When marketing and sales teams don’t align, but the ad goes out anyway:
Support for this podcast and the following message comes from Volvo, who’s making the premier package complementary this summer, when you purchase or lease a new 2016 Volvo.
Visit your local Volvo dealer for details.
Volvo. This is our standard.
This offer excludes XC90 and Polestar models.
Making me think again of Dom Norman, this time his little bit ‘explaining the term UX’. “[User Experience is] everything. It’s the way you experience the world, it’s the way you experience your life, it’s the way you experience the service…”
While I’m not a supporter of semantically arguing on the origin of words and terms, or what a minority thinks a term should mean when the majority has moved on to interpreting it as something else, I like what he’s saying about the broader practice of thinking about users / customers / humans (again a semantic matter that obscures the point if you let it) is useful.
This Volvo ad has lessened my opinion of Volvo. Not that I can be sure I consciously held one before the ad, but noticing what I see as a sloppy and careless marketing campaign that they can’t even see through, has made me think they don’t really care. Which makes it hard for me care.
But maybe I’m just being over sensitive about podcast advertising tonight, as later in the same download there’s one for a larger brand that I only know of through podcast advertising, which worked on me in a novelty kind of way when I saw it on sale in Seattle earlier this year. “Oh yeah Lagunitas, the podcast supporting beer, I’ll try one of those please”.
I found it pretty average though so I don’t think I’d try another, and hearing their new marketing line tonight has possibly sealed the deal:
Wherever you go. Beer speaks. People mumble.
More mumblings at Lagunitas dat cam
What the hell does that mean?
And the ‘dat cam’ there is a nod to the occasional difficulty I have with international podcast advertising when an accent can make it hard to understand. OK, I know the presenter means dot com, and I actually love his voice, but his accent adds a level of trickery that I think advertisers should be more aware off when asking presenters to read the ads. Work with the talent (though to be honest in this case I actually never understood the presenters name and only now Googling it do I realise it’s not Guy Ross or Russ. It’s Guy Raz. Cool name).
Another voice, and name, I’ve grown to love is Ira Glass who I’ve heard mention the advert strap line “what drives you” more times that I can remember, but still to this day I don’t know if the brand is Psion, Cyon, Sion or Syon.
All this said on accent and it being hard for me to hear ads, targeting podcast advertising must be really hard, and mean that you’re bound to hit territories and audiences that either can’t get your product or that can’t even begin to care for it.
Speaking of which, I love cats, but I do not care for hats for cats or companies that think cheeky cartoon monkeys are a good B2B confidence and trust builder. Over 10 billion emails per month suggests that I’m in a minority with that feeling mind you. But then I can’t help but wonder if it’d be 20 billion if they were called something a bit less irreverent.
I digress.
Happy Friday.
Documenteering 