Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

One way to push people through the AIDA process is to tune into the Zeitgeist. In recent months TV advertising for beer has been set on fire by a Heineken campaign from the Netherlands that has captured the imagination of online communities the world over.
I have to admit it’s a classic.

Anyway, I have Doreen [...]

The “visual double-entendre” in this logo for a German company supplying tow bars is so blatantly obvious, I’m trying to work out if they know what they’re doing.

Deliberate or not? Source: www.rameder.de
Do they know something about Freudian advertising I don’t know? Is this a new way to “arouse” interest in keeping with the AIDA [...]

Companies often use things happening in the news to inject their products with interest and move forward the AIDA process. But this recent idea caused a bit of a cafuffle. Obama Fingers. Yes, you read that right: OBAMA fingers, like fish fingers only with chicken.

What the ….? [Image source: spiegel.de]
What in heaven’s name possessed the [...]

The AIDA process for planning marketing is a useful aid, but it has one major failing: it stops after stimulating action - what about aspects of post-purchase behaviour? Customer relationship management (CRM)? Customer lifetime value (CLV)? Managing complaints? Post-sale service and support? And in automotive markets: aftersales management?
Well, that’s why modern techniques of caring for [...]

My eye was caught recently by an item in a specialist marketing and advertising magazine about guerilla marketing. An ad agency in the relatively small German town of Eschweiler had obviously been briefed to create as much hype as possible for the opening of a new Tamaris shoe shop. The publicity stunt they came up [...]

Try me kids, buy me parents.
The conative part of the AIDA process involves motivating people to buy. With some buying processes it’s hard work convincing people they’re about to invest their money in a good buy.
So what you do is place the product right in front of them. In fact in some markets [...]

Many marketeers are baffled by the things their target audiences remember from their advertising. I once worked on a food ad where everyone remembered that the woman in the kitchen licked her finger (an attempt by us to add appetite appeal). Probably because some people think too much about hygiene. Sadly they remembered nothing about [...]

On the last but one MBA course, participants were keen to emphasise the fact that England was not taking part in the European Championship finals (funny, nobody mentioned it on the last course after Germany’s poor showing). The critics liked the latest posters for Lucky Strike, rubbing in the English absence.

It certainly plays to the [...]

I see the always campaign from the States has now overspilled to the UK. MTV watchers are now being reminded every 5 minutes to “have a happy period”. Now I’m not one to judge how it must feel, as a woman, to be told to get on with life or, as is the case, [...]

Indeed what does interest car drivers? Probably a question they ask themselves a lot at Ford.
Of course we need to ask which car drivers. The old sexist joke is that some women are more interested in the colour of the car than what’s under the bonnet. Unlike ‘real’ men - who drive a hunky Ford [...]