Personal Selling from Crowdcube

Here’s another nice, simple sell from a brand – a series of ads on the Tube right now. Crowdcube is an investment company (I know, from the name I would have guessed communal box sharing), and their big selling point is that they allow you to pick and choose investments and personally support new up-and-coming businesses, some of which are featured in the ads.

There are small-scale breweries, storage space companies – the list goes on. The key values in all this are choice, and personal connection. And it’s a good way to market investing. It’s an area that too often has the air of corruption, high living and immorality. So why not inject a little personality and humility to it?

Each ad gives you a feel for the businesses featured, an idea of their personality, and why their individual traits might make you, the reader, connect with them. And that’s the most important aspect, and the most apt for the current market.

We see everywhere now the economic power of the small scale. Not because of efficiency, or expertise, at least directly. But because people have come more and more to value a personal connection to products and services.

It’s why craft beer is exploding. It’s why artisanal coffee shops are a thing. It’s why Innocent Smoothies tell you where their fruit comes from and make the growers the heroes of their ads. It’s why supermarkets tell you which farm raised your chicken.

And it’s why Crowdcube wants you to have a personal connection to your investments.

After all, it works on KickStarter. The world of investing blew wide open with that little idea. Investing becomes not just easy, but filled with emotion and choice.

And it seems to be what we want.

And contrary to popular opinion, advertising isn’t about telling you what you want.

It’s about finding out what you want, and giving it to you.

Nice.

Urgent Appeal for Two BMWs

I’m writing this on the train. Right in front of me are two advertising posters. Both of them are by cancer charities. Both are trying to raise money.

The headline on the first reads: “Urgent Appeal for Macmillan Nurses”.

The headline on the second reads: “Win £40,000 or two BMWs”.

The picture on the first is of a nurse in uniform.

The picture on the second is of the aforementioned cars, some cash, and a photo of a beach holiday.

It’s genuinely difficult to know what to think about these two posters.

It’s certainly rare that you come across an advert that is so crass and poorly done as the second of the two. I’d be interested to find out which was more successful at raising money. I mean supporting nurses is nice but two BMWs are hard to resist.

It’s just such a strange study in contrasts. One is a thoughtful, targeted appeal to help a charity support patients. The other, as far as you can tell from the ad, is essentially a raffle which happens to be going to a cancer charity. Except the ad is clearly from the charity itself.

The cynics might suggest this is pure advertising – that this is what you get when you trust advertisers with a sensitive subject like cancer. Crass, self-interested, superficial.

I disagree.

The first poster is the one which is a product of good advertising. An agency probably had a hand in it. There is a thought process involved. The second is the product of people who have no idea about what advertising is about.

If you couldn’t tell that from their respective production values (and you can), you can certainly tell it from their differing outlooks.

The second poster treats its audience as though it thinks they are selfish – that you can only be persuaded to help the sick through the chance for personal gain. That the passengers on this train are all vain robots, with nary a shred of interest to be had unless you dangle a picture of the Bahamas in front of them.

Sure, in my case that’s true, but I’d like to think that I’m the exception.

Joking aside, that second poster does seem like an aberration, a strange outlier of advertising. And it is the point I made before that I think is significant. Both of these ads are for a noble cause: raising money for people suffering from cancer. And yet that isn’t enough by itself to make their case. One side clearly determined that they needed to make a call to people’s emotions. The other, that it was all about money. I think most of us would agree which is the more appropriate, and the most effective.

But it is the work of advertising to make these things happen. If you think you can market your ideas on your own, you are welcome to do so. But the odds are that you aren’t a natural advertiser. Get help from the experts.

Because even the best of causes needs to be communicated properly.

SNCF and Giving People What They Want

SNCF (the French rail network) has some of the best advertising out there, at least in the sphere of direct (e)mail. I say that for a simple reason. SNCF doesn’t assault you with information. It doesn’t offer you irrelevant goodies to make you resent it less for its constant emails.

What it does is make you want to travel around France. Admittedly this shouldn’t be too difficult a sell for most people. But SNCF sells it in a pure, and effective way.

Every few days you get an email which tells you about places you can visit. And it tells you how much it costs to visit them. And that’s about it. There are pretty pictures, though not too many of them. There are blurbs, and seasonal offers, and special deals. But for the most part SNCF’s DM really boils down to a simple and compelling proposition.

Here are some places you will probably want to go to. SNCF can take you there, and do it for cheaper than you might think.

In a time of airline competition and squeezed budgets, it’s a refreshingly straightforward, no bullshit sales pitch. I’m sold.