Car is so much more than a vehicle taking you from place A to place B. It is part of people's lifestyle and allows me to live life to the fullest. Here is a sample how car companies communicate us what their brand is all about and how they try to give that warm and fuzzy feeling inside making us feel “this is my car” on the top of all of the rational reasons why one car is better than the other one.
Mercedes-Benz Left Brain, Right Brain Ad Campaign
I love this ad campaign by Mercedes-Benz earlier this year. They created different pictures showing the difference between the left brain and right side of the brain and communicated us that Mercedes-Benz combines the latest technology and superior quality with innovation and emotion. The text in the ads read:
(Left:) “I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realis…tic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.”
(Right:) “I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.”
Volkswagen Makes Art You Can Steal
I think VW used some serious brain when they created this fun campaign for Jetta GLI in Canada. VW Canada created several pop-up outdoor exhibits featuring limited edition long-exposure light paintings, created by taillights of the Jetta GLI as it moved. The paintings were hand numbered and VW encouraged people to ‘steal’ them. Soon the paintings started popping back up – but this time on social media networks people showing what they had done with their painting from the pop up exhibit. While I might not agree with the “stealing” message, I love how this campaign was done using both left and right sides of the brain and communicating how much fun VW Jetta is.
In his 2011 PRSA Leadership Rally keynote address, “The Third Way – Public Engagement," Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, gave the following counsel on engaging consumers effectively:
1. Listen with new intelligence. There are new kinds of influentials now, conversation-starters. Cultivate relationships with them.
2. Create galvanizing ideas. Find something that’s visual and simple. Don’t be biased against an idea. Be creative.
3. Know the socialized approach to media relations. The media cloverleaf now consists of traditional media, hybrid media, social media and owned media. Broadcast tailored messages across each space with different spokespeople.
4. Create and co-create content. SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is important, but it won’t help boring content. Use video and other multimedia. “I believe any company can be a media company.”
5. Participate in the conversation. Conversations happen in real time, all the time. Go where the people are.
6. Build active partnerships for common good. The new CSR mantra is “immediate justification.” When consumers buy a product, they want to feel like they’re doing the right thing. Do your part to help.
7. Embrace complexity. Issues are complex. Embrace a coherent way of thinking about them and analytical methods to identify and address problems.
Admit it, some of us like reading (or watching) fluff every now and again. Fluff takes us to a world that is not our own reality, and let’s us tune out for a bit.
Fluff pieces are stories that don’t have real value or strong content. They are stories that have fun stories, but serve no real purpose except to entertain.
As I venture into this world of PR and content marketing, learning and writing about best practices on blogging and writing headlines, I notice a lot of fluff out there. Fluff that has managed to receive 40+ “Likes” and reTweets. This made me think about fluff as a form of marketing. Good or bad practice, it is out there, and from the surface, seems to be effective marketing.
Does fluff work? I have surmised that fluff can be a good marketing strategy, if just to capture initial attention.
Fluff is good marketing:
1) Makes you feel good – Fluff writing doesn’t require a lot of researched data and information. The story tends to be something cutesy or non-consequential. Like an FYI that you can take or leave.
2) Makes you forget current challenges – Alcohol marketers know all about making you forget your present troubles. Notwithstanding that alcohol in itself makes you do that anyway, savvy marketing lets you see the “fun” and party aspect of having a drink. With fluff, you forget, even for a brief moment, present problems. Think about the phenomenon of romance novels and soap operas for so many women.
3) Lets you escape – Tied into my point in #2 above, fluff promotes escapism. Look at an advertisement for a luxury auto. The shots are gauzy, the women and men are insanely hot, and the car makes you feel giddy – all while you are sitting in your living room eating a bowl of popcorn.
However, this is where it gets bad, literally.
1) You get lazy – Since they have no real substance, fluff tends to make you lazy. No fact-checking, no research just makes for a written piece that is sedentary. Since there are no real calls to action to motivate your audience, i.e. to look at your product, sign up for your newsletter, or to even navigate through your website. Fluff pieces are pure brain candy!
2) Doesn’t make you smart or learned – We all know that garbage in, garbage out. Though fluff pieces are fun and exciting, they don’t really bring the reader valuable information. As a blogger, and PR student, I love to read, but I hope to learn from what I read. This is where “content is king” rings true. Articles about Justin Bieber’s hair is pure fluffy fluff! Give me pointers on how to be a blogging sensation that brings me a million dollars by next Friday.
3) Shallow- This summarizes it all. There is nothing truly deep and abiding with a fluff article. The elements of escape from reality and into fantasy does not solve your target audience’s problems or make their lives better. Nothing gained and nothing lost. The marketing takeaway is that fluff can produce the initial desired result: bring interest to a product or service. Fluff can also be good PR because it makes things look pretty and enticing. But fluff, as the word itself is defined does nothing more than to bring short-term attention. I say use the advantages of a fluff piece, but make sure to back it up with something worthwhile and valuable.
Ever wonder what made PR what it is today? Without first knowing where PR started and where it came from, it is blasphemy (ok, maybe not blasphemy, but it’s still important)! The best part about knowing a little history of PR is that though the principles may be as old as time, the fundamentals still apply: evoking emotions in PR campaigns and creating a call-to-action are only two of many timeless PR campaign tactics you should incorporate into your plan. Check out this infographic for a brief history of top PR campaigns.
