Just to be clear, I’m not just writing this blog to enclose a picture of Katie Price for gratuitous hits to the site. After all, they’d all bounce anyway (the traffic that is), and google wouldn’t like that.
This blog is vaguely connected, honest, bear with me. It begins with the central assertion that I don’t think this looks like Katie Price at all (double name mention, triple traffic points). In fact, when I saw this ad fleetingly on a poster at a train station as the train pulled through, I was intrigued by what it was about (which I wouldn’t have been if I’d known it was about Katie Price, sorry Katie – blimey reckon we must have hit top page rank by now).
I thought it looked like it might be a good drama or something. Anyway, as I pulled out of the station and with nothing better to do and trusty iphone in hand, I googled the only thing I could remember about the ad, which was the tag line - ‘The Morning after the life before’. Intriguing I thought. Not a dickey bird. No picture, no microsite, no direction to a landing page.
Sky Living (Sky TV mark you, not just any old brand), hadn’t decided to own the tag line, online, if you get my meaning, either by buying the phrase or doing enough to own it organically (which probably wouldn’t have taken much). A few weeks on and I can see the ad rising up the rankings coutesy of Youtube, but there’s still someone’s blog sitting at the top of the google search, probably wondering why their site is getting flooded, and Sky are still nowhere.
Having pondered this for a while, I wondered how much effort big brands were making to own the tag lines that they were hammering into people’s heads via huge brand campaigns every day. With a few moments and an open browser, I found this:
‘I’m lovin’ it’ – Macdonalds is listed 8th in the rankings. I found the ad write-up on Wikipedia first, and was ushered into a Justin Timberlake video.
‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ – Audi came 6th. I had to learn that Del Boy used the term in ‘Only Fools and Horses’ and that Audi had an 8 year battle to use the trademark before I got anywhere near the brand.
‘See what you can do’ – O2. See what you can find. I had to go back to the O2 homepage to make sure O2 were still trading.
‘Make a house a home’ – Homebase were beaten in second place by, wait for it, Tommy Walsh’s expert DIY tips, but at least they made second.
‘Ideas for life’ – Panasonic have to bow for top spot in favour of 32keys.com who entice you with the slogan ‘be happy and enjoy life’.
‘Here come the girls’ – Alright not a tag line, but instantly recognisable. Boots don’t make it onto the first page of google, beaten hollow by the Sugababes, now there’s a case study in marketing.
Ok, that’s enough, you get the point. Well done, by the way to Tescos (‘Every little Helps’) and Lloyds TSB (‘For the Journey’) who darn well own their tag lines and then some.
My laboured point is this. Marketers love to talk about lines. You can be above them or below them, on them or off them, or even tag them. Consumers might want to get rid of lines around their eyes, but when it comes to marketing they have no concept of lines. All channels are fair game, all the time. The fact that brand messages are often owned by a different internal department to search engine marketing is a complete irrelevance.
The message is simple, if brand marketers want to maximise the potential of their eyeballs, all channels need to be joined up and ready to go when the first media of a new campaign hits.
By the way, did I mention that this blog is about Katie Price?
