AdMaverick Unplugged

While that title may sound like VH-1 called me to play a set on my French Horn, it’s actually a reference to being unplugged from Twitter and Facebook for the past two weeks. It was part experiment, part challenge from the wife and the fact that I was out of the country on pleasure didn’t hurt either. I guess I could have paid for internet service usage in the hotel lobby, but mentally I was ready to check out for a while. What I found surprised me.

I spend a considerable amount of time talking about how wonderful social media is and the possibilities it creates. I don’t spend nearly enough time talking about the less sexy traditional media that not only still has its place, is as effective as its ever been. Here’s what I saw on my trip.

Presidente. If you haven’t heard of this beer, you soon will. Its the beer of the Dominican Republic and adorns billboards, magazines and almost every opportunity they have to market themselves in the D.R. they do. Their messaging was everywhere.

Want beer in the D.R.? You’d better like Presidente. Better yet, once you land in Miami and make it through customs, El Presidente airport signs are everywhere. This ad appears in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale newspapers. The marketing folks behind this brand are smart. Expect El Presidente to be the next Dos Equis.

Disney Give A Day / Real Simple - I was reading Real Simple on the plane – which if you haven’t noticed is one of the only magazines that seems to have more pages every month then less. These guys seem to get it with their content and also the way the sell advertising. Take the insert I found with the muppets in front of the magic kingdom. Turns out if you volunteer to help others for a day, Disney will give you a free day admission to their park. Not bad. You can read more about it on Disney’s blog or here. This is one of those things I would have found online. But I didn’t. A magazine ad directed me there.

TripAdvisor.com This is old hat for me. I use this company as an example of social media at work when I talk about social media. Do a search on Google about anything related to a trip and you’ll find a TripAdvisor.com link with more content than you’ll ever want.

So I found it odd when I saw them running “in-flight” advertising on the little t.v. monitors. Interesting, a social media company using traditional media to get people to visit them online. As a marketer, I thought it was a waste of money. I mean, if you already rule in the search engines for online travel content, why spend money here? Plus, you can’t go online in-flight so why bother.

I felt this way until my wife said she had never heard of them. And, my wife was asking me about the site. She was making sure I had checked TripAdvisor before our trip (I had) and telling me that she was going to check out TripAdvisor herself and post a review about our trip. I’d say that was pretty effective. Not to mention, TripAdvisor couldn’t ask for a more suitable audience. Travelers on an international flight leaving a tourist destination. Want to reach people who have travel opinions? Well done.

Bottom line is that traditional media is still a viable way to market your company. In all of these examples, marketers were a little more creative than running a :30 second spot to a mass audience. They were targeted, they were timely, they were effective.

Author: Josh Fleming
www.lessingflynn.com
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Tagged as: beer advertising, caribbean beer, disney, disney give a day, dominican republic, facebook, in-flight media, presidente, print media, Social Media, Traditional Media, tripadvisor, twitter