There are plenty of reasons to work hard on getting messaging right, of course. My favorite guideline comes from our very own Neal Davies, who always says, “If you throw someone one tennis ball, he will catch it. But if you throw that person 20 tennis balls, he won’t catch any of them.” A principle lovingly illustrated by Leila here:

Sage advice. In my experience, being single-minded in messaging is one of the hardest things for marketers to get right. There is just so much that everyone wants to say about their products! Usually, that is. Sometimes there is not so much to say at all. When you have bad customer service and a less-than-parity product that needs to compete with an established, dominant competitor, it can be hard to find good things to say. In other words, when you’re Time Warner Cable.

In their favor, they are disciplined enough to be single-minded with their messaging right now. In their disfavor, their single-minded messaging revolves around their “innovative” Caller ID feature, which lets you know who is calling while you’re watching TV by showing the incoming number on your screen. Quite possibly the least sought-after, most irrelevant feature in existence, and one that some people might actually find fairly annoying. Also, this is 2009. Doesn’t everyone have caller ID on their phones anyway? Their ads seem to imply that without Time Warner Cable, you would have no idea who is calling you.

Focus group of one, but my brother Dave was pointing out that seeing these ads actually made him think that competing Verizon’s service was most definitely better than Time Warner Cable. It’s not that much of a leap to that conclusion. Why doesn’t TWC say anything about things that matter in the category? Probably because they have nothing worth saying. Consumers these days are so incredibly marketing-aware (anyone that has ever sat in a focus group knows that most folks answer not based on their own experience but based on a third-person analysis of the advertising … “I’m not sure who they are trying to target with this ad, but it would probably appeal to young kids …”). That awareness means that they may figure out that if your message is weak, it’s because you’ve got nothing.

The ad itself is not bad. Funny actor, gets the point across. But there are multiple versions of it and they’ve been running them a lot. In other words, Time Warner is putting quite a bit of money behind this point. It’s great to challenge the behemoth leader brand by changing the conversation, but the key is to make sure that the message you’re putting forward matters to people. It should be built on a clear consumer need or insight. Otherwise it just seems desperate. Is it possible that these TV ads are actually driving people to the competitor?