Nothing to beat print when it comes to a taster

LAST month, there was a bit of a seismic event in advertising: consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble (P&G) announced it was cutting back its ad spend on Facebook. The reason: Facebook’s promise of “targeted marketing” simply doesn’t deliver the goods.

P&G have got better results – particularly for its air freshener, Febreze, by going back to old-fashioned mass marketing.

I could say I told you so, but many of the digital clevers out there – and brand managers desperate to appear technologically hip – won’t listen.

The reality is that the old “dinosaurs” like TV and print still work. One of the reasons newspapers are still a highly effective advertising channel is that readers do pay attention to the ads.

In some cases, readers remember the ads before they remember the deathless prose of yours truly. This is especially true where the ad has a price or a number in it: print can be very effective as a call-to-action and retail medium.

If a price is truly appealing, and the surroundings appealing, then a print ad is powerful.

Another one caught my eye this week in The Star, for Trafalgar, the well-known tour and travel company.

The main image in the ad showed a couple, against the backdrop of what could be an old European castle or city wall, about to tuck into some delicious ice creams.

The headline said, simply: “Taste your way around Europe”. Below that was a real call-to-action line: “+Save 10%”.

There followed details of some of the company’s European itineraries, which all feature food in some way. Along with these were the all-important numbers, price and savings.

I bet many people lingered over it and did their sums. It’s effective advertising and it works because it’s in print. And good value, too...

So the first Orchid this week goes to Trafalgar.

And to show how effective TV can be, especially when the ad is well shot and directed, I was mesmerised by a Checkers commercial for its top quality pork offerings. It featured a number of top South African chefs and pork dishes they prepared. To say it was mouth-watering doesn’t come close. Both my wife and I noticed it.

It positioned pork as something to salivate over and it positioned Checkers as the place to get the best. Checkers has done this before and got Orchids from me, most notably for its food.

So, here’s another sizzling, tasty one for you, Checkers. Well done.

One of the grammatical, and common sense, rules that people often get wrong is the use of “ever”, or “all time”.

Both those phrases mean exactly what they say. So if you boast that your product is the “best ever”, you are saying, somewhat stupidly, that it will never be bettered. Never say never.

Overuse use of ever is never going to make it correct, just as feet are different from metres. And difference does make a difference: I would hope the pilot flying the plane I am in would know the difference between feet and metres.

So, I was irritated this past weekend when Caltex kicked off its latest national promotion by saying it was offering the “best prizes ever”.

Even if they had used correct grammar – “best prizes to date” – they would have fallen a long way short.

Please people, a number of vouchers for a road trip of R15 000 each (including fuel) are hardly the best in history up to now. They are not that great by today’s standards.

The chances of them being the “best ever” are, therefore, nil.

An Onion for silly advertising.