Getting Human Nature to Work FOR (Rather Than Against) Your Business
The only emotions that reliably inspire action are those that affect self-image.
Radio’s Missing Creative Revolution
Radio never teamed up copywriters with sound producers to create great ads that pushed Theatre of the Mind to full effect and that were more than the sum of their parts.
Why Making the Ads Is the Last Thing We Do
This substantive style of advertising (started by Ally & Gargano and continued by Scali, McCabe, Sloves) tripled US sales of Volvos.
Targeting Through Ad Copy
Attract the kind of clients who will see your business as a blessing. Clients that prefer you to the point of willingly paying a premium for the privilege.
Same Same Sameity Same Same
City dwellers stop hearing the traffic and sirens out their windows. Psychologists call this “habituation.” Marketers call this the enemy.
Images, “Truthiness,” and Forced Participation
Recent psychological studies show that statements accompanied by related images are considered more believable than the same statement without an image.
The Verb’s the Thing
“No One OutPizzas the Hut” What does that say to you? Does it refer to taste? The dining experience? Carry out or delivery? It says it all.
Laphroaig Lamp-Shades the Heck Out of Their Ad
If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s a fiction writer’s technique of basically OWNING uncanny happenings, plot holes, etc.
The Most Interesting 2001 Kia Spectra In The World
If you’re going to keep posting forgettable ads and product descriptions then you must accept that you are boring and irrelevant. There, I said it. Somebody needed to. It comes from a place of love.
4 Marketing Lessons from The Creative Revolution’s Most Legendary Whisky Campaign
The more creative and powerful the work, the more trust is required.
Six Word Stories
In advertising, it’s not so much what information your words communicate to the prospect, but what experiences they call forth from the prospect.
For All Your (Fill in the blank) Needs
When we hear cliches (and believe me, “For all your ____ needs” is the worst kind of adspeak) our minds simply switch off; we ignore them.
10 Reasons NOT To Hire A Good Writer
Paradoxically, while AI and affordable, ubiquitous access to good writers may suggest a radically diminished demand—and cost—for great ones, the opposite appears to be true.
Use All The Clichés — Just Tell ‘Em Slant
“Kill all clichés and ad speak” — standard, Ad Writing 101 advice. Good advice — certainly not wrong. It’s just not very helpful.
Gold Laughs at Stocks and Bonds
Gold, for thousands of years, has been the world’s only truly secure investment. The economy ebbs and flows, like the tide. It always has. It always will. But gold is like the Rock of Gibraltar.