Advertising Audit.
On the afternoon of Friday, February 28, from 11 a.m. to noon, I decided to catalogue the advertisements that I encountered. I confess, I chose this opportunity in part because I had plans to drive up to North Carolina that evening, and as such, I had very little food in my kitchen. My strategy was to avoid obvious labels, so as not to spend the hour simply writing the names of the packaged goods that so often inhabit my pantry. I started the exercise, turned on the television, and grabbed a water bottle. Deer Park Spring Water. With less than 10 seconds on the clock, I had my first advertisement.
I should mention that, as someone with an interest in marketing, my living room is peppered with advertisements. I have old alcohol and tobacco ads framed on my wall, a large Pulp Fiction movie card over the hearth, and an aggressive collection of shot glasses, each advertising their own country or event of origin. In cataloguing the advertisements, I used the Apple Notes app, and was of course met with the conspicuous Apple branding on the phone, as well as other apps featuring signage for Morgan Stanley, Venmo, Uber, Xfinity, YouTube, First Citizens Bank, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, Shazam and Mario Kart.
For the purposes of this exercise, however, I was much more interested in the advertisements and commercials on the television. I very rarely watch TV, and I admit that, as a collegiate cord-cutter, I actually pay for none of the apps that I watch when I do. On this day, however, I used my Roku device to log into Hulu, and pulled up a show called Mr. Inbetween. Originally aired to American audiences on FX, it’s a low-budget serial about an Australian hitman. At 11:04AM, I started episode six of season two, and was immediately met with three ads.
It is clear that Hulu places these ads. The ad breaks are too short for traditional television, and the targeting is slightly different than what I would expect from FX. It is important to understand that the effective reach of any commercials aired on this platform will be filtered through the lens of Hulu’s demography, which includes 38 million users in the US and Japan, with an average age of 31, and an average income of $91,000. Males and females use the service equally, and users tend to watch television with others in the room. Most of the ads that I encountered seemed to be consciously reaching out to exactly whom they had found — a twenty-something in college who might need to buy a car sometime soon, would need insurance for the aforementioned car, and who might be tempted by similar shows, movies or streaming services.
It is from this perspective that I would like to address the first noteworthy ad. Jeep put forward a commercial featuring a radio announcement that proclaimed snow cancellations for “all two wheel-drive crossovers.” Soundtracked by a low, driving kick drum and arpeggiated guitar strings, imagery of wheels cutting through fluffy snow was spliced between scenes that recalled the inconvenience of winter driving — the dramatic scraping of snow from a windshield, followed by a parking lot featuring rows of vehicles that emerged only as smooth mounds, buried under two feet of undisturbed white powder. Another cut, and a burnt orange Jeep Gladiator made its first entrance ten seconds into the ad, tossing snow twenty feet into the air in slow motion as it effortlessly tore in front of the camera. There was a brief jump back to two forlorn, grey figures, slowly chipping away at their driveway with a snow shovel, to contrast with the power of the Jeep and its disregard for wintery obstruction. Then the music got louder and moved up an octave, an eagle cried, the Americana intensified, and a red Grand Cherokee roared onto a clear street that had clearly been tended to with much more care than the terrain that the Gladiator had encountered. The radio voiceover announced that, “all Jeep four-by-four vehicles will remain open, despite the harsh weather conditions,” as the Gladiator was seen racing a snowmobile, and a red Wrangler swerved precariously onto the screen. The screen cut to black, with the inscription “Long Live Winter,” before jumping back to snow to feature the entire line of six Jeep vehicles, revealed with another eagle’s cry, all crisply polished and fiery red, contrasted against the backdrop of a white, winter cliff, with the words, “JEEP… There’s only one,” emblazoned onto the sky above them.
According to Pamela Danziger of Unity Marketing, Jeep has targeted young professionals with an income of at least $100,000, who are concerned with experiential luxury, and who value reliability, authenticity and a little bit of conspicuous consumption. The VALS categories that Jeep focuses on are the Thinkers, Achievers and Innovators. This makes Hulu an excellent place for them to be placing their ads. Demographically, these target markets are remarkably in line with Hulu’s consumers, and behaviorally, these are customers who have shown themselves willing to adapt, innovate and change their buying patterns — exactly the sort of discerning consumers who might forsake brand loyalty if Jeep can provide a solution to the inconvenience of winter.
To me, this seems like a great platform, a great match, a well-designed target market and a strong message. Jeep has had an exceptional start to 2020, with the highest-rated Super Bowl ad already in their pocket. They have shown themselves very capable, from conception to execution to detail. Which leaves one glaring problem all the more conspicuous: if they have covered all of their bases so thoroughly, then why are they running a commercial about alleviating the woes of snowy driving in sunny South Carolina? This positioning simply doesn’t seem to align. Charleston hasn’t seen snow on the ground for two years. Jeep certainly has other commercials in the chamber, some of which, as mentioned, have rated very highly. Why not substitute one of those in the warmer states? Perhaps Hulu doesn’t offer regional options for their advertisers. Or, of course, this could simply be an oversight on Jeep’s part, in an otherwise well-oiled campaign.
The next commercial of note featured Matthew McConaughey, who walked through saloon-style swinging doors, brightly backlit, into a wood-paneled bar with an almost comical burst of brassy fanfare. Then the music went quiet, while we jumped to him leaning against a bar top, holding a glass of whiskey, proclaiming, “The right way isn’t always easy. Wild Turkey Bourbon knows something about that.” He was here to talk to innovators, trail blazers and groundbreakers, concluding, “Let’s Talk Turkey.” Then his panel shrank to a picture-in-picture, while a small Roku remote popped up at the bottom of the screen with a message imploring the viewer to “Press OK to see more Talk Turkey.”
Of course I did, because I had this job to do. It launched a 10 minute video, featuring McConaughey interviewing Malachi “Spank” Jenkins and Roberto “News” Smith, the founders of something called T.R.A.P. Kitchen, in a leather-backed booth over glasses of Wild Turkey. They discussed the chefs’ gang backgrounds, and how they had bonded and matured, and their shared visions for the future.
If any of this sounds particularly interesting or inspiring, I have to apologize. Not only was the conversation itself stilted and tired, but it was greatly hampered by the method of introduction. I was in the middle of watching a show. Then commercials came on, as is expected and tolerated, but not wholeheartedly embraced under normal circumstances. Then this commercial decided to get ambitious, overstay its welcome, and invite the viewer to click away from their show. There is exactly one scenario in which someone might actually click that button, and in that scenario, the unlucky theoretical viewer would have to be halfway through an article about unusual advertising decisions. Even then, after finding oneself on the other end of that rabbit hole, faced with a ten minute diversion, the task seemed almost insurmountable. Any normal human would click back immediately. Those who stuck it out for their advertising exercise would be left with a deep, guttural resentment toward Wild Turkey Bourbon.
The campaign itself is horribly unoriginal. A whiskey that embraces those who march to the beat of their own drummers? Hennessy has been doing that much more effectively for years. Jack Daniels’s trailblazing personal legend has been the focus of a recent advertising campaign, and Conor McGregor’s Proper No. 12 is in the middle of a strong push with the same message. This particular campaign failed to even effectively enunciate their point of difference before pushing for the click-through, which made this unoriginal message of originality the weakest of the bunch, by far.
In Wild Turkey’s defense, Hulu is a good platform for them. They are targeting millennials, which is wise, as the twenties are a great time to catch lifelong customers while their buying patterns and brand loyalties are still being established. As has been referenced, Hulu is a great place to find millennials, particularly the sort of millennials with enough disposable income to purchase middle-shelf liquor. While it may be self-evident that Wild Turkey should adjust their messaging, I believe their targeting and placement have found their mark.
There were several other commercials that ran through the two episodes of Hulu-infused television that I watched, and my intent was originally to conclude this paper by analyzing Liberty Mutual’s ear-wormy “Liberty Bibberty” commercial. Satisfied with my advertisement log, I turned off the TV, tossed some freshly-folded clothes into a suitcase, and left Charleston for a weekend in North Carolina. I hadn’t been driving on I-77 for more than ten minutes when I saw the billboard that drove any lingering “liberty bibberties” from my mind.
It’s easy to overlook a billboard. In the monotony of highway driving, they often seem to blend into the scenery after a while, which makes it all that much more striking when one truly jumps out to grab its audience. It becomes suddenly comical, these giant walls of text and image, towering into the sky. There is a certain absurdity to the medium itself, in this case emphasized in contrast with the desperation of the message.
FORGIVE MY SINS JESUS SAVE MY SOUL
These seven words were uniform and enormous, faded red clashing against the orange-tinted yellow background. There was no punctuation, leaving the message somewhat unclear as to whether Jesus was being implored to forgive sins, save a soul, or both. Most importantly, there was no direction that followed. No church, no phone number, no website, no exit number… nothing to indicate what the innocent highway drivers should do from here. In fact, the only call to action seemed to be aimed specifically at the resurrected son of God himself, as though the advertiser was hoping that Jesus would be driving along that particular highway with some spare time on his hands. Because past this billboard was another, and another, until I lost count, all with the same desperate, haunting cry for salvation.
Of course I had to investigate. Was this a church outreach project? Was the owner of the billboard business particularly evangelical with his spare signage? Perhaps this was the last will of a very strange old patriarch?
As it turns out, these signs have been posted courtesy of a Mr. Daniel Brothers, a resident of Santee, South Carolina. “There are people going to hell," Mr. Brothers explained. "Every Christian has a responsibility to do something about the lost souls.” And so Mr. Brothers has devoted what must be the lion’s share of his $60,000 approximated yearly income to maintaining these eighteen billboards.
I am not going to pass judgement on Mr. Brothers’s accounting or financial decision making. In a way, this is an admirable effort toward a noble cause. I would suggest, however, that this is a wonderful and perhaps even unique example of advertising without marketing.
While I realize that Mr. Brothers would ideally love to save everyone from the fiery depths of hell, we as students of marketing recognize that if you sell to everyone, you sell to no one. With such an ambitious budget, Mr. Brothers could run a much more targeted campaign, aimed at those who have stepped away from church, or those who are actively seeking guidance or purpose in their lives, rather than simply stamping the message on the side of the road. Targeting these groups specifically would provide a dramatically better soul-to-dollar return on investment.
Furthermore, this campaign could dearly benefit from a call to action. In fact, the wording of the message itself is somewhat exclusionary; with the possessive article “my” appearing twice in the seven words, the message reads as a dialogue between Mr. Brothers and Jesus, with passersby as an afterthought. However, even if we were to change the messaging to “FORGIVE OUR SINS JESUS SAVE OUR SOULS,” the audience could still use some direction to accompany such a strong message. If we are successful with this campaign, and people are adequately alarmed by the threat of damnation, what are they to do in order to change course? At this point, the choice would be left to Mr. Brothers, but I would suggest that he include the contact information for a church, ministry, or bible distributor that he feels strongly about, so that people may act upon his inspiration.
Each of these advertisements were distinct in their advantages and disadvantages. The Jeep commercial did everything right, suffering only from poor placement. The Wild Turkey commercial was very well placed and targeted, but failed in its messaging. The evangelical billboard suffered from non-existent targeting, segmentation, positioning, or marketing of any kind, and struggled with its messaging, but damn if it wasn’t all the more interesting for it. I think Jeep is in a great position to do well, and I genuinely hope that Mr. Brothers gets a marketing consultation and more efficiently goes about his quest for salvation. And I wish nothing good upon Wild Turkey, because they made me watch a ten minute interview in the middle of my show.