Never use Translations in Your Advertising

And, on the other hand, ALWAYS translate your advertising.
Lemme splain.
The most effective kind of communication is idiomatic. Hence, the most effective advertising is idiomatic. Idioms are the connections that link a culture together, and they don't translate between cultures well. If you have a message that works well in English, you have to remember that it is working well in American English, not British English, Australian English or even Canadian English, eh? Or as George Bernhard Shaw so eloquently put it, "The English and the Americans are two peoples separated by a common language." What that means to an advertiser is: If you want to reach an new audience that speaks a different language, it is not enough to just translate the words of your message.  Even if you get all the words right, the message itself will suffer mightily.

A couple of idioms from another culture, Max and Moritz. Read more and see original image: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Max_und_Moritz.JPG

One of the more amusing ways to demonstrate this is to take a common expression such as, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." and use Bablefish to translate that into say German, which translates to: "Sie können einem alten Hund neue Tricks nicht unterrichten." Those words are basically correct, "hund" is dog, "underrichten" is teach, and "Tricks" is tricks. However if you try to translate that "German expression" back into English, you get, "They can an old dog new cheat not to inform." Um Gotteswillen! In fact, if you wanted to express that concept idiomatically to a German audience that grew up on Max and Moritz, you would say, "Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr," which means, "What little Hans doesn't learn, grown up Hans will never learn." That might have absolutely nothing to do with dogs, but the idiom carries the same exact meaning to an entirely different culture. It is reminiscent of a tale told in intelligence circles about early attempts to use the super computers of the cold-war 60’s to translate Russian into English. When they put in “Out of sight, out of mind” using their algorithm, what they got back was: “invisible idiot.”
That said.
Always translate your product essentials (such as the NAME) into the language of your target audience to avoid embarrassment. If for instance you want to introduce your automobile into a new country south of our border, it would be instructive to know that the name NOVA is a colloquialism for “doesn’t run.” Then there’s Vicks cough drops which became popular in Germany, but before introducing them there, they had to change the name to “Wicks,” because they discovered that “vicks” is a rude name for a sex act. Much more recently Osco Drug Stores bought out Sav-On drugs in the predominantly Hispanic Southern California market. They were so proud of the name they had created for themselves over the decades, that they changed their store names, stationary, and advertising from Sav-On to Osco and watched their sales plummet, especially in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. Osco, it turned out, was an idiom usually associated with vomiting. When you’re sick, the last place anyone wants to go is Vomit Drugs.
After all is said and done, no matter what language it is said and done in, the most basic tenant of advertising applies. Know your audience. Speak their language.  Whether your audience are juniors looking for fashion or governments looking for engineers, learn their jargon, their idioms and you can talk to them in their language, no matter what language they speak.

The Dangers of "Brilliants" in Advertising

I remember the day like it was yesterday. My client abruptly overruled every marketing strategy, product name, logo design, identity package and ad campaign concept that he had approved only a few days before. He had decided to do his ad campaign himself. He knew the product better than anyone, and he was the smartest person he knew.
Both of those statements were true by the way. He had single handedly come up with an invention that had revolutionized his industry. He was a brilliant chemist and practitioner, and had built up a million dollar company that he had started in his garage. The only thing wrong was his reasoning. He decided to undo an entire campaign and design strategy, because his "daughter didn’t like it." She was eighteen at the time.
In his defense, she was the one who had come up with the name for his company when she was twelve. My client therefore reasoned that advertising was so easy even a child could do it.  That said, however, she had not shown any inclination for marketing and advertising since that day. And for all his brilliance in his chosen fields, he himself had no concept of advertising, marketing, design, research, or packaging. And after all was said and done, to become known as the leader in his field, he needed to accomplish all of those in the worst way possible. By doing it himself that’s exactly what he got.
Within a few short years, every mistake he made was manipulated to its fullest by the competition. Soon he was just another player in an industry that he had almost single-handedly invented himself. And he is not alone by any stretch of the imagination.

Elisha Graves Otis, brilliant engineer, innovator and inventor. (image from biografiasyvidas.com)

Such is often the fate of "brilliants." Elisha Graves Otis, the father of the modern elevator, was a brilliant engineer and visionary. Unfortunately he neglected to trademark the name “elevator” leaving the door wide open to every competitor with a pulley system and wires, and they used it freely to take his business away. The landscape is littered with brilliant people who failed to achieve preeminence, because they tried to to something so easy a child could do it.
Advertising is in every respect like any other art form: painting, singing or playing a harmonica. If it's not easy, you can't do it. And if it's too easy, you're not doing it well enough. The Peter Principle, as first defined, is that employees will inevitably rise to their level of incompetence.  The problem for any agencies working with people who are outstanding in their field is that those people tend to believe they are outstanding in every field. And they all too often find their level of incompetence in advertising.
Advertising, in every respect, is like any other art form: painting, singing or playing a harmonica: If it's not easy, you can't do it. And if it's too easy, you're not doing it well enough. The Peter Principle, as originally defined, is that in any hierarchy, employees will inevitably rise to their level of incompetence.  The problem is Peter was an optimist. Any agency working with clients who are outstanding in their fields faces the possibility that those brilliant people will believe they are outstanding in every field. All to often, they attain their level of incompetence in advertising.
The truth is that the statement “I don’t know anything about advertising, but I know what I like,” is exactly six words too long. If you don’t know anything about advertising, then you need professional help.  The same is true for plumbing, stone masonry, brain surgery and programming your DVR. If it’s not easy, you can’t do it. Call on professional help. Save time.  Save money. Save your sanity and your business.
Or as David Ogilvy once wrote, “Why buy a dog and bark yourself,” or as it was first written by Brian Melbancke in 1583, "It is smal reason you should kepe a dog, and barke your selfe."
Apparently old David wasn't the first to say that; he was just right.

Pasadena Government Trips Over Numbskullduggery*

Where have I been for so long? Fighting City Hall. Thank you for asking.

Along with writing advertising, I am currently the chair of the Old Pasadena Management District.  As a matter of fact, I have been a part of this district since before there even was a district. Back in the late 80’s, a core group of merchants and building owners met in our freshly renovated Chamber building to figure out how to make our dream of “Old Pasadena” actually come alive. Of course, first we had to chase out the burglars and addicts hiding in the stairwells. At that time, the district was still rife with boarded up buildings and popularly referred to as Pasadena’s slum.
Through extraordinary efforts, we managed to turn the tide, building by building and block by block. In 2000, we voted to tax ourselves to clean up our streets and sidewalks, and improve the safety and security in our part of town. We formed the Old Pasadena Management District (OPMD). 
In 2003, we partnered with the City to bring the district's three garages up to the same clean and safe standards that we demanded of the rest of our district. Before we took over, the districts parking structures, Schoolhouse, DeLacey and Marriott, were unsightly, unsafe, and unprofitable – not to mention the overpowering smell of vagrant excrement.

The look and smell of today’s city garages are unchanged since 2003.

Today the story of our accomplishments has brought recognition and representatives from cities and Business Improvement Districts nationwide to Pasadena to find ways to learn from our success. The story of the garage management in particular has inspired changes across the country. Yet suddenly and inexplicably, Fred Dock, the City’s Director of Transportation, recently announced they are going to take away management of the garages that have played such a vital role in our success. A management that has profited the city enormously.

OPMD Schoolhouse parking structure, Raymond Ave. entrance.

When OPMD took over management of the garages in 2003, their average net income (in the economic good times of 1996 – 2003) was $5,001.  In 2003, the net revenue was an embarrassing $135,675 loss. City staff warned OPMD that the existing rates had to increase, and our 90-minute free parking program had to be eliminated. But we value our customers, so instead, we maintained the rates, and continued the free parking. Then we cleaned, painted, installed extra security, replaced worn and dangerous stair safety strips, and fully renovated the shabby facilities. Since 2005, the garages’ average annual net income has been over a hundred times theirs. After all expenses and debt service, our average net income has been over $500,000.  For 2009, not a banner year for the economy, it was $1.8 million! Where did we go right?

City garage landscaping vs landscaping maintained by OPMD

It's simple really. Garages are a business, and OPMD is run by business people. The difference is evident to anyone who cares to look (or smell).  In the two years that Mr. Dock has overseen city’s other parking structures, the sad and shabby condition he inherited has remained largely unchanged. Complaints about the city structures outside of our district pour into OPMD every month. Why?  Because the Department of Transportation has given them our phone number, to answer complaints about their structures, even though they are clearly not our responsibility. Yet inexplicably, when OPMD President Steve Mulheim went to the department to get the answers those people were demanding, he was rudely informed that that information was NONE of his BUSINESS!
On the contrary, when it comes to the garages, it seems we are the only ones who do know the business. In addition to garage revenue, our 22 blocks are consistently one of the top providers tax revenue to the City.  OPMD’s management of these garages has been a key component in the success and viability of this area.  Yet the City of Pasadena is seriously considering allow others with an incredibly consistent, demonstrated lack of competence, cooperation and commitment to threaten the welfare of our entire district, not to mention the financial well being of the City as a whole.

City garage interiors vs OPMD's maintained with regular washing and painting.

UPDATE: At a City Council meeting last night, Monday, September 13, we learned that even members of the City Council were unaware of the ill-conceived plans of their Department of Transportation. The representative they sent in place of Fred Dock, who was conspicuous by his absence, didn’t even know how many garages the city had or how many of them were in Old Pasadena. At that meeting, City Council Members decided to examine the issue more thoroughly in two separate committees, make recommendations, and invite the entire city to comment.
Should be an interesting evening. One thing for sure, any attempt to steamroll this *numbskullduggery through the city without anyone being the wiser has run out of gas. There might actually be a possibility that we might be able to help reverse the sorry state of the rest of the garages city-wide.
Weeeeeelll seeeee.

*Yes. That is Numbskull Skullduggery =)

Ethics in Advertising

No, no, no. That's not a contradiction in terms!
Although I'll be the first to admit that ethics are a tad less than obligatory in political advertising, in fact, the most successful political ad campaigns avoid them altogether. But what works in political advertising, doesn't work so well with any products or services that people can touch, judge and experience immediately for themselves.
Lying in politics, however, is such a time-honored tradition that Plato spoke of it as necessary to diplomacy. Today, lying politicians are the bread and butter of comedy. Stand-up comics could not exist without them. 
Why do politicians envy ventriloquists?
    They can lie without moving their lips.
What do you call a politician who swears to tell the truth?
    A liar.
How can you tell when a politician is lying?
    His lips are moving.
The list goes on.
But something remarkable happened Tuesday, June 8, 2010. Two remarkably well marketed bundles of bamboozlery bombed at the polling booths.  Propositions 16 & 17, two corporate exercises in corporate greed, deception, half-truths, mistruths and home-spun charm, crashed and burned on impact.

Or as Greg Pruett, senior vice president of corporate affairs for PG&E reportedly explained in an article on baycitizen.org "While the election outcome hasn’t diminished our steadfast belief that citizens should have a vote in local government efforts to enter the electric utility business, we respect the decision voters made on this initiative." He failed to add that this initiative would have taken the right to majority rule away from those voters.  Ironically, if PG&E had been able to play by the rules they were pushing, their 47.5 percent of the vote would have been enough to stifle the majority’s will. Too bad.  So sad.
Surprisingly the effort that brought the $46 million PG&E juggernaut to its knees accomplished that miracle with a budget of barely $100,000. Similarly, the Mercury Insurance $16 million, attempt to reverse a 1988 consumer protection law, and allow them to manipulate premiums, was defeated with a tiny fraction of their bloated budget. So where did the corporations go wrong, or more importantly, where did the opposition go right?
First it seems the corporate troops went about a lie too far. They each used fake names, tried to hide behind populist rhetoric that they didn’t really understand, spent money like water or Meg Whitman (but I repeat myself). Then inexplicably, they defended their true goals openly in corporate stockholder documents accessible on the web. The opposition only had to point that out and make the truth even easier to find… not all that difficult in the digital “click-here” age. So even though voters (consumers) couldn’t actually touch, judge or experience products (arguments) with their own two hands, the bare facts were all-too-easy to find.
Lying is advertising is always a bad idea. That’s especially true if you have a product, and people are using it. There’s probably a reason they like it.  Which means there’s enough good to say about it, that you don’t have to lie. If you don’t believe me, ask your happier customers. And if you still feel like you have to lie, be sure to give some friends or family a box or two of crayons and construction paper to make your “Going Out of Business Sale” signs. Your competition, their customers and their lawyers will be only too happy to help.
Ethics is advertising is just good business. And... sometimes, not a bad idea in politics either.

FINALLY! Voters Will Have to Pay for their Own Laziness!

I love it when election marketers devise a whole new way to bamboozle the public, and California voters, no slouches in the overall bamboozle market, finally have a chance to actually pay for their ignorance and sloth personally, out of their own wallets. If successful, PG and E’s campaign to stifle competition could be an unparalleled accomplishment. That is truly saying something, because this has been a year of unprecedented babmoozlery, from the Birthers “victory” in Arizona (Damn You Hawaii) to California’s own multimillion campaign to pass Proposition 8 which defeated homosexuals right to marry because it would inexplicably destroy the fabric of the American family.  Perhaps Lewis Black was right, and it would have unleashed attacks of Gay Banditos. But I digress.

Who is it that could possibly surpass these dizzying heights in inveiglery and babmoozlery?  None other than Pacific Gas and Electric.  Pardon me, I meant the “Taxpayers Right To Vote, Yes on 16.”  You’ve seen their ads daily on the TV, and don’t they have a sexy website?

But take a look at that tiny type at the bottom.  You know in all my time in advertising, I have NEVER had a client say to me, “can you make my name smaller, bordering on invisible? And while you’re at it, hide my logo altogether. The logo is forbidden!” Especially when they’re forking over $28.5 million (as of March 26). Nope.  Never happened.  Not once.  If I were a cynical person (and I most assuredly am), I might presume that Pacific Gas and Electric had something to hide. Although in fairness, they are not hiding it from their shareholders for whom they defended their multimillion dollar campaign: “this is a good use of PG and E funds because otherwise, the company would have to spend ‘millions and millions of shareholder dollars to defend it repeatedly’ every time a municipality is thinking about going the CCA route. PG and E fights against municipalities forming CCAs because when local government agencies form their own local utility districts, PG and E loses customers, thus cutting into the corporation's long-term profitability.*” 

While I applaud any company that feels that $1.22 billion profit in 2009 must be surpassed, I am amused that they are going to voters to vote against the very competition that would save the voters money.  Of course they’re not really doing that.  Competition is the American way, and voting against competition could be construed as UNAmerican.  No, the good patriots of Pacific Gas and Electric are merely arguing that before their 1.22 billion dollar dominance of the market can be subject to competition, that an election must be held at taxpayer expense and an almost unheard of two thirds majority must approve it.  But I repeat myself.

The fact that the right to vote is protected in the Constitution notwithstanding, there is nothing in this act that protects anyone but Pacific Gas and Electric, and they’re willing to spend up to $35 million dollars to do it. But who will really pay for this competition busting sham election… the very same voters who don’t ask questions, don’t research the PG and E connection and actually fall for the flimsy “personal freedom” argument. Not all of the voters will fall for it, just the lazy ones.  In other words, if history is any guide, the majority.  So get ready for less competition and higher rates from fewer providers. 

Of course, if voters are unwilling to find out what they're voting about, maybe this will become the new American way.

Ready, Set, Recovery! We're pointing the way.

Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design (P-AMD) has been selected to create a new print, web and social networking campaign for the Foothill Workforce Investment Board (FWIB). FWIB provides workforce services that are invaluable in any economy and absolutely vital in today’s precarious environment. They offer a one-of-a-kind, employment lifeline that connects both sides of the workforce to what they need the most – for FREE. Until now, they have gone largely unnoticed by both the employers struggling to keep their businesses afloat, and by the great majority of unemployed desperate to find the right job. 

This is a dream project for us, because the concept essentially sells itself. Everyone wants it; everyone needs it, and it is vital to the community and the economy as a whole. The only fundamental element lacking is awareness. If prospective employees don’t know that the keys to a better life are at their fingertips, they can’t ask for them. If business owners and managers don’t know they have access to essential business survival skills and to an unparalleled pool of highly qualified talent, they can’t use them. That all of this is free isn’t even an issue. Awareness is the key, not just for now but for the long term.

As a part of this coming year’s campaign, P-AMD will create and develop a new website for the Foothill Workforce Investment Board designed to reinforce their overall marketing plan. The site will be the center of a hub of social networking sites that appeals to employers, talented potential employees, city governments, business improvement districts and chambers of commerce that stretch from Duarte to South Pasadena. 

This is not only an exciting project for all of us at P-AMD to undertake but a vital step in the revitalization of our region. A wave of recovery is coming. Nobody can tell when, but the signs are everywhere. However, the job seekers and employers of Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and South Pasadena have to be ready for the wave when it arrives if they hope to ride it. If they jump on it too early or wait too long, they’ll miss it, and recovery and prosperity could be lost altogether. 

Job seekers need to know not only how to get “a” job, but get “the” job they want and can do the best. Employers need to know that there is a viable resource, in their own backyard, where they can find sound business advice and a pool of local, highly qualified applicants at no charge. 

That is now our task, and we can hardly wait to get started.

Pardon me while I rant about our schools

Yet another battle for Pasadena Schools.  Call it Measure CC, or the Pasadena Unified School District Parcel Tax, this is about more than just education or taxes or how wasteful or stingy our school administrators are.  Detractors make it sound like the argument is all about waste (although that waste was not apparent to the outside management audit commissioned by the cities of Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre). And if it were all about waste, certainly these concerned citizens would roll up their sleeves, volunteer in the district and eliminate that waste.  But it’s not; they won’t, and I don’t want to waste ink.

No, measure CC is about community, and this community in particular.  Pasadena has a long history of doing things our way.  Making our own goals, raising our own funds and yes, rolling up our own sleeves to get things done.  Even Measure CC’s most ardent detractors have to admit our schools are improving. They say it’s because we’re following the State’s lead, which is laughable on so many different levels. It’s because Pasadena parents fought long and hard to make them better!

Pasadenans won’t be told what we can and can’t do. When there’s an emergency we respond. When we’re told something is impossible, we do it anyway. In the ‘90’s when our libraries were in jeopardy, and in danger of closing, we rose up, taxed ourselves and kept them open.  When Old Pasadena had fallen into decay so dire that you couldn’t walk down the street alone. Recovery was “impossible,” so we cantankerous band of business people got together and, yes, taxed ourselves to make things better. Anybody been to Old Pasadena lately?  Even in this economy, the shops are lively; the streets and alleyways are clean and safe, and family fun can be found around every corner within our twenty-two block district.

If the whiners about waste really want to help, come on down.  Everyone willing to roll up their sleeves and fix what’s broken is always welcome. However, until that unlikely day, here’s a reality check.  Some things are worth working for.  Some things are worth paying for. And our children and our future? There are two of them.