QVC aims to own 3.8% of alphabet
A Mediapost article yesterday announced that QVC’s upcoming campaign was aiming to own the letter Q. That’s a great idea for a few reasons:
1) Saying QVC requires three tiresome syllables. Q is a great shorthand for those of us who can’t make that kind of commitment.
2) Q, as a letter, really stands for something. It’s kind of offbeat and rare, which totally lines up with QVC’s sales figures (over $7 billion revenue in 2006).
3) There’s pretty good chance I’m going to think of (and patronize) QVC every time I hear the words quibble, quit, or queer.
But this short post isn’t really about QVC, or the absurdity of owning a letter. It’s about the absurdity of owning just about anything.
Overstock.com doesn’t own the letter O – though I appreciate the way they not-so-subtly link shopping to female orgasms.
Verizon doesn’t own the color red (nor does Target) – though using visual cues to aid your brand is important.
And despite one former client’s dreams, their snack could never own July 4th, no matter how much they spent (budget was roughly $2 million). Because only one thing owns July 4th, and that’s fireworks.
The thing is, QVC has a lot of positive attributes: like, say, quality, value, and convenience (had to look that up). Why not do something with those? Or, you know, stand for something else that actually matters to people. But owning a letter? Sorry, I’m not buying it.
That SO reminds me of the glory days of the late ’90s, when DDB first won the Compaq business by suggesting they plaster (tastefully, of course) the Q from the Compaq logo all over everything…
So glad someone finally wrote this . . .
Here’s a great entry from BubbleGeneration in a similar vein that you might find interesting.
Gu! Ud wack!!!!
for me, the letter Q will always be owned by that annoying lady in White Men Can’t Jump, when she was studying for Jeopardy, and memorizing foods that begin with the letter Q. quiche…quails…quesadillas…quick ( nestles). i think that’s it. i would lose at Jeopardy.
[…] coworker Jared wrote a great post last week about how awful the idea of “owning” things in marketing is. Money line: “And despite one former client’s dreams, their snack could never own July […]
[…] said they need to “own” something (as in a color or event). Well, my coworker Jared gave the idea a nice smack-down over at the Naked blog. In it he writes: “Overstock.com doesn’t own the letter O – though […]