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Flashback: NBC wants to move Leno back to later-night slot. Conan gets the boot. Generational warfare among TV viewers ensues. Young people side with Coco. Leno stays out of it, but is perceived to be complicit.

Then NBC airs this ad, hoping it will not be controversial and mostly fly under the radar.

On the surface, it has all the characteristics of a low-key ad that will quietly do its job and not be noticed:
- It is simply a remake of an older ad with very few changes
- It promotes the new time and doesn’t address the elephant in the room
- It has no dialogue
- The original ad didn’t cause a fuss

But times change, and people’s sensitivities are on high alert. The new ad gets criticized. Why?
- In the wake of the time switch, Leno’s smile now looks suspiciously like a smirk
- The Beatles’ song lyrics (“back where we belong…”) are being interpreted as (what else) a dig at Conan.
- It looks like gloating, literally like a “victory lap”.

Frank Luntz says “it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear” that matters – and this ad just proves that you don’t even need to say a word for interpretation to get away from you.

Additionally, I think people expect more from their comedians. Tiptoeing around the time change issue isn’t good enough. It’s a cop-out, and it’s uncreative. It will further disenchant younger Conan fans and not win anyone back to Leno. Weak all around.

Another great marketing campaign is going on Toronto’s subway system right now. Check out Covergirl’s new take on the TTC turnstiles:

I don’t know what a “lash blast” is, but it’s a heck of a good use of the physical environment in an advertising campaign. I think it’s especially effective because of the the strong yellow and black colour scheme.

Starcom, Saatchi & Saatchi Canada, and CBS Outdoor are the folks behind it all.

Marketing magazine has a short piece on the ads, too.

Oh, Toyota. It’s been a rough couple of weeks and there have been so many missed opportunities to lessen the impact of this bona fide corporate crisis. Worse than a missed opportunity, though, is to actively add to your woes.

We get it – nobody likes nasty news coverage that goes on for days after steps have been taken to solve a problem. It’s frustrating, and it’s often just sensational after the recall/fix/plan is in place and working. But rule number… eleven (I’ve really got to start actually numbering these rules!) of crisis management is not to attack the attacker.

So don’t complain about ABC’s news coverage and threaten to pull ads from their affiliates as ‘punishment’.

A few reasons why that’s a bad idea:

1) It’s not really punishment for the ABC Corporation. Even in a recession they can find new ads to fill these spots. They are not dependent on any one company for advertising (though admittedly these southeast dealers are biggies – 20% of Toyota’s US sales).
2) It blurs the line between the business and news functions of a TV network and its affiliates. It shows you don’t understand the way their organization works, which makes you look silly. In theory, your business decision is doing nothing but making life harder for the sales people at a local station. This is misdirected anger and it shouldn’t affect the news one bit.
3) You end up with ugly media stories like the one linked above.

A better strategy would have been:

- Push back on ABC’s news (locally and coordinated/nationally) with aggressive lines about your actions, invite them to shoot the fix in action, interview happy customers, etc. Fight back with your side of the recall story: Toyota is an automaker that made herculean efforts to get the fix underway quickly.
- Change the tone of your advertisements to a “Toyota cares” theme. Maybe personal stories about how Toyota’s inspection found problems, fixed them for free, gave a car owner advice on how to maintain a particular part, etc. Any sort of a ‘personal touch’ story showing Toyota to be anything but a massively incompetent or callous.
- Perhaps run a Superbowl ad to ’shoot straight’ with the American people, update them on your handling of the crisis, and tell them about all the great new things they have to offer now that an isolated problem has been fixed? This time: no prepared notes, no reading from a script.

Any of all of these would be better than bullying affiliates over network coverage tone.

I didn’t mention this ad in my roundup yesterday, but easily could have. The Audi Green Police ad is very funny — but it feels eerily like a near-future dystopia.

Banning incandescent bulbs? Strikes a little close to home for those of us living in Totalitario, no?

(See the whole ad playlist.)