Posts tagged care

Dove for Men and Oprah – Sponsorship Fail?

March 18, 2010 · Filed under advertising, Marketing, Rants · Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

I happened to be home early this afternoon because I had to take my son to a doctor’s appointment. He was a little fussy and it sometimes distracts him when the TV is on, so I thought I’d give it a shot. When I turned on the TV, Oprah‘s show was on. Within a minute or so, she took a commercial break. As we transitioned to the commercials, there was a message informing us that the Oprah show was brought to us by Dove Men+Care. “Hmmm…” I thought to myself, “That’s an odd partnership.”

Flickr via nayrb7

As I’ve posted before, there are some marketing and advertising placement decisions that just don’t make sense, especially in very clearly male or female-targeted programming. This seems to be one of those situations. Why would a product line that is very clearly targeted for men sponsor a very clearly female program like Oprah? In fact, according to Quantcast, the viewing audience of Oprah.com is 70% Female (Sorry, I couldn’t find reliable TV show viewer demographics, but we can easily conclude that the demographics are dominantly female as well). If you want to sell to men, sponsor a men’s program, right?

Flickr via theimpulsivebuy

I did have to consider that their marketing strategy was to target women since they tend to make many of the household purchasing decisions. But, Dove Men+Care marketing is directed toward men. Check out some of the TV advertising. Actually, I really like this advertisement. I think it’s funny and I think that it actually speaks to men very well. But this only serves to further confuse me. This is a marketing campaign that targets men!!! Why are they sponsoring the Oprah show?!?

So, I’m turning to the fine folks at Dove to help me understand your strategy. Perhaps it makes a lot of sense. But, on the surface, I can’t tell why you would spend a lot of money (and I know it’s a LOT of money) to sponsor the Oprah show, which is going to expose your product line to women, when your other Dove Men+Care marketing and advertising speaks to men. So, any of you Dove marketers who subscribe to my blog (and I’m certain there are dozens of you), I’m waiting. What’s going on?

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How Good Are You at Spotting Fakes?

November 22, 2009 · Filed under Brand, Business, New Media, social media · Tagged , , ,

 

smile

photo by strollerdos (via Flickr)

I took a very interesting test recently in which I was shown video of 20 people smiling, and was asked to decipher if I was looking at a genuine smile or a fake smile. I got 17 out of 20 correct. It certainly wasn’t easy, but I think that we are all programmed with pretty good bullshit detectors. We can usually tell if somebody is lying to us, giving us a fake smile, or isn’t genuinely interested in us. This can be a client, a new acquaintance, a cashier, a potential love interest or a customer service agent. And we don’t need to see their faces to tell if someone truly cares or if they’re just going through the motions. It’s generally very difficult to glean tone via text alone, but it is easy to tell if a person, company or organization is “phoning it in” even in e-mail or social networks. Yes, it will take you longer to respond to people, and to post new information, but take that time to make it genuine. It may seem like you’re accomplishing a lot when you re-post the exact same information across a dozen different networks or to your entire e-mail database. But, I assure you, you are accomplishing less. We can tell you don’t care about us. We can tell you’re not treating us special. We can tell you’re giving us a fake smile. Take the time to be real and make us feel special.

By the way – TAKE THE TEST

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