10 Basic Truths of Advertising, Part 1
America has always sorted its mail over a trashcan, and now just as ruthlessly sorts, filters, and dismisses every other incoming stimuli. Modern life demands it.
Are Your Ads Missing Hope? | Wizard’s Roundtable
You need all four... (1) A Big Idea (2) Nuts and Bolts (3) Entertainment (4) Hope. The last is the easiest to overlook… but it’s the most important.
No Parking on the Dance Floor of Your Mind
Are your ads letting the imagery and the story-logic do the persuading and selling? Or are they relying on whacky creative that’s actually counter-productive?
Naming the Disease
Nobody knew bad breath was a destructive social ill until Gerard Lambert pointed the blinding spotlight of his ads at the dangers of halitosis as a means of selling Listerine.
How to create your first, “No Fail” Advertising Plan
First timer’s take courage! You must have Faith. Many have succeeded doing this and you can. Just be ready for the challenges.
7 Elements of Successfully Selling Services Online
Products have product pages, but what do services have? Leaving these elements out of your copy is a fatal mistake.
Alsofocuson
A key element of any strategy is choosing what gets focus. When I present a focused strategy, sometimes I get presented with a made-up word: Alsofocuson. As in, “I like the focus, but can we also-focus-on this other focus?”
Learning from the Legends — MacManus and The Penalty of Leadership
Too often inexperienced copywriters and advertising clients want to persuade with copy points — with information being pushed at the reader.
90% of Local Advertising Summed Up In 2 Slogans
Optimizing a purchase demands more time, energy, and attention than anyone can spare for 99% of purchases. Instead, people simply want their needs filled and hoped-for benefits granted at a reasonably fair price. “Satisficing.”
Attention Retention
As children we were told bedtime stories. In elementary school, we found books that we could read over and over. As adults, we still seek a good story. The familiarity of stories has been with us from before you and I could even remember.
What Advertising Can’t Do
Creativity worshippers tend to feel that while nothing works for sure, anything might work, so long as it’s rilly, rilly creative and the lightning strikes in their favor.
Sowing Rhetoric, HARVesting Attention
In another post, I lauded Paul Harvey’s “So God made a farmer” speech for its message. Mining it for rhetorical ore in this post feels a little sacrilegious…almost like making an ad out of it. Wait. I didn’t mean that.
Not a Farmer? Check Your Heart!
Dear Intrepid Entrepreneur, if you have the heart of a farmer, you're already a success. What? Explain! On Super Sunday, February 3, 2013, Dodge aired this legendary ad. Take two minutes and listen.
Show Me the Future
You’ve seen this commercial before. A hand reaches for a Corona from behind an umbrella, a logo appears, and it all fades to black. If you can show me a version of me in the future, you’ve tapped into something powerful.
How to Get (and keep) Attention | Wizard’s Roundtable
I’m joined by Orlando Wood, Chief Innovation Officer at System 1 Group in London. His book Lemon and subsequent short film Achtung! outline how we’ve lost customer’s attention over the years, and how to get it back.