Oakley and the Chilean Miners – Publicity Goldmine

This portion of the Chilean Miners rescue has been brought to you by Oakley Radar® sunglasses.

Doing Well By Doing Good

Move over, Lance Armstrong. Oakley has 33 new “celebrity” product endorsers.

Unless you were trapped in a cave somewhere yourself over the last few weeks, you probably heard about the dramatic rescue of 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days.

The good news is they got out, with a little help from their friends and a few corporate sponsors.

At the very same time Chris Brogan was speaking to Linked OC members at Oakley about how companies are using technology to connect with consumers, the Chilean miners were reconnecting with their families thanks to technology donated by Oakley and others.

Oakley posted an update on its website the following day:

Hold the Creativity, I Just Need an Ad, Quick

PlaceLocal builds ads automatically while you wait.

Sure, budgets are tight, but can a small business afford not to be creative when advertising?

The problem with creativity in advertising, as many businesses owners see it, is that it doesn’t always translate to the bottom line with leads or sales. The Taco Bell Chihuahua campaign is a prime example. People talked a lot about the dog, but they didn’t buy more tacos.

On the other hand, there’s a well-known maxim in the ad biz that “nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising”. Meaning, if your product doesn’t deliver as promised, an engaging ad will doom your sucky product more quickly. Remember the Outpost.com campaign with the gerbils shot from a cannon? It was engaging, but it was also creatively self-indulgent. There was no relevance whatsoever to the brand, which disappeared almost as fast as the commercial won awards.

Is Creativity a Luxury?

Just as most ad agencies are set up to service larger clients, most mom-and-pop shops don’t have much of an ad budget and usually have to settle for the local paper or PennySaver-style coupon mailer. So creativity is not even part of the decision.

Introducing Automated Advertising

Now an advertising technology company out of New Haven called PaperG has come up with a creative solution to bridge the budget gap between small businesses and local ad publishers. PaperG’s new software tool, PlaceLocal, creates customized display ads by using images and reviews found online.

Simple-Minded Marketing Works

Do "post-recession" consumers want the "simpler" things in life? Or do they really want the easy life?

Simple Does Not Equal Easy

Simplicity is often difficult to achieve, which would explain the phrase “deceptively simple.” (It’s one of those strange dichotomy-conundrum-oxymoron-type things. Take your pick.)

Whether in writing, design, engineering, or cooking recipes, simplicity is key to effectiveness. So it follows that the challenge of this post will be to not clutter it up with too many examples. (Note to self: edit!)

Simple is Sophisticated

Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Albert Einstein remarked that “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Then there’s the famous KISS acronym (“Keep It Simple, Stupid”) credited to Lockheed Sunk Works engineer Kelly Johnson.

KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid - Easy to say, not so easy to do.

(Vigilante Grammarians will note that although KISS is often spelled out as “Keep it simple, stupid,” Johnson used it without the comma. The expression was not meant to imply that an engineer was stupid; just the opposite.)

Marketers Discover the Popularity of “Simplicity”

It’s tempting to add “Well, duh!” to this heading. But the use of the adjective “simple” when marketing food has suddenly become newsworthy thanks to a recent study by Innova Market Insights.