The Terrible Pond’s Newspaper Ad

This image has been improved (??) in Photoshop. My phone camera is terrible. Anyone wanna gift me a new iPhone 4S?

I picked-up the newspaper today morning after what seems like ages and what did I immediately see? An advertisement from Pond’s. While looking at the ad, am thinking to myself, “hmm.. not bad. A half page ad about some Facebook contest”.

Then, horror strikes. I read the Call-to-Action line that says, ‘To know more follow us on Pond’s India (Facebook & twitter icons)’. If you interact with me online, you might already know how much I hate these social media call-to-action scripts.

There are few things that are wrong with this line:

  • I still don’t know what the Facebook & Twitter URLs are. There is a lot of guess-work involved.
  • This line works online where the Facebook and Twitter icons are hyperlinked.
  • The term ‘follow us’ in the print platform is almost a negative connotation. ‘Join us’ or ‘Talk to us’ could be better.

You know which brand does this brilliantly on electronic media and in print?

Star World Social Media ad - doing it right!

The Pond’s ad however, does not tell me anything about the contest, or its results to interest me. Also, if I do happen to get interested, it does not tell me where exactly to go, leaving all the guesswork to me!

All in all, its a terrible ad. Why O&M, why?

5 comments

  1. Coz they don’t know any better 🙂

    Social is ” let’s do facebook and twitter and 100000 fans as soon as possible and then we will engage them ” after all

  2. Yeah! I wish brands would stress on more meaningful internal metrics rather than falling for MAU/DAU, Impressions, etc.

    Focus on one goal around Social Media. Devise metric around the same. Measure relentlessly.

    Sigh!

  3. That could work too. But its a pain to scan QR codes and because they will only contain text, its better to just write the URL smartly on the ad itself. That way, everyone will see it.

  4. Pingback: 5 Indian Social Media Articles Worth Reading

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