Cheeky TV ad from First Bank

I like this TV ad from First Bank. It's cheeky, funny and memorable.

It also pokes fun at self annointed experts and motivational speakers. Those are easy targets that very few people will get upset about. I'm called a marketing expert because of my bestselling book and satisfied clients. And I've been described as a motivational speaker so many times that I finally just accepted the label. Yet I wasn't offended by this ad because I recognize the truth in it. The lesson for marketers: It's effective to take a position and be cheeky. And stating the obvious can be a refreshing marketing approach.

Notice that this ad didn't say anything about the features and benefits of working with First Bank. It simply implied that they have a sence of humor, are down to earth and easy to deal with. Hmm, pretty distinctive for a bank. Two thumbs up for this advertisement and the First Bank.

Stop Branding and start marketing - video tip

Kitchens or Bridges: What are you selling?

Customers don’t care about your internal process – until it goes wrong. Customers don’t care about how many trucks you have until it arrives late. Customers don’t care about the ingredients until they decide they like it.


Concrete FormationsHere is a company that didn’t get it. Guess what this business sells? Not bridges. Not curbs. They sell custom shaped kitchen counter tops.

Who would have guessed that from the company name? When I pointed this out to the business owner he seemed distressed that I didn’t understand him.

He was selling kitchen counter tops that could be shaped as the customer wanted. It would look like marble at much less than the price of marble. But he was a concrete guy.

What might prospects be looking for – in the yellow pages and online? Something about kitchens and customer shaped counter tops. I suggested that he rename his company or product with kitchen counter tops in the title. He looked at me as if I was strange.

If this was an affordable alternative to marble counter tops call it Faus Marble tops.
Looks like marble
I can’t believe it’s not marble
Why pay for marble?
Kitchen counters shaped the way you want
Beautiful counters in your kitchen


Anything but Concrete!

Google “Concrete formations” and you will find bridges not kitchen counter tops.

Google your name and see what you find.


George Torok

Marketing Speaker

Business Speaker

Marketing is an Imperfect Science

Marketing is not art. It is a science. However it is a behavioral science and therefore an imperfect science. Anything dealing with human behavior is imperfect at best. Yet it is still a science. You can predict and measure cause and effects.

Marketing is not art and it is not magic.

In order to be an effective marketer you must understand people and how to influence their behaviors.

Marketing is about guessing that if we do this, people will do that. The guessing part is important. The significant part is guessing how many people will do that.

What do you do? Predict – test – measure and adjust.


George Torok

Marketing Speaker

Motivational Business Speaker

Crazy People: Movie about Advertising Truth

This old movie with Dudley Moore might offend some of you with the language - but it is a real look at advertising.

Life Insurance is not Life Insurance

Sometimes effective marketing means misinterpreting words. Sometimes the truth doesn’t sell as well as misleading words.

Life Insurance is not life insurance. It is really death insurance. Fire insurance protects you against a fire. Accident insurance protects you against an accident. Theft insurance protects you against theft. And we could reassembly assume that flood and earthquake insurance would protect you against flood and earthquakes.

The truth would to be to say that you are selling death insurance to protect your survivors upon your death.

If they were truthful would my Dad have purchased Life Insurance when I was born? At the age of 18, I received a payment of about $1,800. During those 18 years he contributed much more than that amount. What was the purpose? If I died, he would have received a payment to pay for my funeral. I didn’t die so I got a modest payment.

By buying the “life insurance” he was betting that I would die young. It was not a profitable bet on his part. I appreciate the money I received at age 18. It could have been so much more if he simply put the monthly payments in a bank account at zero interest.

I’m sure that my Dad did not think about the investment in those cold terms. He was likely pressured by the emotional aspects of buying Life Insurance.

There is nothing wrong with buying Life Insurance – if you understand that it is really death insurance.

You buy fire insurance to protect you against the loss of fire. You buy life insurance to protect your loves ones against the loss of your death.

Death is the logical end of life – but let’s be clear on the difference and the intended deception.

Life insurance is really death insurance.


George Torok

Marketing Speaker

Business Speaker

Make Your Prospects Angry?

To Win People’s Hearts, Make Them Angry
on Forbes

That is the implication of a paper presented this past weekend at an annual Experimental Political Science Conference put on by New York University’s Center for Experimental Social Sciences. Timothy Ryan, of the University of Michigan, did “a new type of field experiment” in which “I induce feelings of anger and anxiety and passively measure the effects on information seeking. Across three studies, I find anger to increase information seeking, a result inconsistent with some standing theories. When anger is evoked along with anxiety, however, information seeking does not increase relative to an emotion-neutral control, a result at odds with past findings that anxiety motivates attention and interest.” In other words, make people angry and they’ll pay attention and want to know more. Make them anxious at the same time, though, and you won’t do nearly as well.

Read the rest of this article on Forbes
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We know that emotions move people and we know that anger pushes people to action. Have you considered using anger as a marketing tool?

If you make them angry at the clearly defined enemy, that might be an effective marketing strategy. It works for political campaigns.

But be careful. Make them angry and confuse them and you better duck.


I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore.


George Torok

Marketing Speaker

Business Speaker

Says Who? Not Anonymous Again

Anonymous gets credit for saying many things – both good and bad. But who really knows if any of it is true?

How much faith do you place in anonymous?

If you keep receiving adoring love notes from anonymous at some point you might question the truth of those welcome words.

If you receive customer service complaints from anonymous how serious will you take the complaint?

In a court of law a person must state their name and swear to tell the truth. So when the source is anonymous why would we even consider listening?

Customer testimonials are powerful marketing tools - but only powerful if we know the source. A testimonial from anonymous is highly suspicious. Initials for the name is just a small step above anonymous.

Use a real person's name and your message has personality and becomes more believable. If you want the words to count attach a name to the words. Identify the source or remain quiet.


George Torok

Marketing Author

Business Speaker