MAPS
In a comment a few weeks ago the Maps people had said they were thinking about changing their advertising focus. This past 2 weeks has seen a different look. These ads seem to feature Maps employees in kind of a native Oregonian branding approach.
I’ve seen 2 of these ads so far, they seem to be running a fairly heavy rotation flight plan with the Stateman, so one ad ran a few times last week and this ad is running the current week. They were virtually identical, so you can see an attempt between the two at message building.
The photo in each ad is of an attractive employee with a label: name, position, Oregon connection. The ad is dominated by two positioning statements the first having to do with things typical native Oregonians like such as camping, Crater Lake (perhaps next week eating granola?) and a second statement that reflects back at Maps services. This ad is better than the ad last week, in this version Janet loves her auto loan. Last week the employee loved their phone, and there was a question in my mind, does Maps provide phones? So this week was much less ambiguous and therefore a clearer ad.
So does it work?
In general branding ads and top of mind ads like this are harder to judge. This ad contains no hard call-to-action the way June's ad did. Its purpose is different. What it does do is inform the reader about services at Maps and who is eligible to be a member. It does the educational task very well.
This ad will cost more as it is bigger than the June ad and maintains its good position on page 2. So hopefully it will not hurt ROI.
Willamette Lutheran Retirement Community
I’d say the WLRC is probably the exact opposite of the Maps ad. I’ll break it down into 3 areas: text, color, and who cares.
This ad is pretty text heavy. The first paragraph is strange; grammatically it is one giant sentence. But the writer skillfully inserts ellipsis after each phrase dividing it into pretty good bite size chunks.
The second paragraph is a description of the retirement community. The description is pretty good. It reads well, sounds inviting, a pretty good description.
There are three specific problems with this copy. First is there is simply too much of it. After reading the first paragraph do you need the second? After reading the second, do you need the first? Would the ad be better if it were boiled down a bit?
With the exception of “42 acres,” is there anything in the text of this ad that can be said of WLRC that can’t be said of any other retirement community in Salem/Keizer? The answer is no. So we have two paragraphs that doesn’t make the community stand out, but rather tells the reader, “we are the same as everyone else.”
I was glad the copy had a call to action at the bottom. Here is an admission, steal the best from someone else: use the call to action “Call Today for a Free Lunch and Tour.” Some people look down on a free lunch, say it is a waste of time and money, say it costs too much…simply, those people are dumb. One move-in pays for everything, and offering a free treat and an opportunity for your sales person to bond with a potential resident, is priceless.
Moving on from copy, the WLRC ad costs more than the Maps ad. It costs more just for the use of color. But when you spend more money on adverting, it should have more impact. The color of this as is limited to a green border, green logo, and color photo. Grab your graphic artist and shake them around a bit, you can do a heck of a lot more with color in that ad. You have the space to make a good presentation…to me the lay out just looks tired.
Finally, who cares? I have digested the copy, looked over the design, and come away with a very blasé feeling. Advertising is hard. I don’t see anything in this ad that moves me to action, nothing to excite me, or prick up my ears. Look again at the Maps ad, fewer words, clearer message. The WLRC ad wants to tell me about their country charm, the reader wants them to show me country charm, and tell me why it is important to me.
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