The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

W-R-O-N-G.

But it’s not my fault, it’s when companies put things like this out and try and say it’s a case study in creative effectiveness:

Are they being serious?

I hope not because putting aside the fact the ‘results’ are either ridiculously ambiguous or are of no true commercial value to the client other than stroking their precious ego, the fact is there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any one of those 3000 bottles of ‘hot sauce’ had any direct effect on their clients business.

Maybe its because the case study was badly written up?

Maybe … but as I assume the ‘data’ being quoted came from the agency, I can’t see how this could be reported without their involvement.

Maybe it’s because the client didn’t want to release all the data?

Maybe … but that makes the case study pretty worthless given there’s little context to evaluate the true level of success achieved.

Maybe it’s because some people think this is what constitutes a ‘case study’?

Sadly, this is quite possibly the case.

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I cannot tell you how angry this sort of thing makes me feel.

It’s exactly this sort of thing that makes adland a laughing stock in business because what we’re actually demonstrating is we don’t even understand the fundamentals of what business is supposed to be.

+ Did Ford make all their employees swear to secrecy prior to the launch of the car?

+ Was every press release banned from ever mentioning this car?

+ Were all Ford salesman kept in the dark about the impending launch?

+ Were all dealerships under strict orders to not feature collateral or examples of the car?

+ Did every car industry magazines/website agree to not mention the car?

+ In other words, were the 3000 bottles of hot sauce the only exposure this car had in terms of communicating it’s availability?

My guess is no.

My guess is that there was a lot of exposure that was used to communicate this special edition vehicle to the people of NZ.

In fact, I’d say the results are quite poor given a ‘special edition’ normally encourages people to act quickly and immediately … but as they don’t say how many cars were actually available, we will never know.

The thing that bugs me with this – apart from the fact the case study is more flawed than Seal’s face – is that adland loves to take all the credit when things are [allegedly] good but so bad at taking the responsibility when things go bad.

Sure, everyone is a bit like that, but adland has made it an art-form … however when they take credit for ‘good news’ that is questionable, they just make themselves look like fools.

Don’t get me wrong, I like that they tried to explore new ways to launch a car, but the information they are using to communicate this story doesn’t – in any way – show it had any impact on the end result. None. Nada. Zilch.