The year was 2008 and E*TRADE Financial Corp. realized it needed to change its marketing approach if it hoped to draw new investors to its equities trading platform.
The unexpected savior? A talking, tech-savvy baby.
“What had happened was, E*TRADE no longer had success with their messaging that you could get rich,” said Ari Halper, executive creative director of the nearly 100-year-old Grey New York advertising and public relations firm. “They no longer had success with their messaging that your broker is a schmuck. So they needed to find something else that was compelling to people.”
With social media and new technologies rapidly changing the ways companies are able to connect with their customers, Halper and Horn Group Inc. founder and CEO Sabrina Horn said a successful marketing, advertising or public relations campaign still revolves around a strong message and a holistic strategy. Horn Group was named the nation”™s top tech PR firm in 2011.
The two New York City marketing and communications executives shared their insights and offered critiques of area companies”™ advertising campaigns recently at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, at an event hosted by the Business Journals.
The common denominator of any successful campaign, Halper said, is a great idea.
“Great ideas are never going to go away,” Halper said. “It doesn”™t matter that the digital medium is becoming so complicated and it”™s constantly changing and innovating ”“ it still starts with an idea, and great ideas will always win.”
Halper”™s team at Grey New York conceived of the now-famous E*TRADE baby, which was first featured in an ad spot during the 2008 Super Bowl, after discovering that E*TRADE”™s biggest inhibitor was fear.
“We discovered that there was fear,” Halper said. “People thought, ”˜I can”™t do this myself, it”™s too complicated, I don”™t have time, I”™m going to lose my life savings, I just want someone else to handle it,”™ and that was what was inhibiting people from investing with E*TRADE.”
The solution was to show that the E*TRADE platform was so easy to use “a baby could do it.”
“So here you”™ve got 1,000 new accounts a day, safety in numbers and it”™s easy ”“ so easy a baby could do it,” Halper said. “And with that, you struck a chord with people and it became a very massive success.”
Halper and Horn warned, though, that a marketing campaign can no longer be focused around advertisements alone.
“For us, it”™s PR, it”™s social, interactive and even advertising, with measurement always being in the middle,” Horn said. “And for us, social is like air: it”™s not the shiny new object anymore ”“ it”™s baked into every single program that we sell.”
Horn said she favors the notion of “thinking in 3-D.”
Pointing to Michelangelo”™s David, Horn said, “He was constructed out of a giant block of marble, and when the front of his knee was being created, it was always in anticipation of what the back of the knee would look like. That”™s 3-dimensional thinking.”
While the E*TRADE baby was a hit in 2008, now “virtually everything has changed in the advertising industry,” Halper said.
With the growth of social media and digital tactics, “Now we”™re expected to do everything,” he said. “Every single media channel you could possibly be in, you”™re expected to have these fully robust integrated campaigns to get your message out in a seamless fashion and not miss a beat in any of them.”
However, the principles behind any strong campaign are unchanged, Halper said.
“Consumer insights, great strategies, great foundations ”“ again, it”™s never going to change,” he said. “Another one is that you”™ve got to keep it simple: one message, very clear, don”™t try to cram too much in.”
And finally, don”™t fall into the trap of saying what you want to say at the expense of what consumers want to hear, Halper said.
“That, to me, is one of the biggest mistakes that advertisers and agencies make, when they”™re too focused on the message they”™re trying to put out there as opposed to thinking about, OK, what”™s going to get through to the consumer.”
