There are players in Major League Baseball who have made bunting an art form. If you’re not a baseball fan, bunting is a technique where the batter intentionally taps the ball instead of hitting it with full force. It’s a strategic move that makes infielders dash to retrieve the ball while the batter tries to steal first base. Six-season All-Star Lou Brock, who played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1964 to 1979, led the league in stolen bases for eight seasons. Brock was a helluva bunter.
Depending on the play, bunting is a good strategy in the game of baseball. In the game of advertising, however, it never gets a run. Sadly, many advertisers are trying to bunt their way to success in an environment where various research sources report that 80 percent of the ads people see on a daily basis are ignored. According to one study, more than half of consumers feel ignored by the brands running those ads.
In today’s marketplace, David Ogilvy’s advice is as relevant as it was three quarters of a century ago:
“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.”
David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather
Ogilvy’s sentiment was later echoed by two other creative powerhouses:
“Go big or go home.”
Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Why is it important to swing for the fences—to go big or go home? Because if you don’t, you’re wasting your money. Foursquare, a firm that gathers data on the technology sector, says that in the digital realm alone, advertisers wasted a record $123 million in the second quarter of this year! Why is so much advertising a waste? Well, let me be frank. As I look around me, I’m continually astonished that so much of the brand advertising that I see tries to solve the advertiser’s problem (sales) while failing to solve the consumer’s problem. And I’m not talking about so-called “breakthrough” advertising—stuff that breaks through the clutter of the four to ten thousand ads most people see everyday. Real “breakthrough” advertising earns that classification when the consumer is able to “break into” your ad because he or she finds something relevant there.
If your ads are not interesting, you will be ignored. It’s ironic that so many companies are terrified to do something risky (aka “interesting”) in their marketing, not understanding that the news cycle these days is a nanosecond long. In today’s environment, the only thing that’s really risky is not swinging from the fences. Here are a couple of similar TV spots—one of which, to quote Ogilvy again, “…aims for the immortals…” and another that, in my humble opinion, never gets to first base.
Burger King’s “Bundles of Joy” spot takes risks. First, it shows real moms in labor and delivery looking like real moms do when they’re in the hospital having babies—sweaty, no makeup, hair unkempt, experiencing real discomfort. The video is quirky—no big camera crew or softbox lighting. The whole thing looks like the kind of video we shoot on the fly on our iPhones to post later on our Instagram. These shots manage to capture the reality of having a baby in a candid and unembarrassed way that invites the viewer in the room as a member of the extended family. It’s the agony and the ecstasy of having a baby. But for these moms, the real ecstasy comes at the end as they get to wolf down a Burger King Whopper when it’s all over. That’s risky too. A Triple Whopper with Bacon and Cheese tops out at 1,350 calories! Shouldn’t she be trying to lose that pregnancy weight? No way! That’s the real joy of the spot. Eat that Whopper, Mom! We’ve watched what hell you’ve been through and you’ve earned it! Honesty makes this spot interesting.
Way less successful is Grubhub’s riff on the BK spot called “Special Delivery.” This is what typically happens when one brand tries to clone another brand’s success. You can almost hear the conversation between some Grubhub exec and their agency: “Can’t you make us something like that cool Burger King spot with the pregnant moms that everybody’s talking about?” Same setup—moms delivering babies in a hospital. Except it’s not. The moms don’t look real (they’re wearing make-up, their hair is done, there’s not a drop of sweat), the lighting is flattering, and it’s shot like any other standard uninteresting commercial. The bigger problem is that they skip most of the story and go right to these moms post-delivery gorging on food delivered by the Grubhub stork. It’s like skipping the ball, the ugly stepsisters, losing the glass slipper, and just saying, “They lived happily ever after.” No drama. Not interesting.
There’s innovation, and there’s imitation. And I think I’ve made it pretty clear which is which. If you’re not willing to be interesting, do us all a favor: save your money. Don’t advertise. It will save us the trouble of ignoring your ads.
