Jeff Bennett's Blog

Two companies on my resume made history with television ads. Wang was one of the first computer companies to utilize television ads to build it’s brand.  Years later, Lycos leveraged television ads to bolster it’s brand building program distinguishing itself as one of the only Internet players of that time to utilize television ads.

Wang strengthened its marketing efforts back in the late 1970’s (before my tenure) by launching a three-month television advertising campaign in 1978.   Wang was a rising company then and was taking market share from IBM in the office with it’s revolutionary word processing platform.  The ad campaign portrayed Wang as David and IBM as Goliath. Wang, then the 32nd largest computer maker, was second only to IBM in television advertising.

Wang followed this campaign with an even more aggressive ad that was I believe the first computer company advertising on a Super Bowl telecast.  In this ad “super man” type of character was positioned behind a Wang office system and was chasing IBM’s Charlie Chaplin around the office.  I was not working for Wang at the time but I do remember that ad to this day.  Boston based Hill Holiday created the provocative ad campaign for Wang.

At Lycos we were working to define the concept of Internet Search along with early search engines Yahoo, Excite and Infoseek.  We were truly creating a new way of finding and sharing information.  This was way before we all “Googled” stuff…boy it pains me to hear my kids refer to search in that way.  We were trying to demonstrate that with a simple keyword entered into a search engine could help guide the consumer in their effort to retrieve all sorts of relevant information.  Our first cut at this was using a mountain Sherpa to do this…not a Laborador Retriever which came later.  Check out this blast from the past that was launched in 1998.

This was just the first foray of many for Lycos.  We moved from having the Sherpa as our mascot to a Labrador Retriever that “fetched” anything in a super fast manner across the Internet in another attempt to help define what a search engine could do.  We actually had a series of Lycos The Dog ads.  In addition we collaborated with other companies on co-branded advertisements.  Lycos “powered” part of the Fidelity Powerstreet web site and we were included in their tv campaigns.  Lycos also teamed up with BMG Music on a series of television ads.

I look at the world of marketing today and ask the question are tv ads needed?  Sure they help broadcast a message.  Consumption of content on the television medium has changed radically though.  The viewership has been fragmented across thousands of channels.  Tivo and DVR’s enable the consumer to just skip the ads.   Consumers either turn these ads off or simply tune them out.  Viewership is also in decline as more and more consumers are spending their time on the Internet and accessing this content through other channels.

Look at the dominant and emerging technology companies of today and ask are they advertising on televsion?   Google…no.  Amazon….no.   Facebook….no.  We have seen a lot of brand building coming from Microsoft’s Bing…but has it worked?  Not sure.  I know Yahoo is going back on the airwaves with a branding ad and it will be interesting to see how it performs

The Internet has leveled the playing field for companies of all sizes.  You don’t need a multi-million dollar production and prime time TV spots to get access to the most targeted consumers.  My favorite regional hardware store chain Aubuchon Hardware can bid more for the keyword “hardware” or thousands of “hardware terms” like “buy hammer,” and by doing this gain the first position on Google’s search page and get more impact than Home Depot or Lowes.  Aubuchon has adopted a generic brand, HardwareStore.Com on the Internet, so they are not a regional chain on the Internet they are the category!  My favorite product discovery site is the Daily Grommet and they can shoot a cool video of a product, add great content and enable social conversations and get ranked above any behemoth retailer for scores of keywords and phrases in the algo search results on Google and as a result get more impact for their products.  Creative brands can leverage Facebook and Twitter through the use of engaging apps to drive call to action to their stores, web sites or valuable data collection methods.  All of this is possible without a television commercial.

I am probably in the minority but I like a creative television ad.  The fact is that there are just so many other ways to market in an efficient manner today to reach mass market and targeted customers.  It is looking like the visionary work of Wang and Lycos on their television ads might be soon a memory of a different time.