Curious wording in Teleflora ad may overshadow their main message

Teleflora is running a series of television ads pitching Mother's Day flowers.  The first ad that's been running frequently is the "flowers in a box" ad .  I've seen the ad numerous times, and remembered the whole "flowers delivered in a vase are better than flowers delivered in a box" point of differentiation message.  Of course, I didn't remember that it was a Teleflora ad.

Today I saw another ad in the series, this time with a curious "hand-arranged" claim.  HAND-ARRANGED?   As opposed to what?   Machine-arranged?   When I heard those words, I instantly thought that was something every flower delivery company could claim.  After all, doesn't a human always have to be involved in arranging the flowers before they go either in a vase or a box or a whatever?  

The words "Teleflora's bouquets are hand-arranged" remained in my head, so I went to Teleflora's web site to discover exactly what they meant by "hand-arranged."   There, I realized they were the same company running the "Vases are better than boxes for flower delivey" ad as well.   Oh.  So only now am I thinking about the fact that the humans putting flowers in a box may not be actually "arranging" the flowers.  Oh.  And now I'm thinking, why is that important?  Are arranged flowers better?

Teleflora is correctly trying to point out something every Mother's Day flower buyer should be looking for as a key criterion for a flower purchase -- will those flowers be delivered in a vase?  That positioning makes sense -- not only to me as a copy strategist, but also to me as a TV viewer and consumer.

But the "hand-arranged" claim is too confusing for a 30-second television spot.  Whenever an ad uses a word or words unfamiliar to the target audience, or words that clearly don't make sense to the audience, it is the word or words the audience remembers -- instead of the advertiser.

Another TV campaign (discussed in this blog) had Diane Keaton saying the word "re-densified" (huh?) -- and, of course, that's all I can remember about the campaign.  Evidently I wasn't the only one;  when I blogged about it, I got people visiting my blog, advising they'd Google'd "redensified."

Teleflora may go down in the minds of 2010 consumers as the company that pointed out the obvious -- that flowers are hand-arranged.  Will consumers still remember the "vase versus box" message -- or will they wonder what Teleflora is trying to pull, by mentioning something that most consumers believe all flower providers do.   Wil I have to pay more at Teleflora for this hand-arranged claim, is that it? 

Always a good idea to run your ad concepts by a few average consumers for their reactions (remember focus groups?).  If more agencies actually did that, we'd likely have fewer "re-densified" and "hand-arranged" ads sticking in consumers' minds for all the wrong reasons.

 

 

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