A Unique Marketing Strategy...CEO Mocks Himself to Highlight Products

A Unique Marketing Strategy...CEO Mocks Himself to Highlight Products

A friend and former colleague of mine recently asked why don’t you write about the Fred Ad Strategy for marketers to learn from and engineers to reminisce with pleasure these nostalgic ads.  I gave it some thought and here I am…

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Fred ads started as a way to get recognition for Data Translation through using humor by putting the CEO in uncomfortable, but funny circumstances. The product was always there, and the main feature of the product was brought out by the pictorial of Fred in the ad. So it was not to be farcical, but a clever way to bring our a product's main asset to the user through the humorous situation of the CEO in the ad.

It was the early ‘80s… the boom of technology… the PC Market… we decided to take advantage of this. Who would have thought such an idea would be a success in the world of engineers. Combining creative with technical products.

WE GOT THE WORD OUT

Engineers that read electronic magazines such as PC Magazine, EE Times, Evaluation Engineering… just to name a few would come to know Fred, the CEO, and look forward to the ads tied to a low-cost data acquisition board in a comical way. We sold data acquisition and imaging boards and software, our target market - the test and measurement world. These were high times for our company having made the Inc. 500 list two years in a row - we were on top of the world.

PC Magazine wrote about our ad strategy in March 6, 1984. The five page article "Cap That If You Can" by David Richie tells a story about Data Translation, of Marlboro, Massachusetts, a firm that found a way to cash in on the success of the PC.

"Molinari undergoes an amazing transformation from mild-mannered business executive into a flamboyant pitchman."


THOSE THAT REMEMBER

In 2007 Paul Reko from EDN Magazine wrote:

“Remember those Data Translation ads that had a picture of Fred Molinari in some memorable pose? I miss Fred. I always had a warm spot for his data acquisition and control products, since he would beat up other vendors on price or performance or both.”

For those of you that are interested, each week I’ll “Share as an update” on LinkedIn of one of the Fred Ads - let me know what you think of the mechanics that went into the ad - our strategy.

#marketing #advertising #strategy












Debashis Ghosh

Software engineer ◆ Embedded systems architect, firmware and software engineer ◆ Experience in Robotics, Industrial Controls, Networking, Medical Devices, Consumer Electronics ◆ Embedded Linux, RTOS, device drivers

6y

Back in the early 80's my college library in India, subscribed to a few magazines like EDN . It was in one of these that I first saw saw the Fred Ads along with a photograph of the DT building in Marlboro. The ads stuck in my memory and as luck would have it, after completing graduate school in the USA, I joined DT in 2002.

Great article Fred - brought back memories Those adds captured my attention long before I went to work for Data Translation. Always looking forward to what was next and admiring the president of a company that could have a little fun with his adds. They grabbed your attention and back when print was king that is exactly what was needed.

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