I once worked for a guy who really knew his stuff, at least for a time and until he went into old-man mode after he made millions (with my help, I might add). He taught me a lot… but we always disagreed about negativity in ads… negativity aimed at the competition. He was against it: “show what you do, not what they don’t do.”
I was always for direct attacks at the competition that I see as the enemy.
I was born and raised in Pittsburgh during its dirty times when our sports teams were crap and the city had just begun its renaissance. And being from the Burg meant having a huge chip on your shoulder – and decades later I still do. It’s part of the Pittsburgh angst and anger that I’ve carried with me to every corner of the world. I haven’t been back home in years but that anger never moves far from the surface. I can be in Paris or London and it’s right there, whenever I see anyone or anything that looks pompous or full of itself… big brands, big ads by big companies, “London is the best city in the world,” and hogwash like that.
My Pittsburgh anger is about being discounted by the major media, discounted by places like Philadelphia (a hell hole, really), New York, Boston. I still remember Lou Reed’s small town song that says, “there's no Michelangelo coming from Pittsburgh," or something like that.
The anger comes from never being able to shake the stereotype. A lot of people and things come from Pittsburgh and its environs: Gene Kelley, Mary Cassatt, Andy Warhol, Joe Montana, Joe Namath, the Salk vaccine, Ahmad Jamal, Annie Dillard, Gertrude Stein, August Wilson, David McCullough, Christina Aguilera, Henry Mancini, Jimmy Stewart and my boyhood hero Bill Mazeroski, who single-handedly (at least to my young boy eyes) beat the mighty Yankees and that blowhard Mickey Mantle. But no matter. Even though we beat them our team is still crap and Pittsburgh is yokel, ignorant, bohunk… ad infinitum.
Let’s get back to marketing so my blood pressure can subside. When you and your product are dismissed by the bigger brands there’s only one way to respond. ATTACK! Like Gingrich did to Romney, then Mitt back to Newt. It’s documented that when Gingrich went negative he took the lead; Romney stopped being a sissy, then he retook the lead.
Or are you trying to tell me that politics ain’t marketing?
If you’re the little guy, the underrated product or the new kid that the competition dismisses with snickers and sneers and “who even knows about them?” comments, you must ATTACK.
Why? Because no one believes that you’re better, so touting your features and benefits rarely works. After all, the logical consumer believes that if you were better, you’d be bigger and more successful, right?
When Apple finally attacked the PC with those clever “I’m a Mac” ads, they stole market share from Microsoft.
You ATTACK the hubris, the pomposity, the idea of entitlement your competitor has simply by virtue of his size or his big ads and media control. How do you beat that? A punch in the face. (Yes, once you attack, then and only then demonstrate your expertise, new features, better financing, and the like.)
I did it when I challenged Allergan with “Better than Botox?” I would have preferred to kill the question mark but had to do so to keep this side of the FTC. Yes, I attacked Allergan with all its millions and press power and physician support; and I did so with everything Pittsburgh taught me: screw ‘em, I have nothing to lose so they can’t scare me, and who the hell do they think they are?
Did we beat them? Well, we pulled in half a billion dollars. They spent years trying to stop the ad and never could… in fact, had they bought us out and used our skin cream as a post-Botox healing cream, Allergan could have cleaned up. But they were too proud to admit that a small company took the shine off of their skin toxin.
People love a David and Goliath story; they love the underdog, the guy or gal who’s been wronged by the big company, the big ad agency… the little guy who never gets a fair shake and would win if the playing field were even.
Why am I a better marketer than, say, David Ogilvy? (He was the best, in my opinion, this is just an example.)
Because he gets attention by spending bags of the client’s money and not by being creative; because he threatens to pull his million dollar ad campaign if a magazine dares to run my ads; because he slips money to web sites and pays for positive comments and blogs without doing any work himself; because he doesn’t care about you or your product since he’s too busy spending the money he’s overcharged you. Have you seen his chateau in France? How do you think he got the money to buy that monstrosity? You probably helped pay for a room in the place.
So choose me! Without saying it, I am obviously the opposite of Ogilvy: creative, trustworthy, concerned, honest… and I’m successful the old fashioned way… I earn it and I don’t ‘cheat’ my clients.
I won’t convince everybody, but I guarantee you I’ll get more clients than simply touting my capabilities and being the nice guy. “Shucks, we’re a good agency that does good work at a good price.” Good luck with that one.
“Consumers want a new story... authenticity, not spin... participation, not propaganda.”
