Some time back, I received a coupon ad from a pizza chain. The ad, which was produced by some out-of-town printer or ad agency, included several familiar Indiana towns. It was designed to create the impression that the chain’s stores were really locally oriented pizza parlors.
But there was one town I hadn’t seen: Fishus.
I’m a salesman’s kid, and my heart has a soft spot for those brave individuals who go out and try to convince other people to buy something or choose one product or service over another.
The advertising world draws a particularly effective breed of salespeople who work hard to convince companies that the medium or product they offer deserves a healthy chunk of the company’s advertising budget.
How much of what you saw or heard yesterday do you remember? Estimates vary, but the consensus tends to be that the average American is exposed to thousands of marketing messages each day, from TV commercials to billboards to slogans on fast-food drink cups. And of those, you’re likely to remember just a couple – maybe a few if you really strain your memory.
For some reason, though, companies often believe that the audiences for their own marketing messages somehow remember each one in excruciating detail. So when given an opportunity to communicate again, they assume that only something fresh and new is appropriate.
An airline recently landed in Indianapolis, offering service to Branson, Missouri, a place that’s become a living wax museum for yesterday’s celebrities.
The airline’s publicity boasted about what a great value it offers – and at face value, it sure looks that way. Airfare is just $59. If you want to bring more than a change of clothes, you’ll have to add another $15 for the first bag, but that’s still a pretty good deal.
As businesspeople incorporate social networking sites into their marketing efforts, they don’t have a lot of guidance that’s based in experience. Netiquette changes so rapidly that today’s faux pas might be perfectly acceptable by next week.
I do think some things are timeless, and one place it pays to be careful is blurring the line between your business and your personal life. Posting information that’s too personal or that has the potential to offend can cost you business. It’s been that way before Facebook was invented, and my guess is that it will always be.
One of the most common mistakes in marketing communications materials is forgetting to tell the reader, viewer, or listener what you want them to do. It happens all the time: someone crafts a brilliant, memorable message, but forgets to include some sort of instructions.
Do you want people to buy your product? Visit your website? If you don’t point them in the right direction, they’ll come up with a course of action on their own, and odds are good that it won’t be the one you intended.
I enjoy building things out of wood. Sometimes, I get lost in the power tool aisle, studying tremendously expensive pieces of equipment that do amazing things in the hands of skilled operators.
I could buy that equipment, too. But would owning and using it suddenly make me a skilled cabinetmaker? Would I be able to produce furniture like an artisan? Could I apply filigrees with the deft of a sculptor? Of course not. Despite my best intentions, what I produced would invariably end up looking something whacked together out of a couple sheets of plywood.
We all know that positive thinking is powerful. In fact, from an early age, we’re taught to put on a happy face no matter what happens. And, when I reference something that could be perceived as negative in copy, many clients are quick to request its replacement by something with a bigger smile.
That’s not always a good idea. Sometimes, what’s negative is far more impactful and communicative. For example, if your competition has been falsely suggesting that your product has a flaw that shortens its service life, hitting the misperception head-on is going to be infinitely more powerful than tiptoeing around it.
When writing an ad or a brochure (or even a blog post), repetition generally isn’t very helpful. You have a limited amount of time with your reader, and you need to make every word count. Besides, if you mention something once, you usually don’t need to do it again.
I’ve seen people try to apply that same logic to copy for websites. They’ll ask me delete an item or section on one page, noting that another page carries the same information.
In a recent blog entry, I mentioned an experience in which a client insisted a word that I used really didn’t exist. After writing that, I remembered writing a brochure for an apartment developer, in which I mentioned that the centralized recycling program would “minimize the project’s environmental impact.” “OH, NO!” the client’s manager yelled. “It should … Read more