A wasted effort: John Hancock Financial Services

While traveling Europe a few years ago, I came across various kinds of markets, e.g. in Amsterdam it was a ginormous flower market, and in Hamburg quite a unique fish market. Both markets had one thing in common. Pretty much all the vendors offered the same thing: in Amsterdam flowers, in Hamburg fish.

Now who do you think sold the most flowers, or fish respectively? The silent vendors with the most subtle appearance, flying under the radar, trying to be smart? Or the ones that were screaming one witty punch line after another into the audience?

I can't really say that the dear folks at Hill Holliday, the advertising agency in Boston, who are responsible for this disaster, don't get advertising, and are a sub-par shop. Quite the opposite. Their latest work for Dunkin' Donuts actually earns a +5 on the Mad Ad Score scale. But their team working on its John Hancock account simply seemed to have gotten lost in a bad idea.

Why is this so bad? Well, let's go back to basics.

The TV audience doesn't watch TV to seek out witty commercials. They don't really watch the commercials. Commercials are a nuisance, white noise, thrown at you by the networks. No one asked for them. No one, except a few mad people like me, actually pay attention.

Hence, you cannot assume that the audience, in between Yankees innings, or the latest C.S.I. episode, are desperately waiting to read typed text on their TV screen that tries to sell them on financial products. Granted, the messages are relevant, and investing for one's retirement is a serious subject matter and shouldn't be left to chance.

But, please! Not making use of the audio component? WTF? Were the minds at Hill Holliday actually on holiday? Or were they just too much in love with their idea? Back to advertising 101: with a TV commercial you get:
a) :30 sec of moving images to tell a story, and
b) a radio commercial on top of it.

Still don't get it? OK, let's take the behavioral approach. Taking into consideration the behavior described above, it's pretty much safe to assume that most folks watching TV, while on commercial break, either:
- go to the bathroom
- check their iPhone, bberry
- grab their iPad, Laptop
- snack on some popcorn, get a drink
- read the mail, a newspaper clip
- ... you fill in the blanks here

The one thing most of them don't do is: watch! Yet still, they do have ears, and if they don't mute the TV, they still will - to some degree - be able to listen to your message.

If you do what HH did for John Hancock above (and there is a bunch of other very bad examples online, see link below), you are wasting pretty much half of your media buy on the home-TV-watching audience. Whoever is out at a bar won't be able to listen anyway.

MAD SCORE: -2

Message: 0, because no one is reading it
Creative: 0, it's boring
Context: 0, you got in front of me, but you didn't get through to me
Impact: -1, it's all together a wasted effort
Intangibles: -1, this has got nothing special to it

Related links:
More examples on Hill Holiday's agency website
More about Mad Ad Scores