One morning, I'm driving my six-year-old to school and for some reason he asked me what I do at work. I thought: How can I make this sound on-par cool with the police detective that lives next door, a rock star like Hannah Montana or the cashier at Target? Yes, I knew it was futile but I started really hamming it up anyway. I told him how my company creates outdoor boards like the ones we were passing, and radio, newspaper and magazine ads. He asked, "What's a newspaper?" I'll have to write about that troubling issue another day. Then it hit me…talk to him about how he is reached by messaging – TV! Nickelodeon and Disney are ambient noises in my home between the hours of 6 and 9 p.m. whether he is watching or not. I explained to him that my company creates TV ads for companies that want to sell the stuff they make. He started catching on, but then I remembered the most well advertised toy this year, Zhu Zhu Pets!!!
Holiday Ads are Notoriously Guilty of Overspending
Every time the Zhu Zhu Pets commercial comes on, he yells frantically so that he can tell me again, "Mom, this is what I want for Christmas!!" In late September, I began shopping and much to my dismay learned that Zhu Zhu Pets are out of stock everywhere. Well everywhere except Amazon.com and eBay where individuals are all too happy to sell the stockpile of Pets bought at regular price, for 300-400 percent markup. Wow, capitalism, or in this case individual greed, is alive and well.
Building High Demand with a Short Supply is not OK
A highly popular $10 toy that is launched in a down economy with the potential to "save Christmas" has turned into every parent's worst dilemma—tell your child Santa couldn't make enough of them because everyone wanted one, or pay three times in the secondary market so they can open on Christmas morning.
This brings up a reoccurring issue that almost always happens around the holidays—tons of ad dollars spent to create a huge demand with absolutely no supply to back it up. This seems unethical to me. Why would you continue to advertise something that isn't available? At what point as marketers, should we advise our clients about goodwill and lasting consumer brand perception? These brands need to be very careful because parents tend to have a long memory. They may get a burst of success for this season, but in the long-term plan, the consumers will never be loyalists.