Entenmann’s Hires Idiots to Create Marketing Campaign

The accused: Entenmann’s, baker of fine donuts and other pastries, including a mean pound cake.

The locations: Skateboarder Magazine, September ‘05, p. 53. Transworld Skateboarding, August 2005, p. 105.

The crime: Bad marketing.

Let’s analyze what’s wrong with Entenmann’s new advertising campaign that attempts to cater to skateboarders.

If I could get my new HP LaserJet 3380 scanning software to work I’d scan the pages so you could see them. But since it’s not, you’ll have to look them up.

Ok, let’s take apart the skateboarding one first, which is the one in Transworld. What’s wrong with this picture?

1. “EXTREME” - This is what it says across the top of the ad in big letters. First of all, only people who aren’t involved in skateboarding refer to skateboarding as an “extreme sport” or extreme in any way. Congratulations Entenmann’s, within the top inch and a half of the ad you have made it obvious to everyone reading this magazine that you are completely out of touch with your target audience.

2. “Sweet!” - Who wrote this ad copy, Napoleon Dynamite?

3. “When you finally land the move that is uniquely yours…” - First of all, they’re not called “moves”, they’re called tricks, even though the word “trick” sounds more immature until you get used to it. And despite skateboarding’s complexity and the number of “moves” you can do, there is no move that belongs uniquely to anyone unless it’s the 900, the mega ramp, or a 360 flip down Wallenberg, so this just doesn’t quite make sense.

4. “…it’s time to break bread with your friends” - It is? Why? I don’t think people think about eating donuts after skating. They think about drinking lots of water and other clear liquids. Remember how the national dairy council had those “It does a body good” ads for years, trying to peddle milk, and they didn’t really work? Then they stumbled onto this “Got milk” thing and sales exploded because they figured out that more people can relate to drinking milk after eating cookies than drinking a glass of milk after a hard workout at the gym. Well, you guys are still trying to sell milk as a health food, so to speak.

5. “…treat everyone to one of the many Entenmann’s Extreme sweet good - an we mean goods.” Once again, you used the word “extreme”. Stop it. It’s stupid. And what do you mean by “and we mean goods”? I can tell you mean it, I just can’t tell what you mean. You mean the donuts are good? Or do you mean that you think skateboarders refer to things as “the goods” all the time? If it’s the latter, than once again you’ve established the disconnection between yourself and your target audience.

6. Bad design. The overall design of this ad stinks. Every attempt to make the photo “artsy” by lowering the number of colors in it just makes it look worse. Whoever trimmed the photo did a pretty bad job on it. Looks like they were in a hurry. The guy is missing a big chunk out of his left toes.

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Ok, let’s move on to ad #02.

This ad, rather than featuring a skateboarder shows a snowboarder who is apparently snowboarding on a powdered donut. In this case they did a better job with the ad because they kept their mouth shut and minimized any ad copy. But still…

1. This is a skateboarding magazine. Not a snowboarding magazine. Ads featuring snowboarders go in snowboarding magazines. Oh, you thought that all skateboarders snowboard and vice versa? Well, some people do both, it’s true, but most skateboarders do not consider themselves snowboarders, so you’ve missed your target audience once again. Way to go.

2. Ok, so the guy is snowboarding on a donut that looks like snow. Is that supposed to be clever? That’s the kind of idea someone in a junior high graphic design class would come up with. No offense if this ad really was designed by someone in junior high. You’re young and still have time to improve.

3. Well, I really don’t have much to say that’s bad about this ad, because there isn’t much to the ad. It doesn’t offend like the first, but it doesn’t do much good either.

4. Ha! The fine print shows that Entenmann’s is owned by a parent company called “Bimbo Bakeries”. Now it all makes sense.

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So why is Entenmann’s paying tens of thousands of dollars for this adspace? Maybe they just had left over funds in their ad budget and they had to spend them somewhere, but chances are they want to increase sales with the 8-15 demographic that reads these magazines. If that is their goal with these ads, what could they do to better reach that group?

1. Come up with a good idea. All things are created twice, you know. You’ve got to have a good idea or you’ll never get a good ad. How about Gino sitting on a picnic table at a well-known Los Angeles schoolyard eating a donut saying “These pretzels are making me thirsty!” Now that’s funny and bound to drive sales upwards. Well, maybe.

2. Execute. A good idea won’t go far without good execution on the design. Why not hire an agency that understands this demographic and how to market to them? Or even better, go hire an artist who works for a skateboard company and get them to design the ad. They know what they’re doing.

3. Maybe spend your money elsewhere. I’m not sure any ad, no matter how clever or well designed, is going to improve sales when placed in a skateboarding magazine. Do 15 year olds really care what brand of donuts they buy? If they do, are their purchasing decisions affected by advertising? Geez, do some market research before dropping all that cash next time.

Next time I’m going to rip on the Dickies ads that just came out in a few magazines. These ads are even worse because while the worst that can happen with the Entenmann’s ads is nothing, Dickies is actually causing damage to their image with a target audience that includes active customers.