Tired of your own ads?
You’re not the market.
Every ad agency has a tale of a client who wearied of a campaign and ordered it replaced, unaware that it had yet to run.
Given the quite human zeal for new-and-fresh, clients and agencies alike are tempted to replace a campaign just because it happens to be getting a bit old. On its own, that’s a pretty poor — and possibly counterproductive — reason to retire an ad campaign. A better reason to retire a campaign is that it fails to sell, has ceased selling, or doesn’t sell as effectively as its proposed successor.
You’re not the market.
Every ad agency has a tale of a client who wearied of a campaign and ordered it replaced, unaware that it had yet to run.
Given the quite human zeal for new-and-fresh, clients and agencies alike are tempted to replace a campaign just because it happens to be getting a bit old. On its own, that’s a pretty poor — and possibly counterproductive — reason to retire an ad campaign. A better reason to retire a campaign is that it fails to sell, has ceased selling, or doesn’t sell as effectively as its proposed successor.
All of which assumes that the advertiser knows whether the campaign is indeed generating revenue. Most haven’t a clue.
Still, there are times that it is appropriate to retire a campaign purely because it has been around too long. This morning, I snapped the adjacent photo. It’s a six-foot-tall sign in the lobby of the University of Utah Moran Eye Center. I have no problem with the concept of piggybacking on tax refunds. I have used that concept for clients myself. But either this poster has been up way too long, or it or went up way too early.
—Steve Cuno
Left: Pretty much throughout the United States,
tax refund time tends to end before September.
RSS Feed
