put up 30 raido ads in a week for your restaurant; you don’t see any new customers. You sponsor non-profit events that are attended by over 20,000 people; you get only three responses about your business. You partnership with a local business to showcase your brand around the area; you get no new traffic to your website.

If you ever get upset at these outcomes, you can come to the conclusion that the campaign was a failure. But many times people assume that the failure is due to the campaign itself, and not the timing. The timing is wrong because the advertising was done too close to the event ( ie: passing out flyers a day before the show ), or the results are measured too early ( ie: I started my radio ads and haven’t received better weekly sales ).

The best way to go about creating campaigns is simple: Start early, measure late. If you are advertising anything, make sure to seed your campaigns very early. Especially for non-event advertising ( such as branding, local business, websites ), it always takes time for a consumer to recognize a symbol and its meaning. If you advertise anything, the amoutn of exposure needed for a consumer to embed a message within their head is usually 4-8 times within a given week, and lesser over time.

The person receiving the advertisement usually never recognizes or remembers the message upon the first 2-4 times, and it takes even more times for saturated media venues like newspapers, websites, or flyer boards. Starting off early can embed the message for easier facilitation of new advertisements in the future, as well as a quick recognition of their meaning ( essentially branding: Isn’t easy to just see Windows, Coca-Cola, or even a local store, and understand the message automatically ).

This can help people to advertise better in the future because you don’t have to work as hard with trying to introduce a new advertisement and force someone to recognize it. You have a local band? Try exposing a poster three months before a gig, instead of two weeks.

Doesn’t it cost more money to start campaigns earlier?

Yes and no. Yes if you organize your campaign in the same way but for a longer period of time. But no if you organize the entire campaign better and work on a longer time period. You can create small ads on big website networks such as Facebook or Craigslist once a week for a few weeks before you actually begin full-fledged advertising. You will spend a tiny bit of money and time, but you will have a head-start on having people recognize your message.

The true plus-side to any advertising is that the longer you have your message out there, the more success you will have in your advertising in the future. This is one reason why it is hard to measure initial success from a campaign. What if someone recognizes your restaurant two years from being advertised and decides to take their family to your establishment for dinner?

What if journalist heard about your band through flyers during their years in college, and decides to listen and review your album in a newspaper? What if you build a website, and your content moves up the chain in Google searches?

You can see, seeding your advertising campaigns is one of the greatest keys to advertising success. It is only common sense that tells us that the longer you place a message in front of someone, the easier they can recognize and react to it. The biggest companies had given their due diligence in advertising and marketing in the past, and now they can reap the benefits of a persistent message.

My advice to you: don’t lose hope. Be persistent and patient, and your work will pay off. Just ask Robert Woodruff

Then an idea came to her: Why not make him stand out by starting a Web site devoted to helping him find a job? She used her tax refund to buy a MacBook, which came with a Web site building feature. A few days later, myhusbandneedsajob.com was born.

The woman was tired of seeing her husband come home without any prospects of being hired, so this was a great way of putting her husband on the map. He’s getting calls from employers and people with similar situations, and it seems that this site is successful.

But from above, what scares me about the couple is the the fact that she went out and bought this:

macbooks

In order to make a simple website?

Myhusbandneedsajob.com

If I was an employer, I would have to seriously ask Mike Stearns ( the unemployed husband ) if he had something to do with the development of the site. This is a guy who, on his resume, has been in management of internet applications.

What that website is telling me is that, out of the hundreds of thousands of free webpage designing programs on the internet, and countless more that can be put to use on any computer made after 2001, that his wife decided to buy a luxury item to make a 5-page html website?

This shows two very huge red alarms: One, which isn’t that important, but could suggest something about their cuminulaitve skills, is that the wife grossly overpaid and made poor decisions with their money. This shows that ( I am sorry to be mean but this has to be said ) she isn’t computer/internet savvy. She probably has an amazing job, but I would think twice if ever to hire her for an internet company.

Two: the husband was compliant in all of these decisions, and shows that he doesn’t know much about web development. The word “web development” I am using loosely because they could’ve made that exact site, or even a better one, for free or in the library.
It scares me that these two people are afraid of their loss of wealth and job prospects, but their means of getting attention required buying an expensive computer that was overkill for what they set out to do. The only reason I include “they” is because Mike is also holding a sign up on the website, as well as a Q&A section about his job prospects. It seems that he was complicit in the design of the site.

Kudos, A+, for the amount of marketing buzz and attention they have gotten. But, the world is increasingly looking for people who are skilled at working the internet. It is not like many employers are asking to build the next Facebook, or coordinate a marketing project with a program that integrates into chat functions, but how does someone with his background not understand that you don’t need a Macbook to create an html site?

Am I wrong for thinking that is a little off? Please, bite my head off if you need to. I just think that they wasted a lot of money, and they are lacking certain skills that I felt are needed considering his former positions.

If the wife was the sole creator, and he ha nothing to do with the site, then it makes some sense. But I need a job too. I wouldn’t dare think for a 2nd that somehow I needed a 64-bit Athlon processor core to pump up Microsoft Publisher.

Even more proof of this ad’s success, there are a bunch of people who are reacting negatively to the ad. People say its annoying, its absurd, its mindless. That is great; everyone seems to be paying attention.

Here is also an article from Adweek on the producers of the commercial.

Here is the interview of the Killers where the controversy took place. The quote is tamer reading the whole article, but going close to saying what they said will bring about a lot of enemies.

Although I agree with Goodman that this was very bad PR, I have to admit that it has received a decent amount of exposure. Like all types of advertising, the context of stories disappear after a certain amount of time, thereby the bad PR functions in itself as good PR sooner or later.

Essentially, their interview, and Flowers quote, will end up good PR. But don’t jump on the shock-advertising bandwagon yet; do your homework before you do something drastic to your image. Some cases of bad PR have caused irreversible harm to images of people, programs, businesses, and entire industries. Denny’s and minority workers/ customers, Britney Spears and the pop industry, Janet Jackson and the Superbowl, John Lennon and Jesus Christ. This is but the smallest sample you will find, but I hope the examples and your memory will prove my point.