Great retail creative is a result of a smart strategy, intelligent clients and creatives that don't shirk at doing a coupon ad or a POP poster now and then.

In advertising, we often frown upon those clients that force us to do sales ads or put a big price in the middle of our “gorgeous” layouts. Here are some ways to do wonderful award-winning ads while also being incredibly effective.

1. Start with a strategy.

You may think that you don’t need one but consistently good creative (especially when there are lots of elements created) usually comes from it. The key words here are “consistently good creative” meaning over the course of several years. Price alone is a weak strategy unless there’s something attached to it, like a guarantee or a value message.

2. Remember: Retail advertising doesn’t mean stupid and brainless.

Yes, you can have headlines. And yes, headlines can be thought-provoking but so can the body copy and even the legal copy. Just because there’s a coupon, doesn’t mean the coupon can’t be entertaining or interesting. Give it a twist…someone might pay attention. (see our billboard sized coupon)

3. Don’t disregard the design as a tonality.

Even if your messaging is straight-forward, you can still present a distinctive tonality with the proper fonts, photography, color scheme and design treatment. H&M has a brilliant campaign because it’s not just the $12 bikini top that’s the draw, it’s the gorgeous model shot and styled fabulously that makes me realize that $12 bikini top is fashionable too. However, the font is always the same and the look stays similar throughout the campaign.

4. Keep the message simple.

If the client or agency is presenting a complicated offer, it HAS to be presented easily. Cash back and percentages off of retail/wholesale/off-the-truck/at-the-counter tends to get confusing to the consumer. Make it simple and easy to understand. Don’t make me do math while reading your ad!

5. Use all forms of media to capture your consumer.

Nowadays, there are so many ways to alert your customer about your product/store. Zip codes can be acquired, email addresses, map quest, Google search, GPS, etc. can pinpoint where your customer can be reached. Use them all but keep the messaging and tonality consistent!!

6. Use all forms of media that aren’t really media.

What do people see in the bathrooms? What do they see in the parking lot? What’s happening by the counter? What happens while I’m waiting for the site to process my order? What kind of music can be heard? (online or on-site) What does my receipt say?

Why aren’t you using the delivery trucks? There are soooo many other venues around the brick and mortar store as well as online that can be used for your messaging.

7. Don’t forget the shopping experience.

What is the consumer thinking while shopping or after they’ve purchased and are using the product? When do they stop paying attention? When will they be surprised? My favorite example of this surprise “experience” is at Ian Schrager’s Delano Hotel in South Beach, FL where every room has a little silver holder that is attached to the wall with a real complementary green apple. The inscription reads “An apple a day…” (which they replace every day). It’s not a coupon for a free breakfast, but this makes me want to take pictures of it, tell everyone about it and makes me want to come back and stay there again.

8. Have fun

Despite what everyone around you might say, fun comes out in the messaging. We’re all tired of the doomsday “we’re all broke” messaging. If your advertising has a sense of fun, humor, wit, charm, realness and doesn’t take itself so seriously, your customer will sense it. We all need it right now and companies need to lighten up.

Hope this list helps. Tell us what you’ve experienced while creating retail advertising and take a look at some of our award-winning retail ideas here too. 

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Blasphemy. You bet. Close your old-fashioned website and open a hybrid blog/site. You’ll immediately realize a number of advantages. Take a look around at our site, and why we believe so strongly that this is the format of the future.

Five Reasons to Create a Blog/Site

1. Improve your Google search results (otherwise known as page rank).

Why pay for AdWords (those pesky all-text ads on Google search results) or for expensive SEO consultants? Start a blog/site and you can tailor posts to specific meta descriptions (the post’s title) and key words? And achieve great results in the central column (organic) of Google search results. It’s really not hard to choose the right descriptions and key words to be competitive, provided you’re not trying to rule generic terms like “marketing” or “advertising.” This is, by far, the number one reason to move to this blog/site approach.

2. Lower Costs

Blog/sites by their very nature are cheaper to build and maintain than custom websites. A blog/site is built on existing blog software (usually WordPress), which can then be customized with thousands of “themes” which deliver a wide variety of looks and colors. Countless “plug-ins” and “widgets” are also being invented on a regular basis which allow you upgrade your site…including everything from security to comment managements; to links to recent social media. Link a new blog/site to your current website. You won’t have to throw everything you have away. Our new blog/site (which you’re visiting right here) is under construction. But we’re building it live…so check in and watch our progress. (And let us know what you think).

3. Feed the Google content monster

Google loves blogs and rates them very highly in search results. Google wants to drive content creation. Forget Google’s stated (and lofty) mission of “organizing the world’s information.” More content gives them more room for advertising. The more often your blog/site is updated, (and then visited and linked to) the more opportunities you’ll have to rank highly.

4. Easy updates

If a new product gets a rave or your CEO has a terrific interview, you can quickly and inexpensively add it to your blog/site that day rather than wait weeks to months to update your news on a traditional site. By that point, the story has lost its relevance.

5. A contemporary, modern appearance

As you can see from our blog/site, this format enables you to easily assemble numerous elements from across the internet. You can link to video on YouTube, personal blogs, Twitter feeds, photo sharing sites like Flickr or your favorite books. This look, in one of its many incarnations, is the type of cutting edge design you’ll find on the internet.

Check in on us…we’ll keep you up-to-date as we continue this adventure.

In the meantime, if you like the idea of a blog/site and are interested in building one, give us a call.

Sites shown: http://www.segura-inc.com/  http://www.elysiumburns.com/   http://www.made-in-england.org/

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General Motors just filed for bankruptcy, but it’s already trying to re-brand itself. The automaker has launched a new ad campaign touting how the company will reinvent itself. Are consumers buying the new sales pitch? Sarah Gardner reports.

KAI RYSSDAL: There is some cosmic irony in the May car sales numbers that came out today. With the ink barely dry on GM’s bankruptcy papers both Ford and General Motors reported their sales last month were the best either company had seen in a long time. To be sure, sales are still way down overall. But today’s reports do offer some hope that the bottom is near.

It took decades for General Motors to collapse. The automaker’s betting it can jumpstart its comeback with a new national advertising campaign that begins today. It’s all about how the company’s going to reinvent itself. But as Marketplace’s Sarah Gardner reports, it’s going to take more than Madison Avenue to get car buyers revved up about

GM.

GM Reinvention Commercial

(gmblogs/YouTube)

GM AD:

Let’s be completely honest. No company wants to go through this. But we’re not witnessing the end of the American car. We’re witnessing the rebirth of the American car.

SARAH GARDNER: That’s how GM’s new “reinvention” campaign kicked off today. The ad is filled with American victory images — everything from a lunar landing to boxing champ Joe Louis. GM promises the new GM will be “leaner, greener, faster and smarter.” Marissa Gluck of Radar Research, says the campaign is “too little, too late.”

MARISSA GLUCK: I think that saying now that GM is ready for change, when they haven’t responded to market conditions for the last 10 years feels kind of empty. It feels like a hollow promise.

Gluck says GM’s money would be better spent on a P.R. campaign using Web sites like Twitter and Facebook with honest talk about the company’s mistakes and future plans. GM in fact has set up a special Web site complete with live chats, Twitter links and even blog posts from GM CEO Fritz Henderson. Scott Lackey at Jugular Advertising in New York, says GM has to answer consumer concerns directly.

SCOTT LACKEY: And the number one consumer concern, and I’m quite sure of this, will be why should I buy a GM vehicle when they may not be in existence, in three, four, five, six months.

Consumers need straight talk, not feel-good images, says Lackey. After all, they’re about to own 60 percent of the company.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/06/02/pm_gm_ads/

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Jugular is known for getting major national media coverage, not just small mentions in trade publications.

• Created approximately $20 million in publicity for two clients with total combined budgets of  $500,000.

• Generated five minutes of Today Show coverage (7:30 AM, Monday morning) for our Chris Farley campaign which launched the Prometa medical protocol for addiction. Matt Lauer anchored a series of five interviews and reports.

• Created a national debate over the causes of addiction with the Farley campaign. In addition to Today we appeared on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, hundreds of radio programs, The New York Times Magazine, and newspapers around the world as far distant as the Basque region of Spain.

• Received 2 million Google links within 48 hours of the Farley campaign launch.

• Generated virtually instantaneous coverage on The View for The Canterbury Institute (addiction centers) four hours after the ad appeared in New York newspapers. Our client was interviewed in person on Neil Cavuto’s national Fox News Program six hours after the ad appeared. He had to go home first to get a tie.

• Drove the highest YouTube click through rate ever achieved for an Age of Conan videogame banner (May 2008).

• Sold 750,000 Age of Conan video games in one week this May.

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After extensive research, Jugular approached the gay audience with messages about Meth addiction in print and at major gay pride events.

Jugular’s target marketing capabilities are best illustrated by these anti addiction advertising and street marketing messages—focused on meth abuse within the gay audience. We’ve interviewed gay addicts and their partner/caregivers in depth. Together. Often in heartbreaking dialogues. We’ve uncovered the emotional bonds in their relationships which resulted in the graphic ad seen here. Unlike all of the other advertising in gay magazines showing happy, healthy people, this is a rare realistic picture that defines demographic characteristics to achieve a market segmentation which is highly relevant. And highly emotional.

We’ve also taken the anti-addiction message to the target audience through extensive New York City street marketing during Gay Pride Week, including the enormous Gay Pride Parade.

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Jugular boasts the highest click-thru rate of any banner EVER on YouTube with their Age of Conan launch campaign.

Jugular creates banners for the web that demand attention–all types of internet banners from flash standards to expandables. And the landing pages which integrate the entire online program. There are good reasons why many clients reject banners as an advertising medium. On almost every website you’ll be accosted, invaded and annoyed. Overly complicated messages. Images and copy jammed into tiny spaces. Ignorance or avoidance of exciting high tech approaches which take the medium to a new level. Jugular overcomes these issues daily.  We launched the Age of Conan videogame with online advertising and achieved the highest click through rates ever recorded on YouTube. For Anarchy Online we ran a birthday promotion for a seven-year-old game and increased the subscriber base by 20%. All for a media buy under six figures with a promotion which lasted seven days. 

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Jugular doesn't follow a standard formula when creating medical or pharma advertising. The results are obvious.

Pharmaceutical advertising? Witness erectile dysfunction campaigns. A man and a woman watching the sunset in separate copper bathtubs? Viva Viagra? A  broken kitchen faucet spouts water a foot high while a couple wrestles? Why? Why is virtually all the work in the category so bad? FDA rules and regulations are frequently faulted. We reject this belief. Breaking an unspoken taboo, we’ve successfully created Apligraf advertising that is competitive and very informative. And resoundingly emotional work for the Scottish Medical Center.

The point is simple (and very much like corporate identity advertising). Pharmaceutical and medical custom advertising materials must strongly define the client’s point of differentiation—not blur the message into the pervasive imagery of the category.  And as a New York health care ad agency who works in the category but steadfastly refuses to be a  “DTC agency”, we insist that our work avoid foolish clichés.

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Jugular has proven that by doing an "Internet Slam" of blogs prior to the campaign launch, assures maximum publicity.

If you’re interested in viral advertising that spreads overnight, this print ad for the Canterbury Center for addiction treatment is the one to look at. “Don’t Die Lindsay” ran once in the morning New York Post. The story was immediately picked up by the internet commentators, rapidly running on over 150 separate sites throughout the world. By 11 AM the ad was projected on the large screen behind the women of The View while Elizabeth Hasselbeck  was engaged in a heated debate  with one of her co-hosts. At 4 PM our client appeared live on Neil Cavuto’s Show on Fox News. Then there was MSNBC, CNN and  even Howard Stern.

The ad ran once. We spent in the low five figures, generating about a million dollars in free coverage. Phones at the client rang off the hook and their web visits soared. “Don’t Die Britney”, another ad in the series which only appeared a single time, generated a similar response.

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Like so many categories, home furnishing and decor advertising is governed by tradition. Show a hero shot of the product. Create ads devoid of personality. Eliminate copy with product benefits or brand personality.  We politely say: what the _____? Our immediate instinct is always to challenge the category norms–and to develop iconoclastic advertising which people look forward to reading because it‘s both fun and educational. 

This Capitol Lighting advertising campaign, which ran weekly over a four-year period, is a case in point. Customers looked forward to the witty headlines and inside jokes. How many home decorating ads have you ever seen with the word  “Pope” ? How many of your customers have called and asked how they can bring the billboard in to get their 20% discount? And for an example of the benefits of guerrilla marketing, take a look at the Mother’s Day card. Distributed in-store, it created an outpouring of emotions about Mom.

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Jugular's addiction treatment campaign using a bloated Chris Farley garnered $15 million worth of publicity.

Jugular’s campaign for Prometa focused on a drug addiction treatment based on the biological and chemical properties of the brain. Prometa has been hotly debated. Our guerilla marketing questioning whether Chris Farley was completely responsible for his untimely death was equally controversial. Just five Los Angeles billboards and an LA radio spot, costing in the very low six figures, received massive national coverage–from five minutes on the Today Show on a Monday morning to two million results in a Google search.

Prometa received at least ten million dollars of free coverage. That’s because we strive to create edgy advertising which will become case studies in the benefits of guerrilla marketing. And, more importantly, serve addicts and their families who are seeking better mental health and a successful treatment for their addiction.

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