Absurd? Or Brilliant Marketing?

‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’

‘Give the people what they want.’

These two clichés are part of marketing lore. But as I flipped through my local Sunday paper, I wonder which one applies to an ad that caught my attention. I can’t figure it out: has my highly esteemed, pillar of journalism excellence (note the sarcasm) become “snake oil salesmen” or have they had an epiphany of brilliant marketing?

You decide…

The ad was featured in the “Milestones” section of the paper which features weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and achievements. They recently began printing this in color and placing it as the insert cover for all of the coupon ads, flyers and comics…you know the stuff that makes lifting the paper your workout for the day due to it's 20 pound weight.

As you can see, this ad featured a photo of a happy looking dog with the caption of “Happy Birthday Bella!” Under that was the headline – “Give a pet a greeting!” Hmm, a birthday greeting to a dog in the Sunday paper…either we have some smart dogs in Ann Arbor or this is just plain stupid – weird – funny – brilliant – absurd.

I guess, deciding on which adjective that best describes it depends on your perspective.

So being a student of marketing I began analyzing it in terms of the motivation and needs of both the buyer and the seller. The paper of course is a commercial enterprise on a quest to turn a profit (nah, they are in business to provide a vital public service… yeah right). They are basically selling space on a page to individuals that have a need to inform others or experience having their picture in the paper. For many, seeing ones photo or name in the paper is the 15 minutes of fame that they were promised.

The pet owner’s motivations are a little more personal and passionate. To some, a pet is their main companion in life; it’s their spouse, child and best friend rolled into one hairy four legged creature. As such, they project their emotional needs onto the pet. And sending a personal birthday greeting to Fido or Fluffy makes perfect sense.

Forget about the fact that ANIMALS CAN’T READ, that’s irrelevant.

The newspaper is merely filling a fundamental need that pet owners have to make their pets more “human.” Your could get into a lot of deep psychological gunk here, but the fact remains that some pet owners will spring for the $35 to wish their dog happy birthday. Now, it's brilliant marketing if you’re the newspaper selling ink on paper and might find it stupid if you don’t have a pet.

So, I believe the marketing lesson here is that a combination of the two at work – some people tend to be suckers and you must give them what they want. It is the emotional connection with their pet which will drive the sale and the newspaper understands this. I'm sure that this has concept has been done before in other media with great success.

But rest assured - if this pet message thing gets out of hand your local news reporter will inform us that people are getting ripped off by unscrupulous marketers! Or, will they, if they’re the dastardly culprits taking grandma’s money?