You’ve started running a new ad. You think it’s a good one, and based on the early response, your target audience appears to agree.
And then the phone rings or the email appears. One or more people are clearly upset with you. They don’t understand why you ran such an offensive ad. They’ve found something objectionable in the visual, or perhaps in the words. They’ve taken offense at something you never considered. You didn’t plan to upset anyone! Now what should you do?
I’ve noticed that many companies exhibit an unusual paranoia about repetition. Once they mention something in an ad, a brochure, or on a website, they don’t think they should mention it again. I’ll often hear them react to a recommendation by saying “we promoted that already” or “we already told our customers that.”
The same thing often happens when they’re reviewing copy for a website. “We’ve already mention this on another page, so we shouldn’t repeat it here.” Okay, why not? “Because we don’t want to repeat something we’ve already said.” Again, why not?
In my last post, I bemoaned the out-of-town printer that misspelled “Fishers” as “Fishus” on a pizza ad. Some would suggest that mistakes like that are proof that out-of-town service providers just can’t be as accurate as local folks. But an ad I created for a Louisiana bank back in my ad agency days proves that an out-of-towner who takes a little extra time and makes some extra effort can create a convincing local message.
The bank was opening a branch in Lafayette, a city in which they had never done business. Management didn’t want to be seen as the giant outsider coming to town, even though that’s exactly what they were.
Looking for a simple way to write more clearly and effectively? When you begin to write a letter, a memo, or an ad, start writing it to your mother.
Okay, it doesn’t have to be your mother. If you prefer, you could write to your best friend or your Aunt Agatha. The key is that you want to write to someone you know instead to of a faceless customer or peer.
I entered the advertising industry at about the same time that women began to play a much bigger role in the field. It was long enough ago that the only way for a woman to break in was behind a typewriter (yes, we still used those) as a secretary (yes, we still called them that). I don’t ever remember men being asked about their typing speed during job interviews.
As in so many other fields, the old boys were terrified about the effect these chicks and broads would have on their profession, but looking back, I think that women may have been the best thing to happen to advertising.
One of the most inane commercials I’ve ever seen dates back to my much younger days and a product called Beefsteak rye bread. I’d guess that it was somewhere in the early 70s, and while that time may have been considered creativity’s golden years, this one was as leaden as they get.
The scene was a construction site full of stereotypically macho men (this was pre-Village People). A grizzled journeyman is doing something to his young new co-worker’s lunch, and two other workers chuckle, “Look – Joe’s switched the bread on him.”
Are you wasting precious time in ads, direct mail, and brochures telling prospects what they already know?
Instead, tell them what matters. Talk about benefits, not features. Don’t say your product uses a three-handled veeblefetzer unless you can explain what that will do for them. “The three-handled veeblefetzer lets you core twice as many radishes in the same time.”