Vons Supermarket Radio Advertisements – Awful!

VONS SUPERMARKET RADIO ADVERTISEMENTS – AWFUL! by Dan O’Day

Vons is owned by Safeway Inc., which has an annual revenue of around $40 billion.

Surely they can afford to hire only the best people to create the advertising for its various brands. So I’m sure that’s what they did: hire the very best to create Vons’ radio advertising.

The opening line of your commercial is “the commercial for the commercial.” This is your one opportunity to command the attention of the targeted listener.

So what did the high priced advertising wizards behind Vons’ commercials do to grab the targeted consumer’s attention from the very beginning…

“Spring is in the air.”

That is how they begin the commercial?

With a meaningless cliche that has nothing at all to do with the advertiser and which could have been written by a 13-year kid as part of a class “write a pretend radio commercial” assignment?

But maybe I’m underestimating them. Maybe they cleverly connected ‘Spring’ to ‘Vons’ so powerfully that it all flows together naturally and irresistibly.”

Uh, well…Here’s the connection:

“And the only thing better than warmer weather is knowing that you can always save money at Vons.”

Let’s recap what we’ve learned so far:

1. The second best thing in your life is warm weather.

2. The best thing in your life is…

Your children’s health? Your own health? World peace?

No. The best thing in your life is knowing that you can always save money at Vons.

They begin with a an irrelevant cliche.

They quickly move to a lie by saying: “And the only thing better than warmer weather is knowing that you can always save money at Vons.”

They mention their “everyday low prices.”

They mention their “Vons Club” prices.

They list some of the foods they have on special this week. (And, by the way, how many do you remember…?)

They tout their flu shots.

And then ” before tagging the commercial with a bizarrely juxtaposed disclaimer, they end by…

Advertising a different supermarket chain.

Yes, Safeway owns both Vons and Pavilions. No, that doesn’t mean a commercial for one should be a commercial for the other.

Vons and Pavilions have different names because they are different brands.

Different brands make different promises to the consumer.

Different promises require different messages to communicate them.

By the way, in this hemisphere Summer officially begins June 21. Gosh, I wonder how the Vons commercials will begin then?

Pitchplay Launches New Pay Per Click Technology!

PressRelease) “With rising or frequently changing search engine advertising costs, it has become essential to monitor your pay per click campaigns and cost per clicks purchased. Without this valuable information you could just be throwing your marketing dollars out the window! Says Robert Russo / CEO of PitchPlay.”

Tampa,FL – http://www.pitchplay.com announces the launch of its ENTERPRISE class website landing page software for online marketing and advertising campaigns.

Pitchplay is a software that combines the best of website design with the POWER of video web commercials and video sales reps to help businesses improve the sales conversions for their online marketing campaigns.

PitchPlay’s advanced system has the ability to track customer acquisition costs (How much it costs to get 1 sale) and alert you when you are losing money from your pay per click campaigns.

PitchPlay users can now focus on how much it costs to get 1 customer vs how much they spend each month on pay per click and sponsored advertising.

With PitchPlay, consumers and designers can create powerful website landing pages that can help businesses dramatically increase potential sales conversions and sales closing ratios.

With PitchPlay! Using the power of our video sales reps you can

Perfect your sales pitch

Improve your sales conversions

And track the results in real time with our POWERFUL ANALYTICS DASHBOARD!

PitchPlay operates like an ecommerce shopping cart and is PCI compliant, a heightened level of internet security to protect your sensitive online data.

PitchPlay also allows direct connection to your payment gateway or merchant account so you can manage transactions, refunds and cancellations all from within PitchPlay.

PitchPlay also offers credit card processing and merchant accounts from within our AMAZING system.

With a simple application you are only a few clicks away from accepting credit cards online. Most completed applications are usually approved with 24-48 hours by an authorized merchant services provider.

Our advanced dashboard management system makes it easy to track your marketing results across several different deployed web pages.

Running multiple PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns at the same time, PitchPlay takes the pain point of complicated conversion tracking software and a/b testing and simplifies the analytics or results. The purpose is to improve your return on investment by making sure that you are not losing money from bad sales conversion rates vs your marketing spend amount.

With PitchPlay you can use the power of VIDEO to captivate your audience and turn browsers into buyers! With our huge selection of male and female video sales reps we bring the human element to your website and pay per click landing pages! You can choose your actor, write your own script if you want, select what you want them to wear and many other options all from within the PitchPlay system.

“It’s like having a live sales rep on your webpages 24/7 – 365 says Robert Russo / President of PitchPlay.com

About PitchPlay
The primary function of PitchPlay is to help advertisers discover the exact customer acquisition costs or how much it costs the advertiser to get 1 sale vs how much they spend on marketing and advertising each month.

The system offers a dynamic a/b testing platform that helps find the bottom line. Without knowing how much it costs to acquire each business client you could be just throwing money out the window. Sign up today or call for a live demo.

Why Mobile Advertising Practices Are Increasingly Implemented

Mobile Advertising practices are increasingly adopted and implemented by emerging as well as established brand owners. SMS Advertising is becoming one of the latest trends of brand promotion for brand owners and advertisers. Affordable and targeted in nature, Mobile SMS Advertising is one of the easiest means of conveying the brand message to target customers. In this article, let us take a look at some reasons why mobile advertising practices are increasingly adopted by brand owners-

Tremendous increase in number of mobile phones- Today, almost everyone has a mobile handset. There are also various individuals who possess more than one handset. The craze for mobile phones as a portable communication device keeps increasing day by day. Brand owners avail of this opportunity by utilising the same mobile phones as advertising mediums for lakhs of customers. Also an affordable practice of brand promotion, advertising through mobile phone effectively communicates the brand message to those targeted customers who can benefit themselves from the brand messages.

Secondly, the launches of smart phones and embedded applications with various mobile phone devices have enhanced the craze of modern customers. A mobile phone is not just a communication device in todays world. Music, games, camera, internet and various applications are some embedded features of modern mobile handsets. Advertisers ensure that their brand messages reach those customers who continuously get themselves attached with their handsets (as their extensions). At one point of time, these customers will go through the brand message. If interested, they will consider of buying the product, if otherwise, a delete button helps them get rid of the unwanted message in their inboxes. The advertiser should hence provide an interesting brand message through the mobile SMS advertising campaigns. The brand message should be influencing enough to motivate those customers who read it through their own handsets. Brand advertising requires some tricks and tactics. Advertisers should therefore keep themselves updated about which trend and tactic of brand promotion can be used to influence customers buying behaviour.

Marketers have opined that mobile advertising provides more ad spaces for CPA Publishers. This again attracts the attention of those publishers who are keen to partner with mobile advertisers for various promotion campaigns. The advertisers also avail of various benefits by partnering with the publishers.

Last but not the least; mobile advertising is considered one of the bespoken modes of communication for various brands. Brand messages through mobile media reach customers right in their palms or pockets thereby providing easy accessibility to the brand ad. Considering all the above mentioned factors, mobile advertising practices are increasingly implemented by various brand owners/advertisers.

In text ads the newer version of contextual advertising

The conventional way of pay per click advertising has become pass as no more is the idea of an advertisement appearing on the side of search engine an option that works as expected and there is always a desire for something more that will draw instant attention. This is where contextual advertising comes into prospect and acts like a breath of fresh air for the ad publishers.

Contextual advertising

Actually contextual advertising is basically a form of pay per click advertising where the ads get displayed like banner ads or pop-ups on other websites that share the same keyword as the keywords used in your advertisement. Contextual advertising is supposedly a favorable way of advertising as it is considered a source of targeted audience and the click rate as well as conversion rate too is supposedly higher here. With contextual advertising whenever people type a keyword on the search engine, they get to view your advertisement as well as the content of the website. With this mode of advertising there are dual benefits, not only the publisher gains clicks but also the website publishing the ad gets traffic.

In text ads

Where we are discussing contextual advertising, we cannot miss on in text ads. Now these ads are supposedly an advanced form of contextual advertising and are most preferred by webmasters across the globe. In text ads appear to be less pushy and more targeted than any other form of pay per click advertising. Actually what happens here is that the keyword used by you and the publishing website is same and therefore the keyword becomes the source of advertisement. The keyword in the content of the website where you are publishing your contextual ad has double underline as well as a bubble .So whenever anybody moves the cursor on the keyword, the bubble gets display where there is precise information regarding the publisher as well as advertisement. If the viewers get impressed and interested by the information then they can click on the bubble and o through your contextual advertisement and if they are not interested then they can ignore it.

Why Flyers And Brochures Are Effective Ways To Advertise

Walk down a suburban street in any developed industrialized nation and one thing will be remarkably constant: The letterboxes will be full, often overflowing. And they won’t just contain addressed, posted mail. The bulk of the material will often be brochures and flyers advertising businesses and services, many of them local.

Certainly, many people find this fact of modern life extremely annoying. Sometimes more than half the houses in a street will have signs angrily demanding that there be no junk mail!.

But this phenomenon proves something: Those flyers and brochures must be working! Otherwise businesses wouldn’t be paying to have them produced and distributed.

Without a doubt flyers and brochures have distinct advantages over other methods of advertising: Here are a few:

1) They are comparatively cheap to produce flyers particularly so. Certainly, glossy multi-page brochures can be very costly, but basic one page black and white flyers are very inexpensive and can still work well. As long as they are clear and large enough to catch the resident’s eye, they can get your product or service noticed.

2) You can target the geographic areas that you want. Ultimately all business is local business. But some businesses are more local than others! Businesses that cater to a geographically specific market tend to get a very good response from flyers and brochures.

An example would be a pub or bar wanting to promote a one-off or regular theme night. Placing several thousand flyers in letterboxes around the venue would be a great way of telling people about this event. People do tend to be more likely to go to something that is close to where they live, after all.

3) Just as you can target runs geographically, you can also target them demographically. Say a pool table company is using brochures to get leads. There would be little point in targeting units, since they generally wouldn’t be large enough to contain the product. And pool tables are not cheap! So, the best results would come from a large run through middle to high income suburbs — houses only.

Of course it can be difficult finding distributors who can do a drop in this way. Most of the big distribution companies offer value but on a large scale. You must pay for a large drop, your promotional material is rolled up with several others, and no thought is put into which letterboxes are chosen! However, there are smaller distributors who can thoughtfully target your material. They are just less well known, and harder to find, that’s all.

4) You can put special offers on them. A flyer that says something like, Present this and get a ten percent discount on any item in the store! is a good choice. The incentive itself can increase sales. Secondly, it’s a great way of tracking the campaign, since the number of actual discounts can be recorded accurately.

5) People hang onto them. This is one definite advantage over newspaper advertising. Of course, many more people will see an ad placed in the paper. But to keep your contact details they have to cut the ad out, highlight it, or write it down usually along with a lot of others. A flyer or brochure, however, contains all the details and can be kept indefinitely. Businesses often get leads from flyers or brochures that have been left on the tops of fridges or in desk drawers for months, even years!

Certainly, particular circumstances dictate that flyers and brochures are not always the best advertising method. But the above advantages make them a remarkably reliable, cost effective way of raising awareness and generating leads for most businesses.