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Oct 7
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For some unknown reason auto makers continue to make advertising decisions based on desire rather than reality. Take the Nissan Sentra—please. According to the agency TBWA/Chiat/Day, the Sentra is a “deal car.” Smart people buy the car for price/value, not to make a lifestyle statement. As such, the car is purchased by “a 49-year old suburban woman smoking brown More cigarettes.” Ah, but for some strange reason, Nissan  does not want this woman. Nissan wants MySpace, YouTube, urban youthful 20-30 somethings to purchase the car. This is the same damned demographic every car maker is pitching with mixed success. Hint: Mom is still paying for this purchase--so appeal to her. Anyway, Nissan has decided to mount a $ 40 million plus campaign featuring a 30-year old comedian named Marc Horowitz living inside his Nissan Sentra for a week. Marc blogs and podcasts about his experience at 7 Days in a Sentra. The approach is intended to support the product tagline: “The next generation Sentra. You could pretty much live in it.” This is probably a wonderfully clever campaign, but Marketing Blurb doubts it will change the existing buyer demographic.
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Oct 7
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Readers of Marketing Blurb are probably too young to realize the woman dealing poker in this picture is a Playboy Bunny—(those are rabbit ears on her head if you are confused.) Bunnies used to hostess at Playboy Clubs in several...
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This holiday season, we can expect the Toy Wars to get ugly. Wal-Mart will continue to discount deep and early, forcing everyone else in the industry to lose sales, or make prices and lose margin. Toys R Us is still...
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Oct 5
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Marketing Blurb once worked in the fashion industry. Okay, so it wasn’t really the fashion industry, but home decorative products—a subset of the fashion industry. We used to subscribe to a color forecasting service, which alerted the company to what...
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Marketing Blurb believes in eating a healthy diet. We also believe that healthy eating is a personal choice and cannot be mandated or supervised by food manufacturers, retailers or legislators. Maybe your Mom can force you to eat a healthy...
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Oct 4
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Despite the promise of superior German engineering, Volkswagen has suffered in recent years from a series of nagging quality problems and diminishing world-wide sales. A series of new models is capturing more attention, and Volkswagen is trying all kinds of...
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October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but we learned from The New York Times (free registration required,) that not all products are pink. In an ill-timed announcement, a new line of products from a consortium of companies including Gap, Armani,...
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Back in April, Marketing Blurb alerted readers that Burger King was preparing to enter the gaming arena with branded titles for Xbox and Xbox 360. Today, we now have details. The King will star in three so-called advergames called Big...
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Oct 3
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The world used to be a simple place where you could depend upon Sony to offer the best consumer electronics for a premium price you were willing to pay. But while we busy with other pursuits, something changed. We ordered...
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Marketing Blurb does not really remember the details, but last time McDonald’s ran their Monopoly game promotion, key winning merchandise and tokens were withheld by an untrustworthy supplier and then illegally planted for bogus winners to claim. This illegal prize-fixing...
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Marketing Blurb has suffered through too many boxed lunches in crowded convention halls. The first thing we do is throw away the top layer of sandwich bread, which is often three to four inches of tasteless mush. We then struggle...
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Marketing Blurb believes that most auto advertising is misguided. Agencies tend to position auto advertising for the desired target audience, rather than those who actually purchase the vehicles. As such, much auto advertising targets young men, when in fact, their...
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We have explained to readers many times, that times are changing at Wal-Mart. With same stores sales stuck in idle, the retailer giant has already decided to target a more affluent customer with higher price point (and higher margin) items....
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Oct 2
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Marketing Blurb is well-past the days of raising infants, so we are out-of-touch with the emergence of organic infant formulas. While the $ 3.1 million sales of organic formula are just a fraction of the $ 3.1 billion baby food...
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Now you might think that recruiting new citizen soldiers for the National Guard during wartime would be a hopeless cause, and you would be wrong—naturally. According to Brandweek, the Air and Army National Guard recently reversed a downtrend in sign-ups...
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Marketing Blurb often ridicules celebrity endorsements. Today, we are going to praise such an endorsement by millionaire pro NBA basketball star Stephon Marbury. Stephon is endorsing is a new line of shoes he will wear on the court this upcoming...
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Marketing Blurb has spent countless hours engaged in market research studies. We have studied secondary research. We have crafted and conducted primary research. Some of this time proved valuable and productive, but for the most part, market research is a...
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Now you might think that advertising in the real world has enough challenges that agencies would stick to reality, and you would be wrong—naturally. We learned from our friends at Advertising Age (free registration required,) that Leo Burnett of Chicago,...
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Oct 1
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Now you might think that brewers position their beers on the basis of taste, and you would be wrong, naturally. Brewers position their brands according to lifestyle. And as such, Killian’s Irish Red beer by Coors brewing is getting lost...
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Producers are always looking for some new angle for reality television shows. Sometime in 2007 we will see the fruits of their labor. Called The Wine Makers, the new show will feature 12 oenophiles battling for the chance to launch...
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You already know that Oldsmobile is on the ropes, and is slated to disappear from the GM line-up. Many industry pundits believed Pontiac was doomed for a similar fate, so GM decided to make this product line more appealing to...
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Marketing Blurb loves Cinnabon and Carvel Ice Cream more than the next pundit. We rarely enjoy either, because we discovered that just the aroma of baked items from Cinnabon actually contains about 400 second-hand calories. We did not know, however,...
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