"Wanted: A Decent Job"

Is this just history repeating itself or is this some of the best advertising you've ever seen?

I came across this car parked in Uptown, a neighborhood of Dallas that boasts custom shops for everything from furniture to jewelry and a splattering of five star restaurants. Clearly, the perfect area for a budding financier to reach his future company's CEO. It seems an amazing display of clever advertising in the perfect location. The job seeker took a simple idea and understood where it would hit the target most effectively. It posses the question of why it can be such a challenge for brands today to be as successful as the owner of the SUV, or even the men who decades ago used the same tactics for finding a job? For each of these men (yes, the SUV belongs to a male) they have successfully captured what every brand tries to obtain in their category today: differentiation from their competition in tough economic times.

As consumers, we are constantly inundated with choices. Most advertising is annoying and irrelevant to us so we ignore it until we find something that captures our attention, and let's be honest, that doesn't happen often. Out of the thousands of advertisements we see everyday we are only able to recall a very small percentage of those brands. Many efforts often end in a lot of wasted dollars and adding to our level of irritation with advertising tactics in general.

A lot of brands are then trying to use new technology tactics to fight the symptoms of overexposure to differentiate themselves from their competition, but what if they just came back to basics?

There is no doubt that the economic turmoil that we have faced as a nation in the past few years has affected sales in numerous product categories. I am not an expert at consumer behavior, but I do believe that in tough times there is a desire for a simpler life. People seem to be reaching back to products that give them comfort, and in a NY Times article I read a few months ago, it can be as simple as a favorite sugary treat. According to industry professionals in confections, candy sales for nostalgic brands like Tootsie Roll, Mary Jane and even Skittles, have grown despite the decline in consumer's disposable income. People are changing their habits to accommodate not just their economic state but their emotional state as well. Candy is just one of the things that consumers find comforting, and it isn't about using fancy technology to reach them. What if Skittles had decided to forgo their Twitter efforts and stood on the street corner with free bags of Skittles? It can be that simple for brands to turn around in this economy, or at least begin to gain consumer faith again if they just go back to the basics.

Could landing a consumer (or a job) be as easy as picking up a paint brush and making a poster? I think so...