Chicken Targeting
Today is my one year wedding anniversary. Christy Sue and I decided to spend it with my whole family (brother, sister, their significant others and my parents).
My parents live in Clermont which is about an hour north of Orlando. At my wedding last year we had a pumpkin cheesecake wedding cake and it was phenomenal.
In honor of this glorious day, we decided to get another pumpkin cheesecake and share with everyone.
This story has nothing to do with the content of this blog post other than it made me think about what I am going to discuss.
Travis is going to make another blog post about this amazing cheesecake experience later.
So check out what happens next.
Christy and I are driving to Clermont with the cheesecake and I pass this billboard on the expressway. Not a very cheap billboard location.
On the board is an ad for some kind of natural chicken. I am not sure what the brand name is because I couldn’t get all that info in one take - it was not very clear.
The billboard was split into two pieces. Two thirds of the board had the main message on white and the other third had the logo on a colored strip (green?) down that portion of the board.
The main message of the board said, “Our Ingredients List: Chicken.”
That was the whole message with the logo and company name (which I don’t remember).
Here’s my question to you…
What is the purpose of this billboard?
I know that the company is banking on the fact that people will see this billboard then while they are in the store shopping they will remember the name of the advertiser and they will remember that they only use natural chicken and then price is not going to matter and then they are going to buy their brand of chicken.
This is called brand advertising.
We call that…a BIG waste of money.
I was really looking hard at the board and I can’t remember the advertiser’s name so how the hell is any one else going to.
Now let’s talk about better targeting.
Who is most likely going to buy chicken?
Who is most likely going to be concerned about natural chicken?
I would suggest placing ads in magazines that target mothers that cook: family cooking magazines, healthy cooking magazines, organic food type magazines and the like.
The ad could have the same message (I wouldn’t) but add a way for someone interested to be able to request a coupon for a free sample package of chicken they can pick up at the grocery store and try.
You are now talking to the most potentially interested people, who can sample the product and you can tell if the advertising you are doing is producing results.
It’s really not that hard.
So why do so many advertisers make the same mistakes?
The advertising industry, the creative types don’t want big money, commission paying advertisers to know they their ads don’t work. So they just tell them…”You’re getting your name out there!”
I’m gonna go throw up now!
cartoon by Doug Savage at www.savagechickens.com
