2-Speed » Advertising

Gotta Love Low Rent Advertising

Will — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:14:21 +0000

The back pages of auto magazines are famous for being loaded with advertisements for somewhat . . . let’s say, questionable, goods and services. Pheromone supplements for your aftershave, slinky outfits for your [in]significant other, a variety of tools and chemicals to increase the length of certain body parts or the amount of time you put them to good use. There are even some ads for crap for your car.

I used to skip the whole section, but the magazines have become wise to that and now put real content after the ads, forcing you to skim through them. Very smart. In any event, I enjoy scanning them. Some of them are innovative and, for the car guy, merge all wants and needs together nicely. Like this one . . .

I wish I were that creative.

Cool Advertising Campaign for BMW’s 1-Series Cars

Will — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:50:42 +0000

I love good advertising. Well, perhaps, appreciate is a better word. The innovative messages that stick in your head and and drive you to buy a product, understand a position or, at the very least, make you want to tell others about them. I think they’re a fascinating study of human psychology. Often, the great advertisements are humorous. Some, though, use other inventive techniques to separate them from the chaff of other messages that we’re constantly bombarded with.

BMW has a cool ad campaign for their new 1-Series cars that I saw in last week’s AutoWeek magazine. On each page, down at the page number, there is a small picture of the car along with some feature of the vehicle – always related to the page number. For example, on page 5 of the magazine, the following text was aligned with the page number: “Number of spokes on the cast alloy wheels on the all-new BMW 1 Series: 5.”

Cool. Here are a few more.

Obviously, this advertising campaign is doing its job. It caught my attention, made me aware of a product and some of its features (granted, I’m reading AutoWeek, so I’m the sort of person who already knew about the product) and was interesting enough that I am re-communicating the messages to others. I have to imagine that the people who created this ad campaign couldn’t have asked for much more.

Technorati tags: advertising, BMW, 1 Series

Does Anyone Else Think That BMW’s New Ad Campaign is Lame?

Will — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 13:59:06 +0000

In the last few weeks, BMW has plastered the automotive journals with a new advertising campaign that professes their “independence.”

“As an independent company, we can build our [cars] exactly the way we want to – designed around a philosophy, not a bottom line.”

Yup, I’m sure that BMW’s Board never thinks about how much money the company lost on the Rover purchase debacle or on the amount it hemorrhages on Rolls Royce every day . . .

I don’t really understand the art and science of advertising, and that makes me curious about why I even noticed these ads. Generally speaking, I completely ignore about 90% of all advertisements. The other 10% get read (or glanced at) and maybe 0.5% (of the overall) actual elicit some response from me – like hitting a web site to follow up or making a mental note for the future. I guess that BMW’s advertising agency should get kudos for getting my attention at all, even though the result is me thinking less of the company.

What happened to talking about the great cars the company makes or the myriad of awards it wins every year or the shear growth in sales volume? I guess that this is about market expansion for the company. Maybe they think that current customers are not independent and that this new tack will bring in new, lone-wolf thinkers?

I’m a fan of the company and its vehicles, but the new advertising campaign is truly stupid, IMO. I just don’t get it. But, then again, what do I know?