A year and a half ago, The Goodyear
Tire & Rubber Co. had been on a
roll, developing and launching products relevant to consumers.
Joey Viselli, director of the Goodyear
brand, says advertising did a pretty good
job of bringing that to consumers, but
the company felt it was leaving something on the table. So the company
teamed up with the McCann Erickson ad
agency of New York to work on finding
the essence of the brand as well as an
emotional touch point to draw consumers through the message for
Goodyear’s “Get there” marketing campaign.
While Goodyear was able to use its
blimp to do so, not every company needs
an icon to use in a new marketing campaign, Viselli says.
“Some people use humor, some people
use drama in the ad,” he says. “Some
people use the heritage of the company
or the excitement of a category. Some
people use fear, like an insurance company. The key thing is to be constantly
asking yourself, why would someone
want to watch this ad? Why would someone want to pause in a magazine to read
what I have to say when they are in the
middle of an article about their favorite
linebacker?”
In print advertisements, part of grabbing the reader’s attention is making
sure you aren’t trying to say too much.
Viselli says it is usually easy to flip
through a coupon book or a magazine
and pick out the local advertisements
from the national ads, and it has nothing
to do with the quality of photography or
the type of font used, he says. Instead, it
has to do with how well the thoughts are
organized and whether the company has
enough confidence in a unique selling
proposition to let the ad stand alone
without a lot of other words and
thoughts.
“One of the biggest errors that smaller
marketers make is trying to say too
much,” he says. “In saying too much, you
are trying to say nothing at all.
“A good agency should help counsel
you. You have to lay out a priority of
communication for an agency. Even if
you are doing this in-house, what are the one or two or three things I am trying to
say? If you get to No. 5 or 6, you need to
know they aren’t going to come across.
Even if they appear in the advertisement,
they aren’t going to come across
because, at that point, you are saying too
much to the consumer.”
If you decide to hire an agency for your
new marketing campaign, Viselli says
you may have disagreements with the
agency just like you will have disagreements with co-workers.
“But if you are all on the same page,
you should be able to work those differences out,” he says. “Maturity is demonstrated by trusting the person, whose
expertise you hired, can give you advice
that adds value. If you are too controlling
of the process, then you should just do
the advertising yourself. I hire people
because I feel they can add value beyond
what I could add. If I find myself overruling them on a regular basis, either I
hired the wrong people or I’m not trusting the expert. That all is predicated on
understanding your business.”
HOW TO REACH: The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., (330) 796-2121 or www.goodyear.com
Finding an agency
When looking for an agency to help
you start a new marketing campaign, it’s
important to have a number of companies competing for your business, says
Joey Viselli, director of the Goodyear
brand. Then, choose one that is as interested in your business as it is in their
own creativity.
“You need to ensure they don’t have
an ego about their process and you
don’t have an ego about your marketing,” he says. “They are going to ask you
(who you are and what you are trying to
accomplish), and you should make sure
that everyone interacting with them
answers it the same way. It costs money
to confuse an agency. They are playing a
consultant role.”
You should also make sure the agency
can scale ideas to meet the size of your
company.
“One of the biggest mistakes you can
get into is getting romanced by the
whole process, and at the very end of it
realize they were working on a $1 million
campaign and you were working on a
thousand-dollar campaign,” he says.
Once you hire an agency, you have to
immerse it very quickly in your world so
its staff can understand what you are
trying to sell. Viselli uses the example of
working with a window manufacturer to
describe how he would learn about that
business.
“If someone came to me and said,
‘Come sit in my showroom for a few
days and see what consumers are asking for. Come go on sales calls and with
my salesmen and see what kinds of
questions are being asked. Come to my
factory and let me show you what it
takes to make a window.’ Then I’m probably in a much better place to come up
with advertising for those windows,” he
says.
“The key thing is to be constantly asking yourself,
why would someone want to watch this ad? Why
would someone want to pause in a magazine to read
what I have to say when they are in the middle of an
article about their favorite linebacker?”