Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Dave Jung on B2B Advertising
B2Blog: How sucky are these B2B ads?
Fellow blogger Dave Jung posts on a Readex study of advertising in BtoB magazine. He rated only two of the ads as winners, and has some cogent commentary on the rest. I liked the one I've posted here from Hoovers. I wonder if that was Dave's second choice?
Grab from Dave's post: But you figure the exhibit booth vendor would at least have a picture of a show booth in their ad. Or the company selling ads in elevators would focus on explaining their product.
The embarrassing thing here is that a lot of the ads are from magazines trying to sell themselves, and doing a poorer job than the ads that run in those magazines. As a b2b publisher, I've long been held hostage to complaints from advertisers who say that a given magazine doesn't work. Of course, maybe they ran one ad, with terrible design and copy, lousy pricing, and no call to action. But it was my magazine's fault they didn't get a response.
But it doesn't help that publishers (self included) don't spend the time and effort to do their own advertising right. I give props to the publishers who advertise in BtoB--at least they're advertising! Most publishers spend their lives selling the value of advertising and don't bother to advertise themselves.
Postscript: as an industry, we need to continue to support American Business Media's CEBA awards, which honor good B2B ads. I wonder whether marketers like Dave Jung like the kind of ads that win CEBAs? I think a few shown on the ABM website look good, but do they work?
Comments
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Fellow blogger Dave Jung posts on a Readex study of advertising in BtoB magazine. He rated only two of the ads as winners, and has some cogent commentary on the rest. I liked the one I've posted here from Hoovers. I wonder if that was Dave's second choice?Grab from Dave's post: But you figure the exhibit booth vendor would at least have a picture of a show booth in their ad. Or the company selling ads in elevators would focus on explaining their product.
The embarrassing thing here is that a lot of the ads are from magazines trying to sell themselves, and doing a poorer job than the ads that run in those magazines. As a b2b publisher, I've long been held hostage to complaints from advertisers who say that a given magazine doesn't work. Of course, maybe they ran one ad, with terrible design and copy, lousy pricing, and no call to action. But it was my magazine's fault they didn't get a response.
But it doesn't help that publishers (self included) don't spend the time and effort to do their own advertising right. I give props to the publishers who advertise in BtoB--at least they're advertising! Most publishers spend their lives selling the value of advertising and don't bother to advertise themselves.
Postscript: as an industry, we need to continue to support American Business Media's CEBA awards, which honor good B2B ads. I wonder whether marketers like Dave Jung like the kind of ads that win CEBAs? I think a few shown on the ABM website look good, but do they work?
