What Were They Thinking?

by | May 30, 2013 | Marketing that works

Quite often I see full-page adverts in the Saturday weekend magazine of “The Age” (and I suspect that they are repeated in other newspapers around Australia at huge cost). Two -thirds of the advertisement is taken up by some gauze screened photograph of a woman swimming or horse galloping or something equally airy fairy. The breathless body copy reads as follows…

“The Crying Widow of Cradle Mountain VS A Man Who Won’t Waver

Cradle Mountain is inundated with nearly three metres of rain a year.  Often with storms materialising from nowhere.  It’s been said that the most severe rainfall is caused by a Crying Widow who roams Cradle Mountain mourning the loss of her one true love.

We’ll never know if the Crying Widow of Cradle Mountain really exists.  But, what we do know is, no matter how torrential the rain becomes…”

And guess what it’s selling? Well here are the final words of that riveting body copy…

“..we’ll never compromise on how we brew James Boag’s Premium or the water we use to make it”

Then there is a graphic like this…

I do wonder what adverts like this do for Boag beer sales but I suspect very little. No doubt, however, it makes the hearts of the product manager and advertising agency beat fondly, proudly and loudly. Frankly I think that the whole advertisement is a waste of space and they’d be better off giving some great reasons why a beer drinker should try their brew.

I’m reminded that one of the great advertisements of all time was written about Schlitz beer around 100 years ago by a famous advertising man, Claude C. Hopkins. It was full of information that was known to brewers but was not known to the beer consuming public. What that advert told the target market about the making of a great beer got their interest  and gave them great reasons to buy the beer. It soared to equal first place in sales almost overnight. (See more here http://www.foolonahill.com/schiltz.html)

And, let’s face it; giving great reasons to buy is what advertising is all about!

 

To view the full James Boag ad, click here.