MarketingInsideOut.com

An AdAge story this week about the sales success of HeadOn states: “Those rapid-fire “HeadOn, apply directly to the forehead” spots are arguably among the worst commercials ever from a creative standpoint. They’re annoying, repetitive, obnoxious — and effective. ”

Creatives everywhere probably gagged when they first saw the campaign. But when I posted this story about HeadOn back in November, I thought it was a smart strategy. And still do.

Regardless of how un-creative the spots are, look at the facts…sales are up 234% even though they annoy viewers. Millions talked about them. Thousands upon thousands blogged about the spots (there are 19,562 on Google blog search alone…a few thousand more show up on Technorati.)

The last time I remember such a high level of buzz about an ad campaign was for Deadenbacher, the ill fated Orville Redenbacher campaign. The Deadenbacher spots cost a fortune to make and were done by one of the most creative shops around. That “creative” approach didn’t work and Crispin lost the business.

On the other hand, Dan Charron, VP-sales and marketing at Miralus Healthcare, the marketer of HeadOn fully admits they weren’t out to be creative or win awards. Charron’s very pragmatic approach of testing for recall against ad clutter helped him hone in to find just what achieved his objective: just getting people to remember the product. And that they did…extremely successfully.

I found myself nodding my head when I read the following comment on the AdAge story. Since he/she says it so well, I’ll just quote it in its entirety:

In this article about the +200% growth of the product Head On, the author used the phrase “arguably among the worst commercials ever from a creative standpoint” to describe the infamous TV commercials for the headache product. And in using that phrase it shows that most advertising types have lost their way. It validates what I say here and on many sites on the web, a creative ad is not necessarily an effective ad. But I also think AdAge (mirroring most of the industry), doesn’t understand the term ‘creative’. This IS a creative ad. Yes it only says the same six word phrase over and over. Yes it is one single camera shot with a chromakey and two-dimensional graphics. So? It is creative, unique, and effective. Those six words do more for sales than those million dollar campaigns with big football stars. Just because it doesn’t have a cinematic look, some sort of cool special effect, or humor driving it does not mean it’s not creative. What it does have is a call to action, and highlights a products purpose, without having to show some esoteric shot of the cliffs of Ireland from a helicopter while offering a tongue twisting voice over from a smooth voice such as Peter Coyote that has the viewer wondering what it was they just tried to advertise. No not every ad should mimic this ad but the fact that it stands out amongst the field of much more expensive ads, yet does so much more for the product, rather than the ad agencies award wall should once again be a wakeup call to most big agency advertising, that advertising is broke and only sees ‘creative’ as what makes an ad good. As for annoying, try the Sprint ad with Peyton Manning that has a budget 100 times this, yet no one can make heads or tails of what it’s supposed to do, let alone what it’s trying to sell. Yet the agency for this Sprint spot made a behind the scenes video and posted it on YouTube so the world could see how a creative, high priced, award winning ad that does little for the product is done. Now that’s annoying. –New York, NY

What’s your opinion?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Advertising, Blogs, Uncategorized, Viral Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This post was written by: Kim Mickelsen