Hello, I'm a Moron

Agencies like to complain ad nauseum that BDC’s don’t allow them to “do their thing.” But, the new Microsoft campaign is a great example of a BDC (Microsoft) allowing their BDA (CP+B) to do their thing. Let’s take a look at what’s happend thus far:

  1. Campaign sucks. In fact, it sucks so much that Microsoft pretends it was a “teaser” campaign
  2. Funny thing, CP+B lets the cat out of the bag and releases their own announcement about a third ad. Opps! Guess right hand didn’t talk to left hand that day.
  3. BDC doesn’t take care of the details. They didn’t buy www.helloimapc.com nor any other campaign related URLs like www.everyoneisapc.com. They also don’t have a paid search campaign running. Three easy things that take less than 15 minutes to set up.

The thing that floors me? The same thing happened to CP+B two years ago with Burger King’s Big Bucking Chicken Campaign. You think after one time, they would learn.

Companies forget the little details all the time. But, maybe it’s not about forgetting the details. Maybe it’s more about departments within a company being siloed. By not communicating, Department A does not realize the “little things” that Department B puts into motion. When the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is planning, it can’t put those small, but important, elements into play.

Another great example? In 2007, MGM MIRAGE issued a press release about their latest development, CityCenter. At the time of the release, CityCenter was a $7 billion project being touted as changing the Las Vegas landscape forever. Well, PR never bothered to tell Department B that the release was going out. Guess who hadn’t bought www.citycenter.com. Guess who did. Guess how much MGM MIRAGE had to pay for something that would have cost less than $10.

If you take care of the “little” things, nothing ever becomes a “big” thing.

2 Comments

  1. […] real waste is dumb/lazy marketers who don’t think. Time and time again, we’ve watched CP+B not buy campaign urls or Super Bowl advertisers not buy paid search or lawyers instead of US Airways buy […]

  2. […] When putting your “traditional” commercials online, stop and do the “easy” things that make sense for the medium/channel you’re posting within. These days, it’s kinda like buying paid search for your Superbowl ad or the url for your company name before announcing publicly […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Anal Organization

  • Oldies But Goodies

  • More Stuff

  • Nonsense Notes