You don’t have to be a football fan or even an FSU alum to appreciate the really poor taste exhibited by the media buyers for Monday night’s game on ESPN. What were they thinking allowing a movie about the murdering of sorority girls sponsor a game at a university where not so many years ago Ted Bundy took lives from the Chi-Omega house?
I’m fairly certain that the media buyer probably didn’t attend FSU and didn’t understand the insensitivity of the context of this placement but somebody should have been watching. This is a great example of why national buys and national messaging doesn’t always work in individual markets. A local test of this ad would certainly have raised objections from this media audience or at least in this market. But perhaps in an era of tightening budgets and hurry-t0-market campaigns, people aren’t taking the time to think and that is a problem.
It goes back to the old adage of one happy customer will tell another but one UNHAPPY customer will tell three or five or ten (depending on which survey you read).
How many irate FSU alumni will it take to prevent this ad from running again? Or perhaps prevent this movie from seeing theaters in Tallahassee?
I’m not certain and that isn’t really isn’t the point of this post. The point is that marketing mavens in other mass media markets don’t know your customer in your backyard the way that you do. That means if you’re a large brand, you need to take the time to localize. And if you’re a small business, you have a leg up on the large brand who won’t take the time or expense to be authentic in your space.
Happy marketing and Go Noles!