Marketers spend fortunes on brand campaigns, on TV spots and print ads and then, often, hire different agencies and have different "campaign management" when they do in-store posters. I don't know why this is, but it is. I suppose they think that communications at point-of-purchase are less important somehow and, therefore, should cost less. As counter-intuitive as that seems, I'll let that sit there without further comment and gallop on ahead to the aforementioned "dumb ad of the day."
I was walking down Lex in the 80s and saw a poster in the window of an HR Block Tax Center. The headline on the poster was:
YOUR TAXES
YOUR WAY.
No, no, no.
There are about three dozen people in this country who get to pay taxes their way, and they all have incomes in the billions. For the rest of us there's no "your way" option. Nope. You pay the government's way. Period.
This line is typical of the bombast, cliche and stupidity endemic in most advertising and, I'm afraid, in-store advertising often leads the way.
We do a lot of in-store advertising--mostly through our sister company--and it's quick and dirty work. No matter how many creative approaches you present, client services over there ditches anything that's not tried, true and tired and shoves it out for all to see. We've got so many "back burner" cpncepts collecting dust we just don't believe a word when they say "oh, that's really creative" and have learned to hear only the "...but..".
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