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“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

Advertising is life made to look larger than life, through images and words that
promise a wish fulfilled, a dream come true, a problem solved. Even Viagra follows
Mark Twain’s keen observation about advertising. The worst kind of advertising
exaggerates to get your attention, the best, gets your attention without
exaggeration. It simply states a fact or reveals an emotional need, then lets you
make the leap from “small to large.” Examples of the worst: before-and-after
photos for weight loss products and cosmetic surgeryboth descend to almost
comic disbelief. The best: Apple’s “silhouette” campaign for iPod and the
breakthrough ads featuring Eminemboth catapult iPod to “instant cool” status.

“When in doubt, tell the truth.”

Today’s advertising is full of gimmicks. They relentlessly hang on to a product like a
ball and chain, keeping it from moving swiftly ahead of the competition, preventing
any real communication of benefits or impetus to buy. The thinking is, if the
gimmick is outrageous or silly enough, it’s got to at least get their attention. Local
car dealer ads are probably the worst offenders–using zoo animals,
sledgehammers, clowns, bikini-clad models, anything unrelated to the product’s
real benefit. If the people who thought up these outrageous gimmicks spent half
their energy just sticking to the product’s real benefits and buying motivators,
they’d have a great ad. What they don’t realize is, they already have a lot to work
with without resorting to gimmicks. There’s the product with all its benefits, the
brand, which undoubtedly they’ve spent money to promote, the competition and its
weaknesses, and two powerful buying motivatorsfear of loss and promise of gain.
In other words, all you really have to do is tell the truth about your product and be
honest about your customers‘ wants and needs. Of course, sometimes that’s not so
easy. You have to do some digging to find out what you customers really want,
what your competition has to offer them, and why your product is better.

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.”

In advertising, you have to be very careful how you use facts. As any politician will
tell you, facts are scary things. They have no stretch, no pliability, no room for
misinterpretation. They’re indisputable. And used correctly, very powerful. But
statistics, now there’s something advertisers and politicians love. “Nine out of ten
doctors recommend Preparation J.” Who can dispute that? Or “Five out of six
dentists recommend Sunshine Gum.” Makes me want to run out and buy a pack of
Sunshine right now. Hold it. Rewind.

“Whenever you find you’re on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.”

Let’s take a look at how these statsthis apparent majoritymight have come to
be. First off, how many doctors did they ask before they found nine out of ten to
agree that Preparation J did the job? 1,000? 10,000? And how many dentists hated
the idea of their patients chewing gum but relented, saying, “Most chewing gum has
sugar and other ingredients, that rot out your teeth, but if the guy’s gotta chew the
darn stuff, it may as well be Sunshine, which has less sugar in it.” The point is, stats
can be manipulated to say almost anything. And yes, the devil’s in the details. The
fact is, there’s usually a 5% chance you can get any kind of result simply by
accident. And because many statistical studies are biased and not “double
blind” (both subject and doctor don’t know who was given the test product and who
got the placebo). Worst of all, statistics usually need the endless buttressing of
legal disclaimers. If you don’t believe me, try to read the full-page of legally
mandated warnings for that weight- loss pill you’ve been taking. Bottom line: stick
to facts. Then back them up with sound selling arguments that address the needs
of your customer.

“The difference between the right word and almost
right word is the difference between lightning and
a lightning bug.”

To write really effective ad copy means choosing exactly the right word at the right
time. You want to lead your customer to every benefit your product has to offer,
and you want to shed the best light on every benefit. It also means you don’t want
to give them any reason or opportunity to wander away from your argument. If they
wander, you’re history. They’re off to the next page, another TV channel or a new
website. So make every word say exactly what you mean it to say, no more, no less.
Example: if a product is new, don’t be afraid to say “new” (a product is only new
once in its life, so exploit the fact).

“Great people make us feel we can become great.”

And so do great ads. While they can’t convince us we’ll become millionaires, be as
famous as Madonna, or as likeable as Tom Cruise, they make us feel we might be as
attractive, famous, wealthy, or admired as we’d like to think we can be. Because
there’s a “Little Engine That Could” in all of us that says, under the right conditions,
we could beat the odds and catch the brass ring, win the lottery, or sell that book
we’ve been working on. Great advertising taps into that belief without going
overboard. An effective ad promoting the lottery once used pictures of people
sitting on an exotic beach with little beach umbrellas in their cocktails (a perfectly
realistic image for the average person) with the line: Somebody’s has to win, may as
well be you.”

“The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.”

We’re all part of the same family of creatures called homo sapiens. We each want to
be admired, respected and loved. We want to feel secure in our lives and our jobs.
So create ads that touch the soul. Use an emotional appeal in your visual, headline
and copy. Even humor, used correctly, can be a powerful tool that connects you to
your potential customer. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling shoes or software,
people will always respond to what you have to sell them on an emotional level.
Once they’ve made the decision to buy, the justification process kicks in to confirm
the decision. To put it another way, once they’re convinced you’re a mensche with
real feelings for their hopes and wants as well as their problems, they’ll go from
prospect to customer.

“A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he
needs.”

Ain’t it the truth. More money, more clothes, fancier car, bigger house. It’s what
advertising feeds on. “You need this. And you need more of it every day.” It’s the
universal mantra that drives consumption to the limits of our charge cards. So, how
to tap into this insatiable appetite for more stuff? Convince buyers that more is
better. Colgate offers 20% more toothpaste in the giant economy size. You get 60
more sheets with the big Charmin roll of toilet paper. GE light bulbs are 15%
brighter. Raisin Brain now has 25% more raisins. When Detroit found it couldn’t sell
more cars per household to an already saturated U.S. market, they started selling
more car per carSUVs and trucks got bigger and more powerful. They’re still
selling giant 3-ton SUVs that get 15 miles per gallon.

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Who gets the girl? Who attracts the sharpest guy? Who lands the big promotion?
Neiman Marcus knows. So does Abercrombie & Fitch. And Saks Fifth Avenue. Why
else would you fork over $900 for a power suit? Or $600 for a pair of shoes?
Observers from Aristotle to the twentieth century have consistently maintained that
character is immanent in appearance, asserting that clothes reveal a rich palette of
interior qualities as well as a brand mark of social identity. Here’s where the right
advertising pays for itself big time. Where you must have the perfect model (not
necessarily the most attractive) and really creative photographers and directors who
know how to tell a story, create a mood, convince you that you’re not buying the
“emperor’s clothes.” Example of good fashion advertising: the Levis black-and-
white spot featuring a teenager driving through the side streets and alleys of the
Czech Republic. Stopping to pick up friends, he gets out of the car wearing just a
shirt as the voiceover cheekily exclaims, “Reason 007: In Prague, you can trade them
for a car.”

About the Author

Alex Kecskes is a former ad agency Copy Chief who has created effective copy and
concepts for a wide range of ad agencies, Fortune 500 companies and startups. As
owner of ak creativeworks, Alex provides brand names, as well as strategic copy for
brochures, mailers, multimedia, articles, newsletters, PR and web content. He has
published articles in a variety of publications about health, business and
technology–this includes copy for over 130 different products and services. He has
won such national awards as the Andy, Belding and One Show. For more information
and samples, please visit: http://www.akcreativeworks.com

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Back in the 1760s, the great Dr Samuel Johnson delivered himself of the dictum that ‘promise, large promise is the soul of advertising’. It’s a good thought, a great thought; and I contend that what was true then is equally true today. But it seems to me that modern advertisers are tying themselves into unnecessary knots in an attempt to reach audiences which they believe are becoming increasingly indifferent to their blandishments.

Well, yes, markets are turning deaf ears and blind eyes, but they always have done, though not for the reasons generally espoused by the world’s marketers. I am convinced that despite all the sophisticated research and marketing effort that goes into advertising these days, the real reason that markets are indifferent to advertising is because much of it ignores the many splendoured principle that people don’t buy products, they buy the benefits of owning those products.

Today, the great proportion of advertisers don’t deliver sales messages, they tell what they hope are emotive stories with which the market can empathise, then they drop the product in as an afterthought, hoping that enough emotional cross-communication has been achieved for people to reach for their credit cards. That it doesn’t and people won’t has resulted in huge advertising budget cut-backs in the developed world in recent years. Only a manufacturer who has taken leave of his senses will throw even more money at a strategy that doesn’t work.

The strategy responsible operates under the title Emotional Sales Proposition (ESP), thought in some quarters to be an advance on the Unique Sales Proposition (USP) which, on the contrary, does actually work. What has been overlooked or, more likely, ignored, is that in developing the principle of the USP in the late 1950s, the brilliant Rosser Reeves was striving to replace an advertising strategy that had been in situ for 30 or so years and was fast running out of steam. What was the device he was hoping to supersede? Well, by any other name, it was the emotional sales proposition. I won’t bore you with the detail, but if you’d like to find out more, you should lay your hands on Reeves’ book, Reality in Advertising (MacGibbon & Kee - 1961). It could be an eye-opener.

So, it’s true - the one thing we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history. Let’s go back to Dr Johnson. It’s worth remembering that the kind of advertising old Sam was talking about in the 18th century was fairly innocuous and largely unexceptionable. It could be read in coffee- house flyers, in chapbooks and in rudimentary newspapers; and it consisted of sales messages as diverse as where to get your wig powdered and the date of the next public hanging at Tyburn. Even so, the products and services on offer were as important to the people of the time as mobile phones and computers are to us.

In the human condition, nothing much changes. Our egos still need to be massaged and we are all in hot pursuit of happiness. Only our methods for achieving these goals, only our technologies, vary with time.

So the next time you are tempted to commit advertising, think about Sam Johnson and give your market a reason for owning your product. A good reason.

About The Author

Patrick Quinn is an award winning copywriter with 40 years’ experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. He publishes a FREE monthly newsletter, AdBriefing. Subscriptions are available at: http://www.adbriefing.com

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I get the L.A. Times delivered to my door every day, but I don’t read it for the articles. It is a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper, but the articles just don’t interest me. Unlike most people, I read the paper for the advertisements because there is a lot to learn from them.

Over 90% of the ads run in the Los Angeles Times are horrible! Most of the ads I see are either ego-driven, have no headline, have no call to action, don’t appeal to what the buyer is truly looking for or needs help with, or they’re trying to be clever for clever-sake, and fail miserably.

When writing copy, I live by this premise:

“The purpose of advertising is to sell something.”

Advertising is like an investment that you hope to get a great return on. However, most people treat it like they’re playing Roulette in Vegas and bet all their money “on black.”

The basics of good copy is to think in terms of words that sell.

Following are some basics in advertising that should help you make your advertising more effective.

1. Concentrate on your prospects. In the end you must persuade him/her no matter what method you use. And to do that, you must understand how he/she thinks.

2. Know your product - its materials, its manufacturer, its use, etc. Know its features inside and out.

3. Find the problem your product solves. The solution would, of course, be the benefit. It may be a mental, spiritual, physical, or financial benefit, but as advertising legend Maxwell Sackheim once said, “your product must have an excuse for its existence.”

4. Never start writing your advertisement until you’re totally excited about the task at hand. If you’re not excited about your product, it will come out in your writing, and hence, the lack of results your ad produces.

5. Advertising is essentially news. Your ads must inform, educate, enlighten, inspire, or promise a reward for taking action. Apply your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) to your news angle. The USP works great as a news angle because if you’re the ONLY one in town that does , isn’t that news? If you have the lowest price in town and you tell them why you can beat every one else, isn’t that news? It sure is. Ads should educate and inform, as well as persuade and move people to action.

Understanding these basics of advertising will put you head and shoulders above your competition. Why? Because in my blunt opinion, 90% of all advertising stinks! And, most business owners (and some advertising agencies) don’t understand that “the only purpose of advertising is to sell something.”

To learn how to write hard-selling copy and to master the basics of advertising from a world-class copywriter, get Joe Vitale’s new course, “Advanced Hypnotic Writing” at: http://www.roibot.com/adhyp.cgi?R29882~_campaign

About The Author

Craig Valine is the publisher of the The AwfulMarketing Alert Newsletter, “Where you learn GOOD marketing strategies by looking at those who do it really BAD.”

To subscribe his free newsletter, go to: http://awfulmarketing.com/ezinesubscribe.htm

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