'CLEVER' ADVERTISING?
Anne Sackey
Communications I Development & Sustainability I Partnership engagement |Gender Inclusion I Program management | Marketing I Culture vulture.
Advertising is all about catching peoples attention, standing out, creating a "want" and need and so we are all looking for a clever way to craft our marketing campaigns. But there is a thin line between taking the cleverness too far, making the campaign meaningless or sinking the brand like the Titanic.
Last week, Social Ghana sent out a social media creative communicating the new prices for Fan Ice. it was done in a really creative and nostalgic way that got everyone re-posting and talking about it. We could all relate to the various timelines in the creative and the fact that Fan Ice had not increased its prices in a long time. The price increase was a win!
Later that week,Papa's Pizza put out a creative that played on the "scam"joke that was doing the rounds. It was funny if you took the time to read the caption posted underneath the creative. But without reading the caption you would actually think they were trying to shoot themselves in the foot.
And then finally there was the creative for the Gold Coast Restaurant that referenced the BBC Africa Eye film "Sex For Grades." in which Professor Gyapo, one of the lecturers being accused of sexual harassment, asks" Have you ever been kissed violently?". There was an immediate reaction of anger and disbelief that anyone would make light of such a serious situation and to use it to promote their product or service.
and to make matters worse, there seemed to be no crises strategy in place as the establishment apologized and blamed its agency and the agency kept quiet.
Four rules stare out at me.
1.Humour that enhances your message is good. Humour that upstages your message canbe disastrous
2. Always sign off on every creative and every communication before it is released into the big bad world. You must have a policy in place on which person and department is responsible for this
3. Have a crisis strategy in place so that you can respond quickly and effectively
4. Own it. Take the blame. Apologize make it right and move on