Yaffe Tidbits

Is It In Your Jeans? A Professional Look at Innovation and Attire

I recently started reading Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment on a plane ride to meet a client. As I sat on the runway waiting while they made a repair (always reassuring) and sweating in head-to-toe wool, I read his section entitled “Dress for a Tie” which takes a look at how our choices in dress affect our professional interactions. I should mention that this section resides in a chapter called “How to Achieve Likability.” I should also mention that, much respect to Guy, I’m generally suspicious of anyone who bullet points tangible action steps to achieve intangible qualities. Affecting attributes in order to win people over can be sniffed out by the herd on a very primal level, and it generally stinks.

Still, I’m intrigued by boardroom behavior that involves subliminal communication (as I assume anyone in the business of wooing people would be) and I found it refreshing to see a man willing to discuss dress in terms of strategy rather than fashion. The “jeans vs. suit” is a real issue that can be (and arguably is intended to be) very polarizing in the workplace, especially in agencies. 

Recently, I read that though now Steve Jobs’ jeans are an iconic statement of innovation, they were once part of the reason he was fired from Apple in the 80’s. Alex Bogusky, former head of CP+B, said he heard that the reason they lost the pitch to Land Rover was because he showed up in jeans. On the flip side, I know of another agency that lost a pitch to a youthful brand partially because they all showed up in suits and ties. “They’re out of touch.”  If anyone was at Future Midwest this year, they likely remember one of the speakers stand up and apologize for wearing a suit to speak to what was clearly a jeans and jackets crowd.

I don’t think it’s a huge leap for me to make the claim we associate jeans with innovation. (Please see Steve Jobs and Alex Bogusky above for support.) I don’t think it’s a huge leap either to claim that some people still see it as disrespectful and unprofessional.

I don’t know if I have anything to contribute to this issue that will be helpful (as I sit typing in head-to-toe wool), but here are some things I think about when I talk to myself about this debate:

-Is it silly to conflate attire with innovation or creativity or is it fair to say that wearing jeans in a professional environment, or any other item counter to the acceptable dress code, is indicative of a deeper drive for breaking the rules, a necessary part of innovation?

-Is it silly to think about dress too much when time would be better spent on your pitch? (I think you could argue that if Bogusky’s idea for Land Rover had blown the others away, they might have looked past the jeans.)

-I hate to drop the gender card in the midst of an already polarizing issue, but is it different for women? Ever look at the difference between how Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the team dresses?

-Do people like Bogusky wear jeans because they’re thinking about dress, or because they refuse to? And isn’t “refusing to” still thinking about it? (When he was conducting interviews at CP+B, he said he regularly asked prospective hires to explain why they’d chosen their outfit in order to hear them work through strategy and rationale.)

-Do any of these questions even apply to junior workers, or non-principals? Or do we just wear what the bosses wear? And if you do just conform to the boss, are you making a statement about your innovation within the company?

I’d like to hear what you think about when you think about this issue, or if you think about it at all?

  Jen Wright, Yaffe Suit and Jeans Wearer

 

 

 

14 Fascinating Facts from Future Midwest

Besides the inspirations and new ways of looking at things, Future Midwest speakers throw out some very interesting statistics during their presentations. I thought it would be interesting to compile a few of them together. Here's some of the ones I heard at this year's conference.

 

 

1. Smartphone ownership will overtake feature phones by the third quarter this year.

2. 77% of consumers engage with brands online for incentives and ad offers.

3. 28% of consumers will provide an email address or engage with a brand online with promise of incentive.

4. Many online new businesses eliminate the middle man between consumers and the product/services they want.

5. The majority of colleges (85%) look at applicants info posted online (including social sites) before deciding to admit that student to their university.

6. 86% of iPad owners would prefer to put up with ads in order to get free content rather than paying a nominal monthly fee.

7. In Michigan, only 1.01% of the people are on twitter, compared to 47% on Facebook.

8. However, the ones who are on twitter have much larger followings/communities online than those just on Facebook.

9. Teens today send about 300 texts per month, but tend to make only three phone calls during that same time.

10. Over 700 billion minutes per month are spent on Facebook.

11. 70% of connected consumers have participated in a branded sweepstakes or contest.

12. The average consumer is exposed to over 3,000 messages per day

13. Email offers that have specific relevance to those receiving it get five times greater conversion rates than full list email blasts.

14. 47% of consumers consider their mobile devices to be essential to their lives and keep them within arms reach at most times.

There you have it, 14 fun facts I heard from the Future Midwest speakers this year. What other pieces of info did you hear that stuck with you?

Mike McClure, Playing digital trivia and #winning

Who's Really Using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & YouTube - and Why?

I love social media. You love social media. We all love social media! But have you ever taken a moment to think about why we love social media?

I recently did some of my own mini research, breaking down certain demographics to zone in on usage patterns and these were my results:

Twitter

The millennial generation, also known as Gen Y - individuals born in my day; the 80s and the 90s, are all about Twitter. These tweeters use the networking site in order to socialize, RT (retweet) and participate in trending topics. On the flip side, the parents of these Gen Y-ers, around the ages of 30 to 50, use twitter for other means. This group of individuals participates on Twitter by actually networking. Women more-so than men use it to network business wise but men will occasionally tweet for those purposes too. Women also use Twitter to converse with friends. Meanwhile, men have adopted Twitter as a way to discuss and gather information on entertaining or news related topics.

In my research of selected timelines, I discovered that women tweet more useless facts like “I just ate a lot of food.” Ok. Why does anyone care? I will be honest; I am guilty of tweeting things that more than half of my followers possibly have no interest in knowing. But hey, it’s ok to over share at times!

Now, as for being followed on twitter, famous women have more followers but the average Joes have higher follower counts than women. Did you know that 7 of the top 10 most followed people on Twitter are women? Sure they are famous pop stars who create huge buzz with their career paths but they are still female, nonetheless. Props to my fellow gender!

Facebook

Surprise. Surprise. Facebook is female dominated. According to BrianSolis.com the site is 57% female and attracts 46 million more female visitors than male visitors per month. Much different than my Twitter findings, females in both age demographics mentioned previously use Facebook for the same purposes – to share personal information and upload photos. It is more common to read about a woman’s day on her status than a man’s. Men typically use Facebook as a means of communication or a way to pass the time. Many men can go days without updating anything but they will log-on in silence to see what his buddies or love interest did last night. Everyone though, uses Facebook to keep in contact with people. Often, if a friend does not answer his or her phone, email or Twitter @ reply, the next best thing is to write on “the wall”.

LinkedIn

This is possibly the more sophisticated of the social networking sites and also used more by men. LinkedIn is business-based and used for job hunting, job posting, and business promotion. As men are perceived as more dominate in the work force, it seems natural that this particular website is used more by men. Women, however, also frequently use LinkedIn for the same reasons as men, just the female profile numbers are a lot lower. In my research though, I have noticed a huge jump in LinkedIn account creations by millennials. The job market is difficult right now and LinkedIn has been a way of creating much-needed relationships to help find work for younger people.

YouTube

Yet another male dominated site is YouTube. When researching, I was told by several ladies that they use the popular site to listen to music and watch videos. However, more men I spoke with actually uploaded their own content to the site. Then comes the question, is this site used more by men because they are more technical savvy?  “Traditionally, men are the early adopters of new technologies,” notes Auren Hoffman of Bloomberg Businessweek.

 
Click on infographic to see larger image

 
“Experts believe the difference between how men and women operate online mirror their motivations offline. While women often use online social networking tools to make connections and share items from their personal lives, men use them as means to gather information and increase their status,” notes Jezebel.com.   Now, do you think you will use social media differently or continue as you were? I certainly will try to stop posting incredibly non-informative tweets.

*My research was done by selecting random friends, associates and acquaintances on these various social media sites to speak with. I also studied several member profiles I selected at random.

Jessica Mosley - Not just a demographic, actual human using social media.

 

*Infographic provided by Bitrebels.com

Does "Buy Local" Only Apply to Your Locale?

After a fantastic quarter with a local client and watching its customer-base grow nationally, I've been thinking about what it means to "Buy Local." I should start by stating that I self-identify as a passionate Buy-Localista. I love both the economic and sentient value of purchasing things that were made as close to me and on as small of a scale as possible. If I could buy drier filters handmade in my neighbor's home, I would. 

But what then when our neighbor's burgeoning drier filter boutique grabs national attention? Aren't we proud of her? Don't we agree with the five hundred families in Santa Monica and 300 families in Austin who now order her product and sing her praises on Twitter? 

If the push to buy local is to keep local money circulating in our local economy, and we consider this concept at least quasi-political, does that mean we find the families in Santa Monica and Austin now putting money into our economy politically amoral? Does it make us hypocrites to valiantly encourage all of our neighbors to buy local, but also feel gratitude toward neighbors who are able to push their product beyond our boundaries? And what are those boundaries? City, county, state? What defines local?

I have thoughts on this, but would much rather hear yours.

 

Jen Wright is a Social Media Strategist who buys locally, but asks questions everywhere she goes.

 

 

Need a Marketing Database System? Don’t Touch that Dial.

They say don’t believe everything you see on TV. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe some of it. Like when the authoritative voice warns you, “Kids, don’t try this at home,” you really shouldn’t try it at home. Not if you want to keep all your limbs and digits intact.

Or when magician/pitchman Marshall Brodien does things with a deck of cards that simply can’t be done, and he tells you “It’s easy … when you know the secret.” Why bring these up here? Because you need to believe them both if you want to use a marketing database to grow your business. Like Brodien’s magic tricks, building a successful marketing database is easier when you know the secret. So what’s the secret?

It’s simple – don’t try this at home! In other words, this is a job that should be outsourced to marketing database specialists. Too many companies feel that because they know how to develop and manage an operational database, they’re in a good position to build a marketing database in-house.

That’s like saying because you can balance your family’s checkbook, you’re ready to manage the books of a large corporation. You might be able to do it, but not without a lot of pain, a good deal of wasted time and money, unnecessary internal friction, ongoing frustrations, and the very real likelihood that what you wind up with won’t do you much good at all.

Consider that the data compiled, stored and used by most companies falls into three broad categories – the past (accounting and billing data), the present (inventory and operational data), and the future (marketing data). 

By their nature, the accounting, billing, inventory and operational data all are largely fixed sets of data that can be serviced by systems that provide organization and storage, but limited access and flexibility. This is data that relates to the past and present, and there’s not much that’s changing here, even over long periods of time. Nor does the information need to be accessible and able to be manipulated from desktops across the company. You have an excellent IT department? Great. Let them develop the systems to manage this data and move the marketing data systems to a specialist.

Marketing data, however, is fluid and subject to change daily. It includes customer and prospect information, purchase/order details, marketing communications, and data that shows not only who’s opening your e-mail and visiting your Web site, but what they’re doing while they’re there. A database marketing system needs to make sense of demographic data, shopping trends, consumer behavior and other customer-centric information that can direct current and future marketing campaigns. You’ll be able to segment consumers, identify high-value customers, target your best prospects, and provide the focus that can help ensure the success of all your marketing and sales efforts. But to do so, the systems and specialized software used to manage this database must be dynamic, flexible, accurate, dependable and able to be manipulated quickly and easily.

Creating, installing and managing such a system can monopolize the resources of even the best internal IT department. Do it yourself, and you might as well rename your company Hatfield and McCoy, Inc., and forget about peace in the family. It won’t take long for your marketing folks to grow impatient with a slow-moving and seemingly ineffective IT department, while your systems people will soon express frustration with the changing demands of your marketing department. “You want what today? That’s not what you said yesterday!”

And forget about actually keeping the system updated and current once it’s live. It’s a simple fact of business today that even the most promising marketing efforts will always be trumped by operational functions such as inventory maintenance or bill processing when IT departments prioritize their to-do list.

So give your marketing programs the support they need to ensure success and grow your company while avoiding unnecessary battles and saving your company time and money. Leave this one, as they say, to the professionals.

 

Guest post by Bonnie Massa, President of Massa & Company, Inc., Analytic Database Marketing

 

 

 

 

 

 

10 Surprising Things I Learned at Future Midwest

The first Future Midwest conference was held in Royal Oak, MI Friday and Saturday. It was a great event with nationally known speakers on the subjects of using digital technology and social media to help companies, brands and individuals migrate through the changing world we live in. There was some serious knowledge dropped into the laps (or in my case, laptop) of all who attended. It was especially good if you are a marketer or business trying to carve out your niche in today's fast-changing, connected world community. I swear I have enough notes to write 20 blog posts from the conference. It was both inspiring and practical. I learned stuff I can use for clients right now stuff I can use to prepare them for the future. There will be more in-depth blog posts on specific subjects from Future Midwest here over the next few weeks (probably not 20 of them, though). But, as a quick overview, here are 12 surprising nuggets of knowledge I picked up over the last two days.

1. Retention is the new Acquisition. The opening keynote speaker, Joe Jaffe, gave one of my favorite presentations, based off his new book "Flip the Funnel." One of the key points in his talk was that rather than spending a ton of money in a medium where only a small part of your audience is actually interested and ready to buy your product, why not concentrate on the few that are your product's biggest fans? Spend your money being helpful to these few brand evangelists and they'll tell others who are interested and ready to buy. But don't try to buy them. Be helpful and they'll do the rest. Customer service is becoming one of the biggest differentiators for companies. The real role of social media is to gain retention and engage your current customers, not to acquire new ones.

2. Talking about your advertising will engage your social media community. In his case study on the Pure Michigan campaign, presenter Tim Schaden of Fluency Media talked about this surprising finding from their social media efforts. One of the things that got more comments and more people interested in their social media was talking about their advertising. People were interested in it. Schaden said they expanded that subject matter to talk about what went on behind the scenes of the commercials and they created content like videos that showed part of the process in creating the advertising.

3. Soon, your car will be able to read your tweets to you. Ford's social media brandprenuer, Scott Monty, showed us a demo of a new twitter app they're developing for their Ford SYNC system. Through voice commands he could get it to read the latest tweets he'd gotten. Hands free tweeting is coming to a car near you!

4. Zombies can be good salesmen. Also, in Scott Monty's presentation, we saw a video ad featuring the new wireless key system for the soon to be launched Ford Fiesta. It was a video created with one of their Fiesta Movement agents. A chained zombie was release to chase three car owners through the woods. The only one who escaped had the new key that wirelessly lets you open and start your car. It was a very funny ad.

5. Having a twitter and Internet enabled phone is changing the way we poop. In their Pardon My Interruption style presentation on all things mobile, Henry Balanon and Damian Rinfelmann referenced this quote. It was to point out that now we can take the web with us anywhere and it's changing our lives significantly. You can't get lost now, because you can use a number of mobile and web tools, including geolocation to get you where you need to go. You always have a camera with you. You carry all sorts of ways for social interaction. And it will only continue to change how we spend our time and interact with the world.

6. Publicly complementing your competitors is good for your company. GM's head of social media, Chris Barger, talked about taking the high road in this always-watching, high transparency world. Do it in terms of dealing with your critics and with your competition. If your competitor is doing something good, compliment them on it. Publicly. Being nice guys really does aid your reputation. Humanizing your company only works if the public likes the humans it sees.

7. Fear is a natural resource. A lot of speakers talked about how companies fear change, fear the new digital and social tools, fear letting the customer have more control of what's being said about their brand, fear being transparent the way you need to be these days, fear failure and others. Jay Adelson, former CEO of Digg gave an inspiring keynote speech on how true innovators do things a little crazy, because they don't fear failure - and that's how success happens. Several speakers talked about harnessing the energy of that fear to spur your company on. Sam Valenti of Ghostly said the scariest thing in the world is not dying; it's that split second before you die when you say, "oh crap, I should have done this"instead of just "oh, crap!" So, use the fear of facing that moment as a natural resource. Do the things you should have done now.

8. My living room will be a powerful computer. Shiv Singh of Razorfish talked about preparing for life in the post digital era - when we don't talk about digital anymore because it's just an everyday part of our life. He showed us a picture of a living room that looked like any living room today. Then he said some day, not too far off, that living room will have more computing power than all the laptops and cell phones in the room - and we're talking about a room filled with 700 computer and digital enthusiasts & professionals here. He said, not only will it be more powerful, you won't see it. It will be ambient and seamlessly worked into the room.

9. Spikes in online conversations align with spikes in sales. In his Saturday workshop on data and analytics, Ken Burbary of Ernst & Young presented a case study where he showed graphs for a footwear retail company. You could see the spikes in the graph monitoring online conversation coincided with spikes in sales. So, there was a direct correlation between online chatter and sales. Also, by monitoring what was being said, they found that 47% of the conversations were about availability and new product releases. Further looking into those conversations revealed that customers weren't able to get the shoe they wanted because it wasn't in stock. Once they discovered this inventory management problem through the online conversations, they were able to fix it.

10. Most presenters are very friendly and accessible. Okay, it's not that surprising, since many of them preach that we live in an age where you have to be helpful. And I have connected to some of them before. But, one good example of practicing what you preach was Ben Smithee. After the conference was over, Yaffe EVP Michael Morin and I were standing in the lobby talking about an upcoming nonprofit project we're working on and how it had some similar issues to one of the case studies that Ben Smithee of Fieldwork had presented in his afternoon workshop. When we realized he was standing about 20 feet away, we went and asked him about some of the issues we were dealing with. Not only did he graciously give us some great insights, he invited us to continue the conversation after he got back home. 

These are just a few of he many insights from the Future Midwest conference that are clogging up my head. I look forward to sharing more of them with you in the weeks to come.

Mike McClure, still full of Future Midwest goodness.

You Can Create Social Change Through Marketing. Here's How.

America's been on the social marketing and cause related marketing bandwagon for a couple years now. But can you use marketing to get a community to pass a bond millage when they've never passed one before? Yes, you can. In fact, we did - in the conservative state of Texas, no less.

The Yaffe Group was working to establish a position for our client, Houston Community College (HCC), for a number of strategic initiatives. One of the most important of those was an upcoming bond election. Passing the bond was critical to the on-going success of the college. We conducted research designed to  understand the performance, attitudes and value drivers of the voting public in the area. After reviewing the research and a strategic planning session with the client, we decided to position HCC as key to the success of the city of Houston and the surrounding districts.

One thing about social marketing, you usually have a big job to do and a limited budget.This was no exception. The good news is that you can usually get the media to give you more added-value bonus spots if it's for a good cause. I't a matter of positioning the client with the media reps, just as you have to with the general public. We managed to get tens of thousands of dollars worth of bonus spots and online adverting for the initiative.

Then we put together a campaign designed to influence the public awareness and attitudes towards HCC. Our main objective was to get people to vote yes on the bond issue. But, we had a number of secondary objectives. We wanted to foster public esteem as it related to HCC and their reputation. We wanted to talk about HCC's value to the community and as a valuable asset to Houston. And we wanted to attract more students and have communication efforts still be aimed at driving student registration.

While we did want to target the 18+ general public, which includes possible students, those looking to go back to school in this economy to find a second career and the 50+ adult population that has the heaviest voter turnout. However, we also targeted all the niches that were key to getting the bond passed. We targeted each niche with different media selection and different messaging. We targeted those in the 50+ segment since they represented a critical voting segment. We also targeted both students and prospective students, as both the end users and as important influencers. We had targeted marketing for the Hispanic, African American and Asian American population as well.  

We used TV, outdoor boards, posters, print, social media and online advertising to reach these targets. The results were terrific. there was a dramatic increase n regard for HCC which resulted in the first-ever passage of a $151-million bond initiative. It received overwhelming voter response and an 11% increase in recruitment of new student registrations, a new all time high.

So, it can be done. You can create significant changes in behavior using social marketing. How about you? What successes have you had? We'd love to hear them.

Mike McClure, Yaffe Exec Creative Director & Social Media Guy

Helping the "real moms" is key to marketing success.

Moms are not what they used to be. They aren’t like those old-fashioned mothers portrayed on TV, where they had all the time in the world to stay at home and take care of the family. Nowadays, women want to have families, but they also want careers, social lives, hobbies, and more. Not only are women busier, more stressed, and unhappier than ever, more and more women are doing it all on their own, without a spouse or partner. Generation X and millennial mothers are substantially different from their predecessors. Having seen the women before them exhaust themselves trying to achieve the cookie-cutter ideal, these new moms are trying to "have it all" without actually doing it all.

Marissa Miley and Ann Mack report in an Advertising Age White Paper how these real moms are on the rise. As marketers we need to make things easier for them. They don’t have enough time in the day to take care of all that they need to, so imagine how little patience they have for shopping. They want to be in and out of a store and on to the next errand. We need to engage them fast, and offer them something worth their time. And right now during this tough economic time we need to demonstrate value as well (cheap can be chic).

Moms want products that will help them manage their lives, lessen the stress, and give them more time to focus on the important things like their kids. Moms want products and services that provide value to their families. Because moms really want to find value in what they are purchasing, they are weighing price with the benefits of the product. Price alone is still important though; these moms are buying based on sales and coupons. Some buy in bulk to lower cost and others comparison shop until they find the best deals. But a lesson to retailers - if you are going to sell something inexpensive to these mothers, it better be a quality product; they can’t be fooled.

Women do most of the shopping. They spend $4.3 trillion of the $5.9 trillion in U.S. consumer spending, and yet most women feel as though advertisers are not communicating with them. The problem advertisers are facing now is that these real moms don’t have the time to pay attention to ads, and over time, it will only become increasingly difficult to reach these women. Advertisers need to use media that is especially convenient for the multi-tasker. The content must be engaging and it must fit into their busy lives. What we are seeing now is a layering of media, so one way or another we can capture audience. Bravo is encouraging viewers to multi-task while watching, either by blogging, e-mailing, or texting about Bravo. They would rather have them looking at their screen than doing anything else.

Marketers need to remember that these busy mothers are not like they used to be, in real life or on TV. Moms do a lot of shopping, and if you communicate with them effectively, they just might buy from you.

This white paper is a great guide map that all marketers should take to heart.

Michael Morin, EVP,  The Yaffe Group

What language truly speaks to your Latino target market?

Guest blog by Michelle Martinez, a Detroit-based business writer and editor,

My name is Michelle Martinez, and if you’re an advertiser, you want me.

OK, not me, but my demographic: I’m a young(ish), educated Latina. Like 80 percent of every other Latino in the United States, I was born here; I make many of the buying decisions for my family, as most women do; and I’ll listen to you in either Spanish or English, as long I sense that you know me.

And that’s hardly easy.

It’s not because I’m such an international woman of mystery (although it makes me feel better about my minivan to think so), but because to speak to Latinos, you need to speak to them in the language that occupies their day-to day lives.

But tread carefully. For many of us, language is personal.

For plenty of Latinos, language and how we use it, changes with whether we’re at work or at home, whether we’re talking to our grandmother, our child or our neighborhood friends. For many of us, communicating at home has long involved a mix of English and Spanish.

About 56 percent of Latino households are Spanish dominant; but 26 percent speak English and Spanish equally and 18 percent either speak English only or are English dominant. Collectively, Latinos have about $862 billion of disposable income; more than any other U.S. ethnic group.

Advertisers have caught on to this and dutifully launched "Spanglish" ads, although with mixed results. The most well-known campaigns include those from the U.S. Army, Toyota for its Hybrid Camry, Dr. Pepper and McDonalds. I’ll confess that hearing Spanish on primetime mainstream TV makes my ears perk up, but I’ll also confess that some of the ads I referenced produced plenty of eye rolls and sighs.

Click play to see Toyota Camry Hybrid ad

I admit, I’m no stranger to the "carro," or the "washeteria," or starting a sentence in Spanish and finishing in English. But that’s at home. Hearing Spanglish in the public sphere can range from annoying when used by strangers trying to "connect" with me, to off putting when it comes from a model or actor that probably doesn’t talk that way when they’re not in front of a camera.

And that would be because like many people in the U.S., I’m more interested in authentic voices that reflect natural contexts than in heavy top-down messages produced by the best demographic information available

—could be my Gen X’er status flaring up…but that’s another conversation.

Advertisers have, for the most part, figured out that Latinos are a diverse community with different histories, cultures and yes, even languages. Some have even figured out that communities in Tejas are quite different from those in Los Angeles, or Chicago, or Miami. But here is the next hurdle; figuring out how to talk to those of us that are as conversant in Seinfeld and Gray’s Anatomy as "Manana es para Siempre."

Figure out a way to speak to the many voices that I use in my life, and I’m more apt to listen, and maybe, buy.

Bad Ad Placements Funny, If Not Yours.

It’s pretty safe to say that the advent of Google has transformed our lives. It has made it easy to access anything and everything. "Just Google it," has become a colloquial phase that we all know too well. The combination of today’s high speed technology and our "I needed it yesterday" mentality has made Google the search engine of the 21st century.

When it comes to advertising, Google has allowed more consumers to connect with the products and services they want in a matter of a few clicks, thanks to Google’s AdSense. AdSense’s contextualizing targeting capabilities has helped make it easier to place ads that tie directly into a users keyword search. This allows for easy ad placement in front of people who may be searching for your product or a similar product. What could be a daunting task for a media buyers, Google has made simple.

But that’s not without saying that it works perfectly. In his article, "The Best Examples of Google’s Worst Ads: When Contextual Advertising Goes Very Wrong," Nicholas Carlson, a writer for Business Insider, highlighting some of the worst (although horribly funny) contextual targeting. For example, Reuters.com posted the story "Over 250 sick after eating at Indiana Olive Garden." Right below the headline was a coupon for a Free Dinner for Two at Olive Garden.

 

As these examples show, AdSense doesn’t necessarily understand the concept of "the right place at the right time" and sometimes works against the purpose of the advertising. But you have to admit, they sure are funny.

Carolyn Klein, laughing in the art department.

EDITORS NOTE: Since the reference article now requires an Ad Age password to read. Here's a similar article with humorous contextual ad examples, in case you don't have an Ad Age account or if you just want to see more examples.