Keeping Brands Secure in Insecure Times
ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — I grew up on a farm. When I was little, my dad got a new Massey Ferguson tractor, and I got a new Massey Ferguson hat from the dealer. My dad used to joke that it was a very expensive hat that happened to come with a free tractor. I loved the hat, and loved Massey Ferguson. When I was little.As I got older, I put in a lot of hours on that tractor, and grew to detest it. It had problems in deep sand, and we had a lot of deep sand. It ran hot. And there were other reasons to dislike not only it, but tractors in general: You see, in my teenage years, a tractor didn’t conjure, for me, idyllic scenes of American agriculture. Amber waves of grain, and all that. A tractor meant very real, very hot, and unbelievably dusty days, pulling a disc harrow through never-ending orange groves. I’d rather have been surfing, or hanging out with my friends. The little kid magic had pretty much worn off.
The year before I left for college, my dad started thinking about buying a new tractor. He wanted to try a European brand that had just entered the Florida market. It was called SAME, and was manufactured in Italy, I think. (SAME is still around, and now a part of Deutz-Fahr.) He had one delivered for a test drive.
The sight of that thing, alone, irritated me. We were supposed to be a Massey Ferguson family, weren’t we? Suddenly, I was eight again, defending my loyalty — for a tractor, of all things — against some upstart interloper. It shouldn’t have mattered to me. I was leaving for college. I wasn’t even going to be around to use it. Still, “You want to test it?” I thought. “Fine, I’ll show you a test.”
I took the SAME to a part of one grove that had sand so deep I could never pull a harrow through with the old Massey. I engaged the harrow, and drove in, using a gear I knew was too high. The wheels began to spin in the sand, and instead of gearing down, I let ’em spin. I buried the thing to its axels. It took another tractor to pull the SAME out. The next day, my dad ordered a new, bigger Massey Ferguson.
Kind of a funny story. But what in the world does it have to do with interactive advertising? Glad you asked.
Think back to that tractor hat, for a second. How much do you think a branded hat, given to a 7 or 8-year-old boy, influenced that 17-year-old’s decision to bury the unworthy competition? I think: A lot.
Next question: How is the tractor hat different from giving a customer a branded digital…something that makes their life just a little easier, and connects them with your brand? Not much, in my opinion.
We can make pixels do just about anything. We have a gazillion new ways to shout our message from the rooftops. But it’s becoming more clear every day that shouting isn’t as effective as we once thought. Nor is making pixels dance, just to see them dance.
But if you can give a customer something personal, and useful — something that solves a problem, and in the process, connects that customer to your message — you’re forging a relationship.
Of course, the things we make today are vastly more complex than the things advertisers used to rely on. At least, we tend to think they are. They’re certainly more tech-driven, and interacting with them is a more intricate process. But from where I sit, the best, most successful things we make have an awful lot in common with that tractor hat. Because they’re built to provide useful, personal, human interaction — and in the process, forge a relationship between the brand and the customer.
Reader Comments.
No comments yet
Leave a Comment
Article Sponsor
More Features
-
Loading ...
Latest News
- Hulu’s Bringing Its “A” Game But… March 19th 2010 ADOTAS – Hulu’s sales team is actively subverting the ad [...] more »
- Yelp! A class-action suit? March 19th 2010 ADOTAS – One of three civil suits against Yelp filed [...] more »
- Viacom Accuses Google; Testing Digital Millennium Copyright Act March 19th 2010 Viacom has accused Google of turning a blind eye to [...] more »
- Google to Leave China April 10th? March 19th 2010 ADOTAS – According to the China Business News, Google Inc [...] more »
- [x+1] Creates The Smartest Tagging System Around March 18th 2010 ADOTAS – Today, if you happen to be at the [...] more »
- IAB’s Video Standards Tackled By ADTECH March 18th 2010 ADOTAS – ADTECH, a part of AOL Advertising and an [...] more »
- Google Search and Mobile and….TV? Oh My! March 18th 2010 ADOTAS – Google wants to dominate your screens…. Not just [...] more »
Features
- Growing Pains March 19th 2010
- For Better or For Worse? March 18th 2010
- Yahoo! Wants to Get More Personal March 17th 2010
- Creative Considerations for the iPad March 16th 2010
- Amazon Leaves Colorado Affiliates Out in the Cold March 12th 2010
Spotlight
AdBidCentral’s CEO, Vivek Veeraraghavan Talks Openly*What was the inspiration to start AdBidCentral? The conditions that inspired AdBidCentral came from a variety of factors in my personal [...] more...
Reader Favorites
Classifieds
- Sr Director, Marketing Services
- Senior Web Analyst
- Account Director
- Director of Analytics
- Manager, Business and Trade Media Relations
Recent Comments
- Jedd Gould: I think you miss the point. Publications have to charge because the content most are
- Gavin Dunaway: They're similar, but Ning is more a competitor to Facebook and MySpace while StumbleUpon considers
- Steve Feldman: Does StumbleUpon compete with and does essentially what Ning networks does?
- Bulent: I wonder how many of the clients would accept a media plan, that would -as
