Want Universal Appeal? A Few Straightforward Solutions on Marketing to Everyone
See, relevance to an ad they can relate to means better success for your campaign. One way to simplify the issue is the online creative. When creating an online ad, mix it up. If the ad is going to show a person, create one ad and tweak it four or five times, one ad for each ethnic group (I know there are more, this is just as an example). When distributing the ads for the media buy, give the ad that is most relevant to the site. Make sure to research the site you are looking to place media on, ask the publisher who makes up the majority of their audience, if the publisher is not sure give them all the ads and ask them to rotate the ads, or place a certain ad on a section of the site that seems to draw more attention from one ethnic group more than another.
The same goes for email campaigns, keep the person in the ad relevant to the audience you want to reach. Do not show a black male in an ad that is suppose to target an Asian woman, talk about losing customers and not doing your research. This is when people get mad and complaints start, keep it relevant.
Although the above can work for most campaigns, things are never THAT easy, there is always a catch. What if some ethnic groups spend more time on mainstream websites than ethnic websites? Then your creative just got a bit more complex. In the chart below (I promise, last chart) you can see that people in general are all over the web:
(click on thumbnail for expanded chart)
What to do now? You can get a clear target audience from your client, and if they don’t have one, create one from research. When designing the media plan, look through the website:
â–¡ What kind of ads do they have?
â–¡ What are the different sections of the website?
â–¡ Is it a general or a niche website?
Ask the publisher or sales rep the following questions:
â–¡ Who is their audience?
â–¡ Do they have a breakdown of the ethnic groups that visit their site (they may not)
â–¡ What type of ads work best on their site, ads with people or ads that show the product or both?
â–¡ Are their specific products that are more relevant to their audience than others?
â–¡ Do they have an email list? What does that audience consist of?
â–¡ Does their audience respond well to lead generation or basic banner ads?
By asking the basic questions, you can go back and create online ads that make sense. If you are promoting a restaurant, use a 300×250 creative size and show a bunch of people sitting at a table eating and having fun. But I beg of you, when deciding who is sitting at that table, do not show all Caucasian people and one African-American and put the ad on an African-American-focused site.
I have heard so many complaints about ads like that, so mix it up, make it women and men of a diverse looking group, and I guarantee that will get a better response. For example, TGI Fridays has a good banner on their site in the e-club section, featuring two people of different ethnic groups and genders sitting at a bar, which is a double plus for the restaurant chain.
Another really good campaign, natch, is for Apple’s iPod, whose online ads feature the product and nothing more. Their site features a different person every time you refresh; the ads are silhouettes and the commercials are silhouettes of people dancing, so this technically erases the color barrier and just makes it a really cool campaign. iPod has technically avoided all complaints of lack of diversity. How?
1. Their online ad features the iPod and everywhere you look the campaign fits any site on the Web.
2. Their site shows different people on the homepage and you can’t see the actual person
3. Their commercials again show different people dancing with their iPods and you can’t see the actual person. Their commercials and background music are a good fit, whether you are a teenager, rap lover, jazz musician or in your 50’s or older. It’s saying, ‘no matter what you look like, our iPod is for you.’
I wouldn’t say copy iPod, but take notice of their campaigns, they’ve done it right.
I tried not to use the word but I have to at least once, it’s all about Diversity, there I said it. Make things diverse, make your agency step forward and create some real ads for people of all shades out there. There is nothing to be afraid of unless you do not like compliments and more clients, because people will take notice of campaigns that look more like them and reach audiences that have felt ignored in the past.
As online folks, we have two jobs; it’s our job to let the client know why it is important to reach everyone and then it’s our job to find where everyone is online.
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