I’ve learned the hard way that you should never build a marketing strategy that is dependent on something you cannot control, or at least cannot reliably predict.
Here’s an interesting new business campaign from lg2, which currently bills itself as “one of Canada’s most internationally awarded advertising agencies”. Here’s the TV spot/online video made back when the exchange rate was 1.35, back in mid-January.
Have a look—and to all you social media specialists, sorry in advance:
Hey—isn’t the client the actress who plays the Italian mother in Brooklyn? All great, except when you go to the campaign’s microsite, which uses a real time exchange calculator, you see how fast the exchange rate advantage has decreased since the campaign started:
I get the powerful temptation here: strategically, it’s selling on price without discounting your value and the ‘insider’ creative might just get you another award. But your prospect is still buying on price—is a 20% exchange advantage good enough? 15%?
Clearly, significant money was spent on the video component and there would have been significant time, money or both spent on media as well. In my opinion, ad agencies routinely make the mistake of thinking that making fun of the ad business is hilarious for the rest of the world. It isn’t, except in this case, it actually is relevant. But all that great creative and production effort ends up looking as though it’s based on an ill-advised strategy.
Admittedly, predicting the effects of long term global quantitative easing is baffling the brightest economic minds on the planet. We’re in uncharted territory here. Then there’s the almost equally unpredictable price of oil, even more directly affecting the value of the Canadian dollar. Are these the unknowable shifting sands you should be building a solid marketing strategy on?
Might this make the prospective client, customer or consumer think twice? When they’re done giggling?
