Want a new job and not sure how to go about it? Well, if money is
no option it seems that a press ad is a good place to start.
At the end of last year, Co-operative Dairies unveiled a press campaign
in Yorkshire and Tyne Tees featuring real people who wanted to make a
fresh career start. The aim was to dramatise doorstep milk’s superior
freshness.
Agency Partners BDDH allowed Lucy, Dawn and Paul to outline their dreams
of becoming a make-up artist, a cake decorator and a signwriter. Since
then all have received genuine job offers resulting from the
campaign.
While potential signwriter Paul and aspiring cake decorator Dawn had to
refuse their offers because the companies concerned were too far from
home, Lucy Alston, a sales assistant from Newcastle is set to realise
her ambition of being a make-up artist. She begins work at a Leeds film
company at the end of the month.
Co-operative Dairies is now hoping for similar success from the TV
campaign launching soon in the region. The ad features Debbie who hopes
to become a aerobics instructor, and David who wants to be an air
steward. Job offers are keenly awaited.
Half-baked idea in a can
News of the first truly sad product launch of the year reaches Mix. Home
fragrance retailer Crabtree & Evelyn is introducing a new product into
its home fragrance portfolio this spring with the launch of a range of
’cooking aroma’ sprays which can scent your kitchen with the well-loved
smells of freshly baked cakes and ’summer salads’. The firm claims the
product is targeted at women aged 25 to 49 who ’like fresh food but do
not have time to cook’.
Upwardly mobile people in the PR and marketing industries whose images
are more in tune to the artificial aroma of ’summer salad’ than the
lingering pong of yesterday’s McDonald’s will now know where to
turn.
And here’s that offer again
One of the ironies of our industry is that its most famous practitioners
so rarely manage to practice what they preach. This seems especially the
case when it comes to the direct marketers.
Last year the Direct Marketing Association featured in the diary pages
of a trade magazine for sending an invitation to a party which arrived
after the event. Now Mix has been contacted by the managing director of
a supplier to the marketing services industry who sees the funny side of
his recent mailing for the Institute of Direct Marketing promoting its
one-day direct-marketing course. ’What can you learn about direct
marketing in just one day?’ asks the mailing. Enough presumably to
realise the importance of not sending the same mailing on subsequent
days to the same person at the same company, albeit with a slight
adjustment to the company name.
Always read the label
Is the world doomed? You might think so after reading the following
examples of real label instructions on consumer goods:
- On Tesco’s tiramisu desert: Do not turn upside down (printed on bottom
of the box)
- On Marks & Spencer bread pudding: Product will be hot after
heating
- On packaging for a Rowenta iron: Do not iron clothes on body
- On a Boots the Chemist children’s cough medicine: Do not drive car or
operate machinery.
- On Sainsbury’s peanuts: Warning - contains nuts
- On an American Airlines packet of nuts: Instructions - open packet,
eat nuts
- On a Korean kitchen knife: Warning keep out of children.
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