Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com

Advertising -- It's All About Purchase Motivation

For effective purchase motivation, the consumer must have a need for the service or product, must remember the product or service that will deliver the solution, and the consumer must be able to contact or find the product or service.  Given this perspective, consider the following example brought to my attention by a very good friend, Ms. Janet Pizzarello.  Janet wrote of the following experience.
 

I have been concerned with the new national ad campaign for United Parcel Service ("Go Brown").  The first time I saw the ads on TV, I thought "hmmmmmmmmmm" and continued on my way.  Then while waiting in line at the Post Office, I heard someone asking the person behind me if he'd tried the "new Brown Company" for delivering packages and if so, what did he think of their quality of service compared to UPS and FedX and the Post Office?  I remembered the TV ads and had to smile to think that someone would confuse the brand "UPS" with the color of their trucks just because the nickname "brown" had been used.  Then I looked closely the next time I saw the ads and there wasn't a single mention of the real company name.  So if someone had only heard the voice over and not seen the very small familiar brown truck with the logo on the side in the last part of the commercial, you wouldn't have a clue.  This incident happened a couple of weeks ago.

Then last weekend I took our light rail downtown to do some shopping and two ladies were talking about trying to find an alternate to shipping in their business and one asked the other what she thought about the "new Brown Company advertised on TV."  The response from the other person was that she'd actually tried to find it in the telephone directory to no avail.  Then her friend said maybe it was an eastern company and didn't have offices in the west.  The other lady said she'd tried on the internet but she said they must be "bogus" because she couldn't find out anything about the company.  She said she even called the Better Business Bureau.
 

So much for creative advertising.  It appears UPS did a good job of communicating the concept of "Go Brown" but did little to tie it to the Company.  You have to wonder if they researched the commercial and if so, how and under what conditions?

Quirk's and PathTracker

The June 2002 issue of Quirk's magazine contains an article on  PathTracker.  It is in the section on page 12 called "Product & Service Update."  You may also find the advertisement on page 53 interesting.

Sponsor:  Sorensen Associates Inc      Portland, OR  800.542.4321        Minneapolis, MN  888.616.0123
The In-Store Research Company


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