Sunday, December 19, 2010

The Power of Advertising

Yesterday I took my new 2010 Mazda 3 in for its first servicing.
While my car was up on the hoist I sauntered around the showroom and looked at the pristine orphans in there, waiting to be adopted. Nice cars.
I'm quite happy with my purchase thus far and I feel that Mazda is in the business of making quite a good vehicle. Great design. Great features. And terrific advertising.
Who among us, were we to hear someone say "Zoom! Zoom!" would not instantly think of Mazda?
A Mazda marketing executive once said, "The exhilaration we felt as a child shooting down a hill on our bike, this is what Zoom-Zoom means at its most basic level."
That is the raison d'ĂȘtre of ZoomZoomism.

And it works. Even as I zip around in my own car, often those very two words float through my mind. They seem appropriate, so up front.
Zoom! Zoom! Go fast! Go fast!
But when it comes to high-level advertising -- wow, it is such a subliminal world out there!

From a display rack I picked out a couple of Mazda brochures and noticed something interesting.
Hmmm…. I've taken pictures of them here as you can see for yourself -- Do you notice anything strange about them?

Does it strike you as interesting the amount of valuable advertising space devoted to things that really have absolutely nothing to do with the actual product?
Look at the very first image, above.
Three guys walking on a beach with two dogs. When you unfold this brochure you see [second image] that a full 40% of the available surface area has been given to images of someone playing a bass guitar, and a street scene of people sipping coffee at outdoor restaurant patios.

Hmmmm -- that was for the 2011 Mazda 3.
What about the 2010 Mazda 6?
Well, as you can see in the third image, there is a guy teeing off into the sun. Opening the brochure again reveals several car-unrelated activities…. first, two people on beach chairs as the sun sets over the ocean, and to the lower right, a guy intently working at his laptop computer.
Hmmmm -- so then it hit me.
The most effective advertising must involve a certain level of diversion.
Get the viewer to at least momentarily envision something they would rather be doing.
With this in mind, dear readers, I've developed a new brochure for Bookpuddle©.
You can see it
--> HERE!
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