Nice try, Avaya

I was at a Red Sox game the other evening, and noticed that Avaya was doing some advertising. In my book, they were doing the right thing in trying to speak directly to “the locals”. BofA had a similar “going native” campaign a couple of years ago, in which they had a series of brilliant billboard messages that spoke to the area’s passion for the Red Sox, which I blogged about here. (I don’t know if they’re still doing something similar, because I’m no longer on the road regularly enough to see whether and how they’re billboarding these days.)

Anyway, Avaya took a page from a similar playbook. They did so by tying their “anyplace, anywhere” communications offerings to the “anyplaces” that Bostonians might find themselves in.

I like advertising that speaks directly to its audience - persona, vertical, or - in this case - the locals. And Avaya got it most of the way right. But they were a little tin-earish on a couple of things, which leads me to believe that they didn’t run it by a true Bostonian. Now, most of the world’s population might not notice the wrong notes - just like they don’t seem to mind the almost universally dreadful fake-Boston accents you hear in movies* - but, since the ads were aimed at Bostonians, I bet I’m not the only one who picked up on:

• “Boston Commons”. Boston Commons? No such thing. It’s Boston Common.
• Fenway Park. Yes, it is indeed Fenway Park, but none of us would say Fenway Park. We’d say Fenway.
• And, since one of their “anyplaces” was “the airport”, why didn’t they say “Logan” while they were at it, rather than “The Airport”.

Okay, I’m being a nitpicking meanie here - and I really do like this type of advertising. I don’t know whether it’s more effective than generic ads, but I’m guessing (and hoping) that it is.

So to show my goodwill, I’ll make another point to underscore this one, by telling one on myself.

Years ago, a software company I worked for decided to go vertical, and our first vertical was insurance. We put a couple of things in our product that addressed industry-specific uses - one I remember was allowing for “monthliversaries” of data. In our literature, we talked about issues and trends that were insurance-industry related. And I put together a very nice little story-board presentation about how one insurance company would use our product. It took a client to point out that insurance companies were either Life or Property & Casualty, but they weren’t both. Ouch. I was a little embarrassed, but the embarrassment served me right for pretending that I knew jack about insurance companies. Yes, I had both Life and Property & Casualty, and they were from different companies, but I’d never given any thought to why that was the case.

So, if you’re going to do any directed communications that are talking local, vertical, or persona, you really need to make sure that you speak the language. And if you’re not a native speaker, it’s probably best to run whatever you’re saying by a native.

 

*One of the only good ones was Leo DiCaprio in The Departed.

 

 

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