This was the headline in a Financial Post editorial written by Hollie Shaw:

Love It or Hate It, Nike’s Ad Got Noticed

The sub-head: Widespread reaction means ad worked, executives say

Really?

I have a lot of respect for Hollie Shaw and I am sure her reporting is accurate. I also swore to myself way back when that I would not weigh in on the whole Tiger thing on the basis that enough ink had already been poured into the sea of Tiger Woods reporting to keep the Titanic afloat. But the premise that noise for noise’s sake is a good thing bears discussion.

You all know about the commercial. Trading in on the dead father’s memory and the respect in which that memory is held. A cut and splice job assembled to set the stage for the son’s redemption. A swirl of publicity ensued in the wake of the ad’s appearance. Some decried it for being in bad taste. Others, including a goodly number in the advertising industry said that bad taste or not, the commercial wouldn’t hurt Nike a bit. Indeed, they surmised, all that publicity would be a boon for a company that seen its golf sales decline 11% in 2009.

“If I were the marketing guy at Nike the day after that ad ran, I’d be a pretty happy guy”, said the chief creative officer at one large at agency.

Why?

In the bad old days, that mantra was a variation of the line usually attributed to master showman, P.T. Barnum: “I don’t care what they write about me, as long as they spell my name right.” Which is reminiscent of the classic from Mae West: “Call me anything, but call me often.” (Note: you may also find the first quote ascribed to Mae West and, another old time entertainer, George M. Cohan.) Any publicity, it was said, was good publicity.

Well, we know better now. And, somehow, I don’t see where the Nike ad is good publicity. Here’s my thinking.

1. Reflected Glory?

Nike’s promotions are celebrity-based, with Tiger Woods the centerpiece of its celebrity platform. If the ad reflects badly on Tiger Woods – and even the ad execs admit it doesn’t help polish Woods’ already tarnished image – how could it be a plus for the advertiser who clearly produced the ad to play off that image? Sorry, but ugly is as ugly does.

2. Bottom Line Contribution?

The link between Woods and Nike is well-established…and well understood by the golfing community at large. If this ad had not been aired, would Nike’s notoriety be one wit less impressive? I doubt it.

For example, none of Nike’s 2009 sales decline is attributed to the Tiger factor (if there is such a thing).

According to a survey conducted by TNS, a world leader in market research, global market information and business analysis, the scandal may have hurt Woods’ personal reputation, but not those of the brands he endorses. Respondents to a TNS survey said they had a more favourable opinion of Tiger’s brands including Nike, EA, Gillette and Gatorade (which did drop Woods but only at a point too close to the survey to have an impact).

I cannot see where this ad did Nike any good in the market or that missing out on the publicity garnered by its airing would have done it any harm.

3. The Fatigue Factor

Polls confirm that most people are tired of hearing about the Woods scandal. It was interesting…even titillating. For a while. But most now feel it’s time to move on and time to let Woods move on with his life, sympathy for Elin Nordegren notwithstanding. The ad, therefore, did nothing but keep the embers lit. It contributed to the fatigue.

Plus, frankly, the ad wasn’t that interesting. Or the production quality that good. In fact, objectively, the ad was pretty boring and, were it not for the context in which it was placed so callously, it would have been eminently forgettable.

In short, if I were the marketing guy at Nike the day after that ad ran, I wouldn’t be that happy with myself.

In my last post (see Bad Ad-Itude), I excoriated Whiskas for its inane advertising. Even if the thinking behind the ads was good, the execution was not. Some felt I was overly harsh and so I offer up an ad for the purposes of comparison.

The MO was the same, with a twist. Whiskas’ Hubert et al pretend they are cats. The Cadbury gorilla pretends he is human. The latter (submitted by Fallon, London) was the 2008 Grand Prix winner at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival so, admittedly, I’m stacking the deck. But the choice of Gorilla at Cannes was not unanimous. You may, indeed, love or hate the ad. But you will, I bet, love the gorilla for his cool and for the expressiveness of his eyes. Just as you, almost as assuredly, hate Hubert for his inane and insufferable manner. Remember, both ads are selling food and both are designed to generate word-of-mouth publicity, so the comparisons are not as specious as they might first appear. The Whiskas ads generated spoofs as silly as the original. The Cadbury ad generated remixes almost as clever as the original. YouTube, as always, is the unofficial arbiter.

By the way, I assume all you ad execs are getting ready for the Cannes festival. With some 25,000 ads from 80 countries submitted each year, the Lions awards are surely the most prestigious, most sought after recognition in the industry. (Results are more important, but they don’t generally get you to the French Riviera.) Online entries open January 29, 2009 with deadlines, depending on the category, March 6, 13 or 20. The work that you enter into Cannes Lions 2009 needs to have aired or been published between March 1, 2008, and April 30, 2009. Entry is getting a bit more complicated; categories seem to be multiplying with the additions of Titanium and Integrated Lions, but that is another story. Good luck all.

To quote Dennis Miller, “Now, I don’t want to rant, but…”

In my former company, I was part of an executive committee set up to oversee all the commercial aspects of the enterprise. It was my practice to show the group our various marketing campaigns while they were still in the design phase. I also showed how our corporate strategic intent and marketing program specifics were perfectly aligned and how all aspects of the various campaigns were fully integrated.

And that was the last time they would see or hear anything until I was good and ready to show it. Good and ready meant that the ad or the brochure was produced and looked fantastic and there was a competitive equivalent that did not. It meant that we had evidence customers were happily cabbaging onto our material with documented results. It meant we had won an award or, better still, two. My colleagues were apparently happy with this approach, partially because they trusted me and mostly because they felt it was more important for them to focus on customer issues, like impending threats and looming opportunities.

This made it easy to be late and safe to produce the odd stinker. Which we, respectively, occasionally were and sometimes did. It helped a great deal that our marketing was at least reputed to be among the industry’s best (not difficult) and that, at the end of the day, we were never over budget (difficult indeed). My withholding strategy was, thus, not a tactic to get away with something, but one merely to keep a reasonable distance between us and the abacus crew (i.e., accounting) until we could put our programs in place.

In the hurly burly of everyday, it is possible for oversight to be manipulated rather than managed. Without proper structures and processes in place, campaigns can become inconsistent or run off on some tangent that has nothing to do with the long-term well-being of the enterprise. Happy numbers get presented that mask return on investment.

What we sometimes see is a gap between concept and execution. That gap may be caused by poor guidance or simply poor taste. As a result, some adverts smell like a prickly durian melon. (Never tried one? You can’t begin to imagine what you’re not missing.)

If you need an example or two, check out the continuous outpouring of putrid creative being produced for Pedigree’s Whiskas cat food line. The silly putty or, worse, silly potty humor of the ‘only cats can be cats’ ads are tasteless to the extreme and can’t possibly be enticing for anyone…least of all cat lovers. You want to strangle the loathsome Hubert and bury the lazy and listless Boris alive. The Temptations ads, with cats repeatedly crashing through walls ostensibly because they would hear someone shaking a bag of treats, are simply stupid. Which is clearly how Whiskas sees its customer base. That said, I suppose some will be drawn to the Whiskas Wet Food Challenge. Who dreams this stuff up? Who, on the client side approves? Is this an agency problem or a management one? There are those that will argue that several of the Whiskas ads have gone viral. Certainly the parody ads have. Is this a plus?

The test of pleasure is the memory it leaves behind. Are the whiskas ads ones you will remember or ones which you will do your best to forget. Do these ads ’stick’ or are they just…well… just sticky?