June 2008 – Can someone please explain…?

I hope the U.S. Army aims better with guns than billboards

There’s a billboard off the northbound side of Rt 95 near Stamford, Connecticut advertising Army Football tickets. Why? Of all the places you could put a billboard for Army football tickets, why there?

I’d like to believe that there’s a reason. That research showed that a high percentage of West Point Military Academy alumni or people otherwise predisposed to buy Army football tickets drive by that very spot on a daily basis. Maybe it’s a guerrilla marketing play, and it’s there just to catch the attention of a single alumnus, now a military contractor, who buys tickets by the truckload to give out to legislators. Or maybe it’s just there to stick it to Navy, with the submarine base just up the road in Groton.

West Point isn’t the only college I’ve seen that’s advertised on billboards in strange places. I’ve seen college recruitment billboards for out of state schools on the New Jersey Turnpike. I can’t remember the school because it made such little sense. But again, I’d like to believe that there’s a reason. That a worthwhile portion of applicants to the school actually come from New Jersey. Or that a significant portion of a rival schools applicants come from New Jersey, and our school wanted to steal market share.

The alternative is just too grim to think about: that some agency (or in-house marketing department at West Point) made a specific choice to advertise there, or worse, they bought a generalized outdoor buy that delivers generic driver eyeballs in random locations with little oversight or audit.

Isn’t there a more targeted way to reach potential Army Football ticket buyers than a billboard in Stamford CT? Any form of directed advertising, from behaviorally targeted online ads, channel sponsorships, paid search, direct mail to alumni lists, blog ads on sports blogs, etc., etc., etc.

By the way, the day isn’t that far off when seeming anomalies will be spawned by the dozen thanks to media targeting programs that allow you to find anyone anywhere. There’s already Balihoo, which promises to let you find virtually any target across virtually any medium (including out-of-home). And I’ve got to believe that the best media buying companies have their own in house versions that go deeper, broader and faster than that.

But until that day, or if that day is here already, can someone please explain to me who the ad-snipers from West Point are aiming at on Rt. 95 north in Stamford, and why?

Pandas and Beavers and White Guys, oh my!

I like “The Ladders” job site. I used it, even after I saw their ad on TV. You know the one — there’s an average looking white guy playing tennis, when suddenly he’s deluged with people running on the court to play, too. The line is “When you let everybody play… nobody wins.”

I didn’t see the problem with the ad until recently when a friend of mine, Laura, pointed out that the “everybody” in the commercial were women, people of color, people who were overweight, or sloppily dressed, or older, or… well, basically, anyone who wasn’t our middle aged, white male hero. It’s a good commercial, centered on a great metaphor, as long as you don’t look past that metaphor at the reality of the institutional discrimination that suffuses every frame.

How did I miss it? Especially because, as an overweight, scruffy-faced, frequently long-haired and usually sloppily dressed guy, I’m clearly one of the undesirables. Come to think of it, my scattered mixed bag of experience probably makes me one of the undesirables on the job search front, too. CEO Mark Cendella seems to have missed it to, judging from his response on TheLadders.com, which focuses on the elitism of the $100K salary threshold as opposed to the casting in the commercial. (Please note: Response no longer available.)

On the other hand, I was instantly offended by the Sales Genie commercials, both the “Panda” commercial that aired on this year’s Super Bowl and the “Indian Salesman” that aired during last year’s Super Bowl. And while I clearly wasn’t alone, with some bloggers jumping on the commercials right away, there seemed to be a lack of outrage from interest groups, publications, the news and the rest of the powers that be.

Now, finally, compare all three of these ads to the Danica Patrick GoDaddy ad that was banned from running on the same Super Bowl. An off-color but not explicit extended beaver joke that winked at pop stars and their “accidental” exposures to get noticed when a good domain will do. Even though the full beaver ad never even ran on TV, it was met with shock, outrage and vitriol.

Why am I dragging this out now, months after the ads started running? Because I was watching a dvr’d show the other day when my 3 1/2 year old daughter came in just after the Sale Genie Indian Salesman ad ran. I started thinking about racism, sexism, elitism, and all the other isms that get bandied about all the time and wondered what I would have answered my daughter if she asked me about the funny man with the funny accent in the commercial.

Can someone please explain to me why the GoDaddy commercial gets banned, while the SalesGenie and The Ladders ads don’t?

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