Lindsey’s Daily Deal: Google, Greenwashing, and Gobbledygook

By Lindsey Campbell, Captains of Industry

Hey Captains’ Readers,

You’re almost there. Friday is on the horizon. But until then, entertain yourself with The Daily Deal:

1. How to get to the top

Hey all you creative advertising hopefuls, before you start spamming every agency from here to kingdom come with your portfolio, why not try something different? After all, that’s the secret of how to get into this business anyway. For instance, take a page out of recent Y&R hire, Alec Brownstein’s book. To land his first job on Madison Avenue, he decided to create a Google Adwords campaign. The keywords? Names of the top creative directors in New York. The call to action? Hire Alec Brownstein. So while other desperate copywriters and art directors were getting blocked by loyal agency gatekeepers, Brownstein was getting creative directors to come to him. Not too shabby for a junior.

2. If you can’t beat ‘em, Greenwash ‘em.

The American Life League, a über-right-wing group of activists who passionately oppose the birth control pill, recently decided to tweak their current campaign in order to get more recruits. To do this they changed their slogan, “The Pill Kills” to “The Pill Kills the Environment.” Lisa Hymas at Grist admits that The League brings up a valid point. According to a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey, water that was tested in nine states across the country found 85 man-made chemicals, including some medications, in tap water. One of the major culprits?  Estrogen. Apparently, the hormone is inadvertently released into sewers through the urine of women taking the Pill. The additional hormones can wreak reproductive havoc on some fish, and some humans for that matter.

But. And there’s a big “but” here, despite the fact that there may be a need for a new Pill compound in order to better protect the environment and its inhabitants, the American Life League isn’t exactly being clear in their new campaign that they don’t just oppose the Pill, but they’re actually against all forms of contraception. That means no pills, no patches, and no debates as to whether he’s “sponge worthy.” Nada. And while the American Life League has the freedom and right to stand on their soap box and “mourn the anniversary of the right to use birth control” and picket outside of Planned Parenthoods, they still need to be straight up with potential Leaguers about what exactly they’re fighting for. Because it sure as hell isn’t the environment.

3. Spring cleaning the Gobbledygook

Using the word “innovate” is basically the equivalent of pistol-whipping your potential customers in the face. Phrases like “market leading,” “groundbreaking” and “mission critical” are also featured on the Most Wanted Jargon list. In an interview with David Meerman Scott, Alex T. Sutton of Marketing Sherpa gets the 411 on how to overcome gobbledygooking your customers–and it’s not something that’s already been published in a Scott book.

For instance, when writing a press release, Scott suggests testing your BS meter by replacing your name with your biggest competitor’s. If the release still makes sense, you’re meter will start beeping like crazy. But don’t worry, it’s fixable. One suggestion from Scott is to try writing content that “describes how your products solve you customers’ problems” and “that’s written in the language your customers use.” By implementing methods like these into each press release, you’ll not only show your customers that you understand them, but that you want to make their lives easier by making their problems go away.

4. Breaking up isn’t so hard to do

I’ve heard some interesting stories about agencies getting handed their walking papers from clients before, but this one is by far the coolest. According to AgencySpy, Secret Weapon Marketing recently got canned by their client CLEAR, a wireless Internet provider. But rather than keeping a tight lip like most agencies tend to do, Secret Weapon is celebrating their streak of never getting dumped…until now.

“I’m pretty sure 13 years, 7 days is a record time for an agency to go without being terminated by any client,” said Dick Sittg, the Founder and Creative Director of Secret Weapon. Even Patrick Adams, the Managing Director at Secret Weapon, had only positive things to say when reflecting on their time with CLEAR. “During the last two years we successfully launched 32 markets covering 41 million people, doubled their total number of subscribers in the 4th quarter of last year alone, and last week CLEAR announced that the first quarter of this year was its biggest quarter yet in terms of new subscribers,” he said.

It look’s like Secret Weapon’s secret weapon is simply the power of positive thinking. But just in case their old client had any doubts about letting the agency go, they were soon reminded of the “good old days” when Secret Weapon accepted an EFFIE last week for the most effective advertising in the Internet Products and Services Category for, you guessed it, CLEAR. If Secret Weapon waltzed out of the room with a slutty new client dangling on their arm, you know CLEAR’s probably hitting the double mint fudge pretty hard tonight.

Until tomorrow good readers,

Captain Lindsey