Google’s G-mail has a wonderful SPAM filter which, when coupled with my ISP’s excellent service, means that I get virtually no SPAM in my e-mail. However, there is a bit of a price to pay for this. I must check me G-mail every day to insure that no legitimate messages have been swept up with the trash. As I sift through the bogus names, offers for cheap drugs, and anatomical enhancement, I note quite a number of folks selling replica watches, handbags and other cheap knock-offs of famous-name goods.

*Sonic.net, in Santa Rosa, CA.

When I consider the idea of a replica – let’s take a Rolex watch as an example – what’s the real value of a cheap copy to the purchaser? Obviously, it’s not the quality of goods. Replicas typically cost much less than the real thing because they’re shoddily made. It’s not the price, because there are many extremely accurate and durable watch brands available at less cost than the scamsters are asking for faux Oyster Perpetuals.

At the end of the day, I believe the value of the replica – especially if it’s a reasonably good copy – is its appearance. The replica Rolex looks to the un- or semi-trained eye like the real thing. The wearer hopes to convey the impression to any stranger or casual acquaintance that they are sporting an expensive watch. In other words, they are perpetrating a fraud in the hopes of garnering esteem. I don’t believe they’re trying to impress their real friends. The people close to them know the truth. The replica purchaser may even brag about the great deal he or she got on the “Rolex.”

Well “duh,” you say. There has long been a sub rosa market for faux Gucci handbags, and anyone who’s been overseas has seen copies of expensive watches and cameras for sale, but lately this onslaught of replicas has started me thinking about the actual value that the legitimate brands being copied confer on their owners.

As much as Rolex, Omega’s, Breitling, and other “high performance” watches claim to be about durability, accuracy, and manifold functions, they’re really just about the ostentatious display of wealth. Few folks who would buy a Titanium-cased, triple-sealed, screw-stem, crystal-faced timepiece that’s rated waterproof to the depth of the Mariana Trench ever wear it anyplace more dangerous than the backseat of a cab.

In other words, these high-end watch makers are selling expensive watches whose outstanding benefit to the buyer is that everyone knows that they’re expensive watches. I can see that some of you are rolling your eyes because you’re thinking that it’s just dawned on me that watches are just another form of gaudy jewelry.

My point is that, if the purpose of a brand is merely to demonstrate ostentatious consumption, then why bother with creating quality, or for that matter function, at all? Why not just take any old thing and slap a high price it on it – making sure of course that you’ve extensively publicized the cost?

A number of years ago I read that Bijan of Rodeo Drive, which claims to be the “one and only ‘by appointment only’ boutique” and is renowned as the single most expensive store in the world, offered a Colt pistol for four to five times the usual retail cost. The justification for the exorbitant price bump was some extraneous plating and the application of the Bijan logo to the pistol’s frame.

Think about this…with the exception of street gangs, LA residents don’t openly sport firearms. And gang-bangers tend to favor weapons that are untraceable. The owner of the Bijan Colt has spent 4-5 times more than he needed to just to demonstrate that…he can.

So what’s the alternative? Unless your business is about parting a fool from his money, make your product (or service) about nothing less than functional quality and, if possible, superiority. That way no one can create a cheap knockoff. And for those folks who buy brands to show off to others? They will be demonstrating an appreciation of superior function, not just elevated cost.

If you’re locked in the battle for TV viewer eyeballs, here’s a morsel of Marketing Wisdom for you…character sells! Please understand that I don’t mean “characters” like the ubiquitous infomercial shill, Billy Mays, Rula Lenska, Joan Rivers, Tim Conway or chimpanzees.

When I say “character” I mean well defined, well written and – especially - well cast roles that have the ring of truth. While these are essential to any good drama, they are absolutely critical to the dramatic haiku of TV commercials, or as they are known in the trade, spots.

When you subtract the ½-second pull-up at the start of the spot that allows the message to be inserted into whatever video stream it’s going to play, and the mandatory 5 second wrap-up or button at the end, the story teller has a little less than 24 seconds to grab the viewer’s attention, set the scene and deliver the message.

You would think that after some 30 years of practice – TV spots settled into their current mode sometime in the late 70’s – ad guys and girls would have it down pat. But as all of us who groan at the countless derivative, wooden, overly literal, or outright amateurish swill that constitutes the majority of television advertising, it’s clear (to me) anyway that creating captivating and memorable TV spots is still an art, and not a science.

One secret to the art of TV advertising – perhaps the greatest secret – is the effective use of genuine, authentic and appealing character to make your point.

Some examples that come to mind are the old guys in the Bartles & Jaymes Wine Cooler ads. It turns out that these two fellows were chums of Hal Riney, the recently deceased advertising genius who concocted the campaign. Note to all who would hope to clone this formula (like the agency that’s created the painfully lame idiots-standing-hip-deep-in-the-cranberry-bog series ads for Ocean Spray) what made the Bartles & Jaymes ads work was the recognizable, authentic character in the two men.

The memorable nature of the B&J spots is especially ironic, since the product they were shilling was anything but authentic – watered-down, second-rate, bulk wine injected with CO2.

Another example is the one of the current on-going 15-second ad campaigns for Comcast which feature quick skits paid off by the sales message in the form of a lame pun. One spot has a Luchadero (sans mask) with the name Moolah embroidered across his chest walking down the street when a fan tackles him just in time to prevent his being crushed by a falling piano. Moolah picks himself up, gives his rescuer and affectionate slap and says, “You save Moolah.” The scene is followed by a black screen with goofy colored balloons containing the caption: “Save Moolah with Comcast.”

Comcast has run a whole bunch of these spots, all of which are equally fun, but the reason I think they work so well is that they are all especially well cast with people whose appearance, wardrobe and attitude is instantly identifiable to the viewer without any explanation. In short, their character is immediately identifiable. Sadly, such success brings imitators, the most egregious of which is a series of spots for Round Table Pizza that promotes their Hawaiian Pizza offering.

My current absolute favorite television advertising campaign are the series of spots promoting AT&T wireless network. The premise of each spot is identical. There are two identical actors in the scene, but the one that does the talking represents the main character’s phone, and he (or she) is complaining that the subject character is going to make a mistake, miss out on something good, or incur some calamity because they didn’t get AT&T wireless service and as a consequence don’t have “bars” in their current location.

“Bradshaw’s phone” tells the story of a salesman traveling to the Orient who fails to get the call telling him how to correctly pronounce the client’s name and instead offends a very important client by calling him “Mr. Stinky Fish Face.”  “Jen’s Phone” shows an attractive teenage girl stuck in a run-down drive-in restaurant with some smelly, lumpy dork because she was unable to receive a call from “totally cool Brad” who wanted to ask her to the prom. All the spots in the campaign are extremely memorable (as you probably already guessed) and bear many repeat viewings, all thanks to the excellent casting and spot-on portrayals of genuine, authentic folks.

The three products I mentioned are functionally unforgettable thanks to advertising messages that were routed in the recognizable authentic character of the people in the story.

You might want to keep this in mind when you’re temped to save a few dollars by buying generic photos on the Internet that scream “stock”, or allowing the radio station ad rep to read the lines in your radio spot because it’s “free”, or cherish the delusion that chimpanzees will make up for the lack of originality or imagination in your ad concept.

Last time I looked it seemed as if Marketing Wisdom was in short supply among those counseling Senators McCain and Obama. Or perhaps I’m failing to notice genius at work. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Take Senator McCain’s campaign strategy or rather the lack of one. Maybe their plan is to let Mister Obama exhaust his resources while furiously being all things to all people – under the age of 50 that is. McCain’s handlers act is if they own the over-50 crowd. At least that’s what I intuit from their resolute portrayal of their candidate as a Genuine Old White Guy.

Don’t get me wrong. I admire McCain.* I think he has many strengths and wonderful qualities…and I hope the electorate has a chance to experience some of them before voting on Election Day.

*For the record, I admire Obama as well. Though in his case, it’s not for what he’s done, but for the majesty with which he carries himself despite his lack of tempering experience. 

Lord knows the presumptive Republican candidate can’t get much traction by citing on his party’s traditional mantra of smaller, more effective government, not given the Republican’s record of wantonly ignoring their ideals at every opportunity for the last seven years.

Not to say that the Democrats are running on their record either, unless it’s as the party which has done little else for the last 7 years but attempt to stymie the sitting President. Under the circumstances, Senator Obama’s brain trust has chosen to have him serve up Liberal chestnuts that were stale before he was born as he tacks from one issue next adjusting his course to catch the shifting winds of public opinion.

It’s clear that the Obama campaign took the public pulse. What’s not so clear is if they read it correctly. Obama’s apparatchiks divined a wide-spread hunger for change and stopped right there. Hence their candidate’s constant harping on Change. However, they failed to appreciate that only anarchists want change for change’s sake. Or perhaps not, given that the anarchists at MoveOn(dot)org have been leading the Democrats around by the nose ever since Bush was elected in 2000.

Personally, I think the kind of change my fellow Americans want is a change of Leadership, or maybe, they just want SOME leadership. Granted President Bush has occasionally gone off the script handed him by the even older white guys surrounding him. But, in the main, he’s hewed the party line and avoided providing those of us who believed in him the leadership we hoped he would bring, or for that matter acting much like a President.

Whereas Senator Obama acts “presidential” as all get out…if you’re not listening too closely. If you do actually take the time to parse what he’s said, you’ll find that it’s pretty much the same recipe for higher taxes and more Federal nannies that his party has been flogging since FDR took credit for bringing the country out of the Depression. And, no, he didn’t. Read your history.

So, what – if any – is the marketing lesson so far Election ’08?

Packaging!

As of this writing, you have tall versus short; your high school civics teacher versus your granddad; hip versus square; Liberal avatar versus occasional Conservative; and lastly…

…smooth black versus crusty white.