Why a cashmere brand advertised for its competitors (not a good reason)
And please don't go to Miami Beach for spring break
Hello Gobbledeers,
How’s it going?
In this week’s newsletter we’re going to talk about:
Miami Beach and spring break and telling people not to go to Miami Beach for spring break.
Free popsicles.
Honey bunches of goat.
Don’t Come around Here No More
Longtime Gobbledy readers may have noticed that there is a common thread running through every single marketing example I’ve shared here over the past 2 years.
Wanna guess?
No? You don’t want to answer rhetorical questions? That wasn’t a rhetorical question. If you don’t want to answer, just tell me.
Fine.
Every one of those companies was trying to get you to buy a product.
Shocking!
Well, some of those companies are trying to get someone else to buy a product. Sometimes they said something like, “hey, if you like boring tampons, these new direct-to-consumer TAMPI are not for you” (or, y’know, whatever).
But even then, they’re trying to get somebody to buy TAMPI.
Which is why the ad that Miami Beach created to get spring breakers NOT to come to Miami Beach is so amazing:
“It’s not us…it’s you.”
“You just want to get drunk in public.”
I mean, yes. That is what spring breakers wanted to do in Miami Beach. And Miami Beach decided that’s not what they’re selling.
So sure, this is really a “this product isn’t for you” strategy rather than a “we don’t want you to buy our product” strategy, but still, a clever and unique way to tell people to go to Nassau.
(Side note: is it just me, or does this have the same look as every commercial for sex-related prescription medication? Is it the color saturation? The colors? The ambiguous ethnicity and attractiveness? I don’t know, but I suddenly have an urge to ask my doctor about Dupixent. I have no idea what Dupixent does.)
(Thanks to long-time Gobbledy reader and current roommate Scarlett B. for sending this along, and also to occasional Gobbledy reader Ben J. for also sending.)
Ice Cream Truck…or Car
I came across this 1967 ad for a Ford dealership in Southfield, Michigan, offering 1 free popsicle if you buy a 1967 Ford:
I thought this was funny and stupid and ha ha 1 popsicle per person (not per car).
But actually, it’s kinda clever - the prices are so low that he literally cannot afford to give away 2 popsicles. I’d never thought of trying something like that with a product that’s competing on price. We see giveaways all the time, sure. And plenty of “one per person” disclaimers. But I’ve never seen it where the seller says that they had to restrict the giveaways because the price is so low.
(And since I ended up in this Ford advertising rabbit hole, I appreciated the diversity of the 44 metropolitan Detroit Ford dealers in 1963. Some of them are old white guys. Some of them are very old white guys. Also, some of them have glasses)
Wool-dn’t It Be Nice…
One way a smaller brand can compete against a larger brand is for the smaller brand to call out the larger brand and bait them into responding. This is called “comparative advertising” (the calling out the larger brand part…not the baiting them part) and, as this classic marketing research discovered, it can be an effective strategy, though it’s more effective for “punching up” - a challenger brand taking on an established brand - than for “punching down” (vice versa).
Here, for example, is one of the ways that Wendy’s showcased that people preferred their fries - which they claimed stayed crispy - to McDonald’s fries, which they suggested did not:
Solid work, Wendy’s.
Anyway, you don’t usually see the leader in a market using this type of strategy because the leader generally doesn’t want to call attention to a follower (that’s why they’re leading, and the other company is following).
Which made this situation between two small cashmere sweater brands a little odd.
Quince, an upstart apparel brand pushing inexpensive cashmere stuff, has been running ads comparing themselves to Naadam, who are (I guess?) the leader in the upstart cashmere stuff space. Those ads looked like this:
Seems reasonable enough - “hey look, same product, 60% cheaper and a better return policy.” Also, they spelled “shipping” wrong. They left off the extra ‘p’ for “psavings”.
Naadam, on the other hand, has been known for “provocative” advertising, and here’s an example of their “provocative” advertising:
(On the one hand, c’mon. On the other hand, putting the black bar over the goat’s eyes to protect its identity is pretty funny. On the third hand, I guess Wendy’s could’ve done the same ad with cows and the tagline, “this is how we make juicy hamburgers.” Also, ew.)
Naadam’s CEO told Glossy a story about those ads: “I remember one time I came out to look at one of the posters in the West Village. And I saw that people in the neighborhood [had] come out with a Sharpie and written, ‘This is gross, take this down.’ And then, when I came back a day later, I saw that other people had come out with a Sharpie, adding, ‘No, this is funny. … You could take a joke.’ And I [thought], ‘This is the best.’ We’re just having fun and starting a conversation…”
(There’s a 3% chance that that happened).
So, after seeing a couple of those Quince ads, the CEO of Naadam decided for some reason that they should respond to Quince’s ad, telling Glossy:
“We’ve seen this brand, Quince, use our name in their marketing. I don’t know if it’s illegal, but I know that it is strange. I know that it’s frowned upon. … Marketer-to-marketer, you generally try not to do that. … It does cross a line...”
(Editor’s note: it does not cross a line.)
He added, “OK, I don’t love this. I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world, but I do feel like they’re opening a door for me to maybe do something.”
I love how he says “you generally try not to do that” and then proceeded to put out a handful of social media ads calling out Quince.
Also, don’t take the bait.
They took the bait.
The tone of those ads were very online:
Sure, whatever. Isn’t it odd, though, that Naadam in the ad calls out that Quince has a lower price? Did Naadam’s customers know that Quince was a thing? Or that it’s a similar thing with lower prices? Why would you do that?
Punch up, don’t punch down.
And they really missed an opportunity:
As always, thanks for reading to the end.
I really, really enjoy chatting with readers, which is why I include a link to sign up for a 25 minute chat: Here’s my Calendly link. We can talk about the current demographic makeup of the Metro Detroit Ford dealers. Or Honey Bunches of Goat. It’s really up to you. Whatever you’d like. Or I can go over your website - it can be about work, really!
And lastly, I’ve been doing a bunch of 1-day workshops around messaging, and the outcome is that your homepage will be SO much clearer. If you want your homepage to be clearer, we should chat. You can reply to this newsletter, use that Calendly link, or email me at jared@sagelett.com.
So Naadam can't think of one actual reason their sweaters are worth 100% (rounding) more than Quince's?