New Wave Marketing 101: Most Ads Are Direct Response... and All About the Headline

Required reading

Arguably the best book on advertising is "Ogilvy on Advertising," from the 1970s. Back then he said something that has certainly come true: all advertising would one day become direct response advertising. 

What does that mean? Well, direct response, which agency types see as somehow 'dirty' (and they have some good reasons for this belief), aims at getting people to do something NOW: get up off the sofa, pick up the phone, give us a call (now it's visit our site or send us an email).

Most ads, unfortunately, try to be branding, which is agency talk for they didn't sell a thing but they look good. Ogilvy foresaw that advertising was getting expensive, consumers were jaded and there would not be enough ROI for those nice, pretty "we love the environment and we love our customers" ads.

If you have the courage to advertise, whether it's B2B or B2C, have the courage to ask for the sale.

So how does this relate to headlines? Very simple: anyone who has ever written a direct response ad knows that the headline is the single most important factor in an ad's success. As much as 70% of the response can be attributed to the head (in the same way that 70% of a cigar's flavor is in the wrapper... the filling, the bulk of the cigar plays a minor role). This is why it can take weeks to write a great 10 word headline, then two hours to write the rest of the ad.

So what makes a good headline? It's an art and a gut feeling. But there are a few 'rules' handed down from successful DR pros that you might consider.

1. Don't be too cute! How many B2B ads have you seen that work with a play on words? You know: "Columbus Widgets Can Help You Discover a New World of Savings." Mostly, these are terrible; although when a good one comes along, research shows that these play on words headlines are the MOST memorable of all. Just resist the tendency to be 'Don Draper' clever.

2. Questions work. The most successful cosmetics ad of the past decade asked a simple question: "Better Than Botox?" and women responded to the tune of half a billion USD. If you can ask a 'real' question, something your customers are asking themselves, you could be on to something.

3. FREE always works, always, always, always (but these days, not 'FREE with autoship program.' Nothing turns off customers faster... and nothing gets the government involved quicker than autoship... just ask 'Smiling Bob' and his people).

4. You've got to standout without screaming... make a point that your audience is worried about, curious about, struggling with and offer the promise of a solution or some information people don't already know.

Whatever you do, spend a lot more time on the headline and opening paragraph than you are used to spending. We all usually jump at the first cute headline that we think of (and if the headline seems cute, it probably is so forget it) or we listen to some engineer or 'scientist' whose solution is to "just say what it is."

C'mon who wants to listen to a lecture entitled "Ball Grid Arrays and Effective Soldering Techniques" when you can listen to one called...

"Solder Balls Aren't As Bad As You Think... They're Worse"?

New Wave Marketing 101: Keeping It Above the Fold and Other Stupid Ideas

Just read an article by some crack designer (http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/) telling me that it’s no longer  “de rigeur” to worry about keeping web content ‘above the fold.’ People will scroll without a problem; so longer web pages are fine… fine, I tell you.

I’m about to blow a gasket.

For years… years… every tin pot designer and web expert has been SCREAMING about keeping copy above the flippin’ fold. That line was Gospel. I think Jesus said as much at The Sermon on the Mount.

I ask any of you who write copy, how many times have you heard that admonition? How often have you been asked to cut a story or change a paragraph or ruin a good subhead or make the font smaller all so you could keep it above the fold?

Hundreds. Thousands.

And here’s the worst part: we were stupid enough and weak enough to do it… to let a CODER tell us what sells… to change our story to fit a nonsensical idea.

People read books and magazines… and they have no problem turning pages. Case closed. The Internet didn’t change that. Write a good story, something compelling, and people will scroll and turn pages and click mice to follow along.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT… BUT STILL WE PUT UP WITH A DECADE OF ‘ABOVE THE FOLD’ IDIOCY. (Ooo, it’s so elegant, so intelligent.)

I guess what’s making me sore (aside from thinking of all the unnecessary things I had to do to make things fit) is that the executives (VPs of marketing, supposedly) we worked for were so damned quick to believe… and so eager to trust a CODER. (Excuse me… they had numbers! Unfortunately, marketing and selling can’t be fully quantified with spreadsheets and algorithms.)

Copywriters, how low our stock has sunk. This idea of short, above the fold copy is a big reason why people now think anyone can write. Why pay for long copy and a good story when you don’t need to? No one’s reading more than one screen. Anyone can throw together a couple of sentences!”

Ah, I can hear it now… the sound of CODERS tap dancing around this new information… “Sure, it was good advice at the time but people have changed, blah, blah, blah.”

No, they haven’t. That’s why a good story is still called a ‘page turner.’

(What next? Are you going to tell me that keywording isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?)

New Wave Marketing 101: Overpaying, Over Doing and Over Estimating the Value of Social Media

If you saw the recent article about The State Department paying over $600K to raise its likes from 60,000 to 2,000,000 you should have laughed and then paused to reflect.

Here’s the takeaway: Most companies are over doing social media, over paying for the results and over estimating the value.

Here it is… short and sweet:

1. SM is a given for the vast majority of companies, but the simple basics are all that most need… because it’s expected – like a listing in the Yellow Pages was expected by consumers, even though no one saw results commensurate with cost.
2. CEOs and internal marketing departments in B2C and B2B are enamored of SM and frightened to be left behind, so they let any pretty face come in and sell them on likes and Google+ and tweets and you name it. Like taking candy from a baby… fools chasing numbers that don’t translate into sales.
3. Results are so poor that in any other media we would all run screaming from the field. But Google has us convinced that .75% is a pretty darn good return. I was a magazine editor/publisher for 20 years. If I had to sell that number to advertisers I would have been laughed out of the room.
4. Only two types of products/companies really benefit from the all out SM campaign: small, disruptive companies/products and huge multinationals. That’s it. Why these two?
• The big, big and maybe only significant effect SM has had on marketing is that for the first time consumers are finding you (78% find companies/products, not the other way around) and when they do, they’ve already developed an idea of who you are. You need to affect these preconceptions and this has traditionally been the realm of advertising; and if you can afford it, big ads with frequency still beat SM.
  
  But if you don’t have the bucks, SM allows you to disrupt markets, attack big market leaders and build status and belief with ‘minimal’ cost. This idea works with both B2B companies and consumer products trying to break through or disrupt an established market.
  
  But once you've hit mid-sized, SM is a minor necessity. You’re not disruptive, you have some media budget, you only need a basic presence.

• Then, there are a few, just a few, huge companies that need to present a human face: Wal-Mart, General Electric, GM, etc. -- companies that most people see as cold and faceless. Intelligent SM works well for them as branding, not sales. 

But most companies are not this big and do not need to be humanized. I don't expect Big O tires to show me their human side -- I do expect or at least appreciate a bit of humanity from Blue Cross Blue Shield or Shell Oil, etc.

If you’re not in one of these two categories, then SM is a small part of your marketing efforts these days. The blush is off the rose. For you to expect big results (and for you to pay big bucks to the plethora of SM pundits and overblown, egotistical coders and SEO ‘liars’) from minuscule return rates is just silly.

Look, say hello and thanks to your customers, explain what you do, offer a sale, improve your customer service, attract good people to hire, then get the hell out of SM.

The rest is plain nuts!

NewWave Marketing 101: Nothing can change the shape of things to come

Wow… hadn’t thought of that song since the 60s. And honestly, neither the song nor the movie (Wild in the Streets) was any good. But like it or not, the sentiments of a generation and 1968 American culture were plainly, if not naively, expressed.

In many ways it’s 1968 all over again for marketing and advertising: things are changing in ways no one can control and few can imagine. What we’re left with at the current moment is a very poor mix of old and new… the old is obvious nonsense to everyone, except for the agencies who continue to peddle it because they’ve nothing else… and, of course, direct response which is so silly that it’s camp. (Do you LOVE the ear wax commercial where the guy sticks the Q-tip in his ear up to his eye socket and then jumps? Jerry Lewis would be proud.)

The so-called ‘new’ hasn’t arrived… instead we get an almost dada-like attempt at trying to be cutting edge and cool. Just another form of nonsense -- but at least these people are trying to find ‘the new’ and aren’t peddling old ideas with the bromide that, “things haven’t changed very much… marketing is coming back to the basics.” No, it isn’t.

Where it’s going, who knows? Have you noticed how much humor is being used these days in TV adverts? As if to say, “we know you don’t believe any of this, so let’s all pretend we’re in on the joke.”

Of course, fact-based ads are almost the sole province of drug companies. They’ve all developed this concept of nice, happy images rolling by, while they’re talking about side effects such as nausea, heart attack, sudden death, hives, swollen throat and tongue, blurred vision, etc.

Since I have a musician’s gallows humor, I actually find these drug commercials more comical and absurd than the ads that are meant to be funny.

Speaking of which, here’s an apocryphal story related to music… but I think it demonstrates what level of change lies ahead for advertising and marketing.

A very good friend and first rate guitarist (whom I’ve known since those on-the-road years in the late 70s) told me about a collaboration he had completed. If you stop to think about how revolutionary this is, you’ll see the implications.

Danny has produced a few home videos where he plays along with basic jam tracks… just for fun and to keep his chops up. He posts them on youtube and a cool sight called Fandalism.com. Well, he gets an email from someone in Italy (Danny is in Atlanta) who has written a song, put down most of the tracks but needs a guitarist. He sends the files to Danny… who adds his tracks and voila… an international collaboration that’s online to the world.

Here’s the part to consider. Even 10 years ago, if I had a band in, say, Cleveland and we were all in our 20s, we would have never considered auditioning a player in his late 50s. Never... much less a 55 year old guy from Mexico City or Bordeaux.

Ten years later, age doesn’t matter nor does distance… what matters is talent and creativity. That’s it.

I have no idea the age of the Italian guy -- he could be 16 or 60… who cares?

This idea of long distance joint musical ventures between countries and cultures and ages is amazing… and beyond anyone’s comprehension even a decade ago.

Marketing and advertising are in the midst of similar radical change to the very essence of the industry… change that no one anticipated… change that agencies are dismissing as foolish (like now defunct record companies did).

I for one -- even at my late age -- can’t wait to see the new burst of creativity we’re soon to experience… and I will be vindictive enough to laugh out loud as so-called marketing experts and agency consultants are left clinging to a couple of clients and biding their time until the good old days of blowhard marketing return.

Like maybe… never… if there’s a God.

Another Company Bites the Dust – But Internet ‘Gurus’ Get Their Money

This is a very unhappy ‘I told you so’ on my part.

But it’s like clockwork… sad, fatalistic, inevitable... a warning from Cassandra that goes unheeded.

A very promising company has just gone under. Sure, there are a lot of reasons, but primary was the decision to spend big bucks on Internet/SEO/Adword gurus. These Net guys got a relatively large sum to build an online presence that would virtually ‘guarantee’ sales and top-of-the-page organic SEO.

Remember, these were the guys who proudly boasted that they had built 159 landing pages to make sure the word got out to every corner of the digital world. (See The Big Lie: Software Is Eating Marketing).

Problem was, these guys weren’t marketers. Problem was the owner believed that metrics could boost sales rather than solid marketing. Problem was the owner paid good money for his web presence but did very little and spent very little to develop a coherent message/story for his product.

But the web guys were so confident their strategy would work – the same strategy they use for every company regardless of product.

As predicted, the 159 landing pages and blogs and tweets and Facebook pages all went for naught. No story, no sales. Period.

So the company goes bust, good friends are out of work… while the Internet guys move gleefully to yet another company, making the same promises and taking the same large chunk out of the budget.

In a letter to the company president sent six months ago, here was my warning…

There is so much chatter about new algorithms, the decline of keywords, the rise of unique content, the decline of multiple sites, etc., I focus on the long-term narrative and customer expectations. If that messaging is right, Internet professionals will know how to break the copy above the fold and those types of things. 

But… If people don’t understand or believe your message, or don’t see the need for your product, all the CTRs and CPCs and closing rates and page hits won’t really translate into the type of sales you’re looking for.

Again, simple advice that went unheeded.

What’s wrong with advertising and agencies? Go Daddy spot says it all

Now that the dust has settled from a mediocre game with very mediocre advertising, and we’ve been inundated with analysis of both, maybe we can see things for what they are.

Simply put: the Go Daddy spot and the analysis that followed, given by ‘advertising and marketing experts,’ together highlight the absurdity of advertising and agencies. Advertising is meant to be part art and part science... isn’t that what we tell ourselves and our clients? These past few days we’ve seen the man behind the curtain and he ain’t pretty or smart.

A few very clear observations we all should have made:

1. The Go Daddy kissing spot was weak by any measure: not very creative, not well done, average at best. Here’s one way you know this -- all the hype the agency put out about the ad prior to the game tells you that they knew it was ho-hum. They built up the ‘45 minutes of kissing’ with a supermodel in hopes of getting the audience to ‘understand’ the coolness of the concept.
 Even more telling, a spokesperson for Go Daddy reported the highest level of phone calls ever during the 24-hours after the ad ran. But s/he wouldn't release any numbers (telling those of us in the industry that this is a little white PR lie).

2. The audacity of some ‘experts’ to claim that, “since we’re still talking about the ad it was successful” is damn nonsense. This is the excuse that advertising losers use to keep their jobs and validate their salaries. If, as an industry, we can’t universally ‘condemn’ the ad for being boring, trite and unimaginative (or better yet, a waste of money) -- then we have no standards by which to judge our work. Rather, we are shysters hiding behind a concept of ‘creativity’ that’s as simplistic as saying, “anything that stands out is good.” If that’s the case, then any 10-year-old can be an ad executive or run an agency.


3. Look, it’s essential to stand out, but that alone is nothing more than being a carnival barker. And for any agency to claim success based on this lowest common denominator is ludicrous. You know, you can ‘stand out’ for being exceptionally stupid or exceptionally crass or exceptionally uninformed. In claiming the lowest ground you are as special as another well-endowed pole dancer in Las Vegas.


4. We either have standards or we’re hacks. Either Picasso is a great artist or his work is no better than any first grader. Either “The Sun Also Rises” is great literature or Barbara Cartland and Ernest Hemingway are just two more pulp fiction writers.


5. Anyone who plays devil’s advocate and claims that “the ad might not have been to your taste but it was successful because we’re still talking about it,” is a fool.

C’mon -- successful executives will tell you that in any meeting you should do something to make your presence known. You don’t want to be anonymous in a room. How, then, to accomplish this? Well, one way would be to prepare for the meeting and ask an intelligent question. Fine. You’ve been remembered. Or you could stand on the table and pull down your pants. That would be very unforgettable. And you’d be a Go Daddy advertising jackass or a partner in Deutsch New York. (The agency is still tap dancing about the ad... rule #1 of PR, never admit you might be wrong.)

NOTE: On one agency site (PPBH) I found this sentence about the Go Daddy ad: “This is the commercial that we all love to hate, but of course can’t help but talk about.” On another site, one ad executive asked if the ad was meant to be 'purposely bad,' and a paradigm of a new style of advertising with built in errors to engage the public.

Do you see what's wrong with agencies?

Pornographic Movies and Marketing Have the Same Problem… Too Many Layers, Not Enough Myth

The source of this idea comes from Howard Suber, the author of The Power of Film and a faculty member at UCLA. (My son was lucky enough to have Mr. Suber as an instructor.)

What’s the flaw when it comes to pornographic movies? Layers.

You start with a man and a woman (usually), then things have to escalate. Two women and a man; two women, two men; three women, a young man, an old man and a dwarf. Every subsequent film has to go one better… another layer, ad infinitum.

American movies are the same, which is why they are declining in quality. Start with two murders, one affair and three car chases. Then it escalates: four car chases, two affairs and a dozen killed. Next? 3D slaughter.

Advertisements and marketing are the same: low price, then low, low price, then ridiculously low price, then crazy Eddie… prices so low we’re losing money (and he was, which is why he allegedly sold stolen goods).

I keep arguing that the nature of consumers has changed. Part of that is driven by ads and marketing that pile layer upon pornographic layer until consumers (B2C and B2B) just stop believing anything and everything… and the more you pile on layers of bull, the less they believe (which is one reason why ‘under-produced’ movies, ads and reality TV shows are somehow judged as more ‘honest’).

We pile on pornographic layers with absurd claims and use digital media to promote our work so our porno can be seen in every corner of the online world, whether consumers like it or not.
 
Pornography and movies have one advantage: they can be seen as fantasy; and as such the unbelievable layers are a bit more tolerated. James Bond can fend off five paid assassins with a duffle bag and we’re OK with that; some couples can keep up with dozens of partners, hour after hour and we’re still OK.

But… then some cosmetic promises instant wrinkle relief or a Dr. Scholls’ insert can help you ‘get your life back’ and we’re suddenly not OK (and advertising and marketing are further relegated to havens for shysters, liars and thieves).

What’s the solution? 

Marketing/advertising that’s less sophisticated with fewer layers, more depth, more primal themes, and more mythical (archetypical) appeals.

Less sophisticated doesn’t mean dumbed down. That would be like saying that Hemingway’s simple sentences were written for idiots.

And mythical doesn’t mean King Arthur (although it could).

I’m thinking of basic archetypical myths -- the reluctant warrior (Arjuna or Achilles), the long return home (Ulysses, The Prodigal Son, The Searchers, Star Wars), the journey to adulthood (The Graduate, Huckleberry Finn), The Damsel in Distress (look at Tarentino’s Django -- right up front one character tells you about the Siegfried myth of rescuing the woman), 40 days in the desert (Jesus), trial by fire (Job), finding our long, lost love, being perfect mothers and fathers, seeking forgiveness, rediscovering belief, growing old with grace, etc.

These themes reach a deep, deep level in our consciousness, a place where we are hard-wired to make symbols, and symbols are good for advertising and marketing.

These primordial tales are not layered, they are single-mindedly simplistic: one inch wide and one million miles deep… they are poetic (“To be or not to be”), they transcend changing consumer natures and strike (again) at what’s hard-wired.

Marketing and advertising have lost this ‘simple’ depth, preferring to add layer upon layer of (fake) story, CGI, music, fantastic stunts, ridiculous claims and promises that a six-year-old can see through.

No… you’re not going to take this approach for toilet paper. But for anything NEW and GAME CHANGING, primal ideas are ideal.

-The Prodigal Son (or Daughter, these days) who finds his/her way home thanks to the newest smartphone or the next Facebook.

-The young entrepreneur who uses the latest software to start his or her own company that brings down the malevolent giant.

- A new biometric testing unit that allows people to take back control of their healthcare destiny from the medical bureaucracy.
 
-Look at the iPad ads showing their positive effects on children. What parent can resist that image of giving their offspring an advantage in this cold, cruel world?

-Last year’s Chrysler ad with Clint Eastwood in Detroit (David and Goliath, Rocky).

These single-layered, deeply emotional ads bring immediacy, authenticity, humanity… and the perfect combination of head and heart. They can lodge deep in the personal unconscious where symbols are being made; and the emotional connection with the product itself will be carried along.

This seems to me to be the new way to market and advertise and the only way to overcome consumer boredom, malaise and distrust.

Otherwise, we’re just cynical marketers whose true ancestors are the money changers in the Temple… creating our own marketing and metrics Tower of Babel… following the worst of direct response without style, humanity, emotion or creativity.

But marketers must deal with what’s real, so I’m always cognizant of the dollars.

Creative, mythic themes are a way to break through a crowded, me-too marketplace and align your product with our hard-wired nature so that consumers are happy to buy.

Talk about marketing that sticks, yet doesn’t seem cheap, intrusive or silly. All it takes is a lot of thought, some creativity and a great, honest product…. and, oh yes, dialing it down on the (Hemingway) bullshit meter.

Digital Catch-22 Has Stolen Marketing… Right from Under Our Noses

Let’s be honest -- marketing as most of us know it no longer exists.

There are several reasons for this and many of them lie at the feet of marketers themselves: poorly conceived campaigns, slow delivery of the creative, the attitude that we are ‘ar-teests,’ the derivative nature of most of our work these past two decades and agency billing procedures that are a micrometer short of highway robbery.

Marketers have been replaced by IT and software guys who have redefined our art/craft so that they can claim to be marketing experts. They define the job so they are the job. And that job is numbers, numbers, numbers.

Better still, here’s the new marketing task in a nutshell:

Trick consumers into seeing ads for products they don’t want and don’t believe in.

Sure, larger, more sophisticated companies still understand the need for marketing in the sense of defining a market, positioning a product and telling an emotional narrative that drives sales. Please look at the Samsung Galaxy III spot… the story it tells, the images it uses and how it’s positioned Samsung as superior to the iPhone. That’s marketing.

But most medium to smaller companies have been convinced by the plethora of Internet/SEO/automated sales people that they have no need for this type of marketing and storytelling. Instead they willingly spend on software and analytics and email lists and multiple landing pages. Numbers, numbers, metric, metrics.

Here’s the cool part: the metrics are meaningless. They were created by digital guys to match the capabilities of the software. It’s a shell game: we measure those measurements that we can measure. Catch-22 if there ever was one.

Do these metrics equate to sales or profits? Rarely, if ever. But by God they can show their clients digitally-generated numbers, so they must be true.

They toss a bone to ‘content,’ but don’t care, really. Had Google not mentioned that new algorithms would be driven by content, these Net people wouldn’t give marketing narratives the time of day.

You know that old line about ‘sell the sizzle not the steak’? These guys sell neither.

Again, they have one goal: To trick consumers into seeing ads for products that consumers don’t want and don’t believe in.

That’s Marketing 101 in 2013. Live with it.

Amazingly, these guys preach the need for a personalized message but then send unwanted and totally impersonal junk to any name they can get their hands on. Personalized? They can’t spell it.

Now here’s the real Catch-22. Because these automated mavens have the numbers and count the numbers, they never fail.(Remember what Stalin said about elections? He didn’t care who voted as long as he got to count the votes.) If a product doesn’t sell it’s because of a weak story -- fire the $20 an hour copywriter. But, if the product does sell, it’s all in the software and programming.

And gullible CEOs are lining up for the privilege.

Did I just read that 83% of company execs think that marketing has ZERO effect on sales and/or profits? Ask these same men and women about the value of automated, integrated, digital, analytic programs and they’ll virtually wet their pants with glee.

At a time when smart marketing is desperately needed, it’s been co-opted, vilified, scorned and ignored in favor of software, metrics and meaningless numbers.

Bad Direct Response Advertising Is Telling You the Truth... If You Listen

We’ve discussed this several times: how it’s best to show what you mean rather than come out and say it. Remember? “If I say I’m cool, I’m not cool; if others say I’m cool, then I am.”

Understanding this simple difference is essential to telling a good story or writing a good ad.

If we’ll listen closely to most DR ads (because most are poorly written these days), we can find out the REAL truth of a product… this idea is Human Nature 101… we intensify and over-compensate for what we fear.

Recall poor Richard Nixon. During the height of the Watergate scandal he went on TV and proclaimed, “I am not a crook!” Surveys showed that a large number of Americans thought he said, “I am a crook.” In fact, that’s what he REALLY said if you listen. His proclamation to the contrary reinforced the very idea he was trying to eliminate.

Here’s what I mean. Recently, I saw a new DR spot for yet another blond, perky, California trainer with a weight loss and exercise plan. Here are a few sentences from the spot.

“This is not like any other program on the market.” They just told you the truth: this IS like every other plan. They’re afraid you’ll see that, so they shout a disclaimer up-front to appear honest and proactive.

“Mary isn’t your average trainer, she’s Hollywood’s most sought after celebrity fitness expert.” The truth? She has no way to standout from the crowd… she knows it; you know it. Again, a bit of preemptive puffery by the writer is thought to be the solution.

“The music behind her program is a new combination of salsa and hip hop that gets you moving.” The truth? You couldn’t tell one of her exercise songs from any number of Zumba-like programs and she knows it.

You see, these DR spots are telling you the truth… just listen. Every time they claim they’re different (rather than showing the difference), you get the TRUTH that they’re very, very afraid of.

“New Wave DR is unlike any agency you’ve ever seen.”

“Our ads are unique and truly creative.”

“Our service is second to none.”

Blah, blah, blah. Read the above as, “average agency, a bit creative with reluctant customer service.”
 

The Big Lie: Software Is Eating Marketing

Software, testing and analytics cannot displace marketing... they are processes meant to enhance marketing, not direct it. Without the right message, product and positioning, analytics and measurements are useless.

Just like those of us who aren’t painters/artists will look at a painting by Braque (my favorite) or Picasso and say, “I can do that” or “that’s rubbish,” Web analytic and software guys are often clueless: they think they’re actually selling something... actually marketing when they're simply measuring parameters of their own making: clicks throughs, abandon rates, CPC and any number of spurious SEO calculations... all data that may or may not be relevant.

Recently, I had a 'guru' tell me that his company was developing "159 landing pages" for a client so his team could find the ideal message? I'd love to see that invoice!


That’s marketing, huh? Sure, like a stick figure is modern art.

Here’s a marketing message for you to populate throughout social channels: “I be a good marketer so send me sum money and I fix yer ad good.”

I don’t care if you fire up the latest software, lists, analytics, landing pages that are optimized with above the fold content, Adwords or affiliate programs… you have nothing.

CEOs with limited budgets are so happy to hear they can have impact through software and analytics alone that they eagerly buy a snake oil sales pitch. (To be fair, you can have impact with minimum budget if you direct GOOD ads and INFORMATIVE information to the right channels.That’s marketing 101.)

And let’s be honest: most 'executives' and Internet numbers guys really don’t like creatives: "You know, these people sit around all day in jeans, thinking… not getting anything done!”

In contrast: “The Internet guys are adding SEO words and creating back links and buying lists and fiddling with knobs, they’re really working. Here, look at this report!” (BTW, you just paid $1,000 for numbers that Google generated for FREE and $5 software added your logo to the top for 'personalization'.)


So these poor souls cut checks for $20,000 a month for social media and web analytics and 159 landing pages, but moan if they have to pay $2,000 for an ad that changes their company… like the Samsung Galaxy ad restructured the smartphone market in a heartbeat.

Again, let me use polysyllabic words for the net number gurus:

If you don’t have a good pro duct with a good stor y and good grap hics, YOU HAVE GOT NO THING! NO THING!

Run that through you’re analytics… and make sure your response is ‘above the fold’.

What Do Republicans, Montezuma and Apple Have in Common?

You’re probably familiar with the apocryphal story about Montezuma II. The Aztec chief stood on a hill overlooking the Gulf of Mexico as a fleet of Spanish vessels approached. Yet, the wily Montezuma did not see them as they sailed into the harbor virtually right before his eyes. He couldn’t see them because he had no concept of such large ships. He didn’t see because he didn’t believe.

Advantage Cortez.

True or not, the story illustrates the falsehood of the old saw “I’ll believe when I see it.” In reality it’s quite the opposite: “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

Understand this and you’re on a new marketing plane. Add one more truism, ‘facts don’t build belief,’ and you’re moving to the top of the class… and beyond 75% of B2C marketers and 99% of B2B (the purveyors of facts, facts, facts and more facts).

Case in point: How difficult was it for republicans to see that Romney could not win?

C’mon, before the first vote was cast, Obama had in his pocket about half of the electoral votes he needed: New York, New Jersey, the entire northeast, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, California, Oregon, Washington.

Republicans didn’t believe their own polls, so they never saw the hard truth. When positive job numbers came ahead of the election, they refused to believe… said the numbers were just plain wrong... an Obama conspiracy.

When economic think tanks tallied up Romney’s economic plan and declared that it would add to the deficit, republicans screamed ‘liars’ and refused to believe. They saw the ‘facts’ and acted just like Montezuma.

Advantage democrats.

Marketing 101: Build consumers’ belief and you initiate sales. Share a vision rather than a fact, and the number of your followers will grow. Appeal to the heart rather than the head and you’re almost always on the right track, unless you’re selling commodities like Drano. Yes, ‘Drano clears clogged drains 5 times faster than the competition’ is a great fact-based ad that works in that arena. ‘The new Dell is 5 times faster than the MacBook Pro,’ is a stone cold loser.

And look how quickly an emotional ad can change the marketing landscape.

Case in point: the Samsung’s Galaxy III. One ad, the nerds standing in line for the latest iPhone, has shoved Apple from the top of the heap. That one little ad did what hasn’t been done in almost a decade.

Sure, there’s a few facts sprinkled in (larger screen size, tap to send files) but the real message is that the Galaxy is way cooler; and Samsung treats you like an adult and not a child standing in line to get the newest Beanie Baby at Toys R’ Us. Only a few diehard nerds and old people (mom and dad in the ad) think that standing in line for hours to get a smartphone is somehow cool or sensible.

Apple took its customers and their loyalty for granted… Apple execs didn’t understand the shift in consumer perspective because they didn’t believe they could ever be overtaken… just as republicans didn’t get the new demographics and Montezuma saw nothing but clear sailing.

‘I’ll see it when I believe it’… no truer marketing words have ever been spoken.

(PS: Allow me to gripe for a minute. Whomever created the Samsung ad should have been paid in stock options. How much is that ad worth? Hundreds of millions at a minimum. Yet, why do I think the agency charged $1 million or so and Samsung bean counters kicked up a fuss. If the ad’s creators were paid $50 million it wasn’t enough!)

New Wave Marketing and Advertising 101: What Marketers Should Learn from the Last Election

(If you’re old enough to remember the Doors, you know that Morrison usually opened his concerts by shouting WAKE UP!
)

Here are a few takeaways for those souls interested in marketing and advertising and politics.

1. Attack ads work as does frequency (which is how Romney got so close)… but they have to be bolstered with some sort of positive vision. You can’t win/sell anything simply by defining what it’s not: ‘Vote Romney because you hate Obama’ is not enough.
 


The same for marketing. When it comes to attracting consumers, a product has to stand for something with a positive, inspiring long-term vision. Pepsi used to advertise that it’s not Coke. So what? Then they did taste tests… still, so what? Then they began their Pepsi generation theme and things took off.

 
2. It’s nauseating how pundits keep saying that republicans need to change their message. That is duplicitous at best and downright evil at the core. Change the philosophy and adapt your ideas to the 21st century, THEN change the message to match the new soul of the party. 



Putting out a new message while your beliefs don’t change is the worst kind of cheap direct response. Change the product then change the message... not the other way around.

3. Let me repeat for the umpteenth time: after September, 2008 everything has changed: consumer expectations, middle class incomes, trust in banking, the role of  government, belief in technology, levels of consumption, demographics and YES, THE AMERICAN NARRATIVE ITSELF.


4. You’ve heard all about the demographics, but let me add one more: each month, 50,000 Hispanics turn 18 and are eligible to vote. Do the math for 2016.



5. The American belief in self-reliance, perfectly defined by Emerson’s famous essay of the same name, has changed...  only angry white guys have missed this watershed moment.

Want proof? 

The republican mantra is built on individual hard work, an independent, entrepreneurial spirit and a refusal to take handouts from the government.  

Think for a second: this philosophy is strongest in Asian and Hispanic communities. These folks work and work and work (more than most white communities), so they should be prime republicans, but they’re not.

Over 70% of Asians and Hispanics voted democratic.



Why? 

Because the republican, classic American belief that small government is best for the individual is not shared by immigrants.  Most don’t see government as the villain; rather, they see big, greedy business as the obstacle to their success, as it tilts the playing field against them, barely pays a living wage and sends jobs overseas.



Bottom line: marketing and politics are both about telling a story with vision, one that corresponds with consumer/electorate desires and is in step with their core beliefs. Anything else, and you’ll spend billions for frequency and market share and still lose to a smarter, more passionate, more in-tune competitor.

And... when you try to sell anything with a story that runs counter to the prevailing meta-narrative (core, unquestioned beliefs) you will fail, just as the republicans did… and you will continue to fail until you change more than your marketing message. 

A new tag line won't do it... you have to change your heart.

New Wave Marketing 101: Fixing Direct Response

Direct response ads have lost whatever credibility they had mostly because of the products themselves… cheaply made and basically ineffective, then tied to the standard DRTV format that screams rip off. 

Add generally poor service… slow shipping, bad return policy, tricky automatic renewals, etc. and you've destroyed any trust between vendor and consumer. 

Here's how to fix DR:

1. Sell better products 
2. Make sure what you say in the ad copy matches what’s said about the product online (to the best of your ability)… better products should make this easier  
3. Spend some money on social media to defend your products, for goodness sakes 
4. Change the tired DRTV format, for example:
    

• Give the actual price upfront 
• Forget BUT WAIT and triple your order tricks  
• Give a full guarantee, shipping and all  
• Avoid the tired Guthy Renker model (or should I say “trusted Guthy Renker”)... look, they’ve made a lot of money at it, good for them, but GR has burned out the format here in the U.S. which is why their sales are increasingly coming from other countries 
• Avoid automatic renewal – the #1 reason why most consumers will not buy and do not trust you
   

Any takers? Probably not. DR has matured into a derivative ad form for a me-too industry built by so-called 'entrepreneurs' who are mostly cowboys.

New Wave Marketing 101: Lack of Meta-Narrative Changes Everything

(Writing advertising for the few, the proud, the passionate ...
and sometimes the crazy)

OK, so what’s a meta-narrative? My use of the term comes from Jacques Derrida and ‘deconstruction.’ (Don’t ask me to define deconstruction -- Derrida himself did a poor job of it.)

Essentially, a meta-narrative is a shared set of stories among a large group that lies at the heart of the group’s ethical, social, psychological beliefs. It’s so deep that we rarely see it or question it -- which is why deconstructionists love to pick it apart.

A meta-narrative can encompass the world, a country, a religion. The American meta-narrative, for example, involves our country being ‘a city upon a hill’, the Wild West, democracy, the unassailable perfection of the Constitution, etc.

Advertisers and marketers fashion their work on these deep-seated, shared beliefs. Writing an ad that contradicts the narrative is suicide.

How far would you get with an ad that says: (‘Americans... love to follow their leaders and hate being independent individuals), that’s why you need to buy X because everyone else is'?

I put the first part in parenthesis because that’s the meta-narrative that goes unstated.

But what happens when the sharing breaks down? Well, take a look around: red states and blue states have different narrative interpretations, as do young and old, the 1% and the 47%, east coast and west coast... this goes on forever in our country.

This recent phenomenon is due, in part, to the fact that we have personal access to all the information in the world. Literally.

No one interprets it for us in the light of the American narrative we used to share; instead we each have our own interpretation and so the meta-narrative decays -- and it has done so very, very quickly over the last decade. Again, look at our political landscape.

These days we're left with fragmentation not consensus and that’s bad for advertisers and marketers.

How in the world do you tell a compelling story when there’s little common ground? At times, writing an ad seems like telling the tale of George Washington and the cherry tree to a Sri Lankan fisherman. It’s not that he’s stupid; it’s that there is no meta-narrative on which to ground the story and connect meaning at a deep level. To the fisherman, the story is simply about cutting down a tree and not about American honesty and pragmatism.

So, what to do?

Well, the problem that’s been exacerbated by the Net is also solved by it.

But first, the new reality: most ads have to be tightly, tightly focused (as do the products themselves) on one of the newly formed and always malleable sub-groups (whose members can change quickly).

Think Zumba participants or tennis players or ex-military or families of small children. These people share a meta-narrative... at least during the time of their participation. And because many are ‘new’ to the activity, they’re generally pumped and passionate and ready for a message that uses their (temporarily) shared beliefs.

No one buys more musical accessories and related merchandise (bumper stickers, T-shirts saying ‘Make Music, Not War’) than a new musician. And no one buys the latest writing software (I just did, Apple Pages) than a (male) professional who needs to try the latest thing (mostly so he can criticize and talk about how much better he would have made the software).

What’s consoling is that the Net also provides inexpensive ways to find sub-groups and target them. Using social channels to tell multiple narratives isn't as cheap as everyone makes out but it's not cost prohibitive. Twenty years ago you couldn’t afford to produce five various print ads, each tailored to a specific group, and run them in associated magazines at $10,000 - $50,000 a pop.

The solution is tailored ads moved into tight-knit communities that could be smaller than you ever thought worth the effort. But capture a few of these and you're into the bigger bucks.

The (sad) truth is that we’re losing our identification with country and religion and even family. We’re becoming parties of one, with our own unique meta-narratives that can be, at times, frightening: Charles Manson had a unique narrative and you see where that ended.

Advertisers must DEAL with what’s REAL (now I’m Johnny Cochran, for god’s sake). 

That means changing how they create, what they create and the products they sell to suit the few, the proud, the passionate and (sometimes) the crazy.

New Wave Marketing 101: Why Are Most Experts Bad Marketers?

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No offense intended, but working with Ph.Ds, MDs, ‘scientists’ and attorneys can be infuriating. These are smart people, very smart, so it shouldn’t be such a chore explaining marketing to them. But it is.

Their idea of marketing always centers on logic, statistics and specs… three things that aren’t primary when it comes to changing consumer perceptions.

But you can’t convince them: if the facts say A performs twice as well as B, then A should outsell B… it’s a matter of logic. But marketing, although logical in many ways, isn’t about THAT kind of reasoning. Marketing is about people, and people are often illogical and irrational… they lead with their hearts not their heads (and that’s why you love them).

But ‘experts’ aren’t happy with this reality. It’s sloppy and it’s not theirs; rather, they posit a world where the best always wins. (Again, not to be offensive, but Ph.Ds and the like always seem to operate from one egotistical premise: If I can learn how to be a doctor [lawyer, engineer, etc.] then I can learn anything – including how to do YOUR job as well as you in a matter of weeks.)

“How hard is it to write an ad, I’m a trained scientist?” (A question directed to me many years ago by an MD.)

A recent post from Seth Godin put this in perspective… I reprint it here:

Beauty vs. specs

There are two kinds of users/creators/customers/pundits.

Some can't understand why a product or service doesn't catch on. They can prove that it's better. They can quote specs and performance and utility. It's obvious.

The other might be willing to look at the specs, but he really doesn't understand them enough to care. All he knows is that the other choice is beautiful--it makes him feel good. He wants to use it.

Acura vs. Lexus, Dell vs. Apple, New Jersey vs. Bali...

PS: At dinner last night, a friend and I were talking facts versus emotions. He’s an attorney, who was, for a time in the 1980s, a Federal prosecutor in the office of anti-trust and tried the largest case of the decade. I’ll summarize his account:

“They (a large multinational) had dozens of expert witnesses from around the world testifying on the company’s behalf. I had no way of hiring that many counter-experts; but I could sense the jury was overwhelmed with facts. In my summary, I said something like, ‘That was sure a lot of facts and a lot of experts; they’re so much smarter than me that half the time I didn’t really understand what they were saying.’ In a flash, that simple statement dismissed weeks of expert testimony… I won the case and the opposing attorneys were shocked at how simply I countered their mountain of facts. It was all I had… what else could I do? But I fully realized at that moment that emotions played a larger role than I suspected in the courtroom. Sure, passions are key in a murder trial – but I learned that even in a dull case of anti-trust, emotion is paramount and far beyond any Ph.D, MD, you name it, expert testimony.”

Yahoo Lies, If Marissa Mayer Is To Be Believed

One thing about a marketing/branding narrative is that it must be consistent at its heart. Anything that is out of character, no matter how small it seems, is a big deal. People sense and dislike inconsistency because it usually speaks to the heart and soul of a person, a product, a brand. (NOTE: Occasional breaks with a brand’s look and feel are fine… consider Google’s constantly changing logo. But there can be no contradiction in core philosophy.)

An aside: you know when you get a feeling about someone you’ve just met? You’re slightly ‘creeped out,’ and you don’t know why… he or she seems fine, looks good but you feel something. Here’s why: The person’s actions and words do not completely match… in some deep way that your subconscious understands. He says X but his eyes say Y; she looks nice but her hands are clenched. What’s creeping you out is this ever so slight inconsistency that subtly screams ‘LIAR.’ To the extreme, the smiling clown who makes you think of John Wayne Gacy.

Back to Yahoo.

So the new CEO, Marissa Mayer, has her baby. Congratulations. Then announces she’s taking just a two-week maternity leave and back to the office.

I’ve nothing to say about the parental wisdom of that choice.

But from a corporate/brand point of view, she should be fired ASAP. Why? She obviously does not understand nor does she believe the essential philosophy of Yahoo. How, then, can she be its CEO?

Fire her today and put out this story:

The Board of Yahoo has terminated Marissa Mayer for the following reasons:

 1. Her insistence on returning to work after two weeks maternity leave is against the corporate spirit of Yahoo. We are an employee-centered organization and we cannot condone our CEO setting such a precedent… one that will be used by unenlightened companies to force parents into quickly returning to work.

On the contrary, we encourage extended maternity leave as a time for parents to bond with their children and enjoy the blessings of bringing a new life into the world.
 
   2. Just as important is Ms. Mayer’s disregard for the primary philosophy of Yahoo. We are an information company built on the idea that users have access to all the data, news and entertainment they need to do their jobs and enjoy their lives. We are also founded on the principle of portability, that is, no matter where or when you need information to do your job you can count on Yahoo. Without this core belief, Yahoo would be nothing more than an entertainment hub and not a source of vital business and marketing information – not to mention being a primary collaborative link for international commerce.

Ms. Mayer’s insistence on returning to work belies our structure. In essence, her actions call into question our basic philosophy. Logically, she’s saying that she can’t access all the information she needs; she can’t do serious work with Yahoo; and the idea of portable, accessible information is a lie.

Judging by Ms. Mayer’s actions, we can only conclude that she does not at all believe in the promise of Yahoo.

This being the case, she is terminated immediately.

(Am I the only one who noticed this glaring, amazing, ignorant inconsistency?)

Facebook’s New Ad: Why 99% of Companies and Agencies Would Have Said ‘NO’

If you haven’t yet seen Facebook’s ad ‘about’ its one billionth user you should. Pure genius. (Go to http://bit.ly/PZPh3d)

Once you’ve seen it, ask yourself these questions: Would your company have gone with such an approach? Would your agency have suggested the idea? Would any of your clients have accepted such an ad?

I’m cynical for sure, but I guess that 99% of the time the answers would be NO, NO, NO.

How can you have an ad that doesn’t mention the one billion mark? Doesn’t say how great Facebook is?

The new ad is 100% emotional… no mention of Facebook’s server power or its world class customer service. There’s no mention of a breakthrough technology… no pictures of Zuckerberg saying, “we care.”

The message is not about FB at all, so it’s even more powerfully about FB. (Please revisit an earlier post “If I Say I’m Cool… I’m Not Cool” http://bit.ly/PZQffM)

Yet… 99% of agencies and clients would have passed on the ad, preferring, instead, some sort of derivative piece with messaging like this: strong, forceful, macho… you get it… dig me.

THEME: One Billion People Can’t Be Wrong

VOICEOVER: When we started Facebook, we knew it was a communications breakthrough … but even we didn’t envision that it would revolutionize the way people get connected and stay connected.

Today, we’re one billion strong… and let’s face it, that many people can’t be wrong.

From Timbuktu to Toronto, Beijing to Boston, San Francisco to Sydney, our growing infrastructure brings friends together, lets us share our feelings and makes any business instantly international.

Join the Facebook family album and find out what you’ve been missing.

The world is waiting to hear from you… don’t be left out.

There it is – the ‘perfect’ ad for the 99%. It’s strong. It tells the world who we are.  It brings a little fear to the consumer. And this ad will pass muster with the Board, the CEO, the SEO guys. Lots of keywords (Facebook, communications, connected, breakthrough, billion, users, international, business) and text chunks we can tweet, too.

Before anyone suggests that the new ‘humble’ ad is OK for Facebook but not for other companies, let me remind you: FB is no longer the darling it once was. Check the stock price. It is beginning to look old, feel old. Billions of users or not, the bloom is off the rose. After seeing the new ad, I had a feeling that FB was somehow ‘redefined.’ I was reminded of what I loved about it years ago. (I use it less these days because it seems too business-oriented and thus kinda cold.) This ad made me think about what FB was once and could be again.

Simply put – as direct response this ad works because people like me, and I am everyman, will be moved to start thinking about FB again… start using FB more frequently and with renewed enthusiasm. More numbers=more sales=more money for FB and that’s the bottom line for any marketing piece.

Still, I can hear the marketing department's reservations: “Shouldn’t we at least mention one billion in the headline?"

(At this moment I finally understand why my wife won't let me have a gun in the house.) 

New Wave Marketing 101: What's the big idea?

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Recently, I posted what must have seemed like an enigmatic Zen koan: ‘A big idea is always small; an idea that’s too big usually makes a bad story.’

I apologize. I hate things like that… when someone parses his or her words in a way that makes one seem smart, clever and in the know. Pompous narcissists in my book; then I did the same ignorant thing.

Why not just say what I mean? I did want to be concise but mostly this was a ‘dig me’ moment: ain’t I just a deep thinker? Mea culpa.

Let me explain what I was getting at with a very typical example from my college writing class.

But first, here’s a true statement: every paper, speech, PPT presentation must have a ‘big idea,’ a central focus for the narrative.

Think of it this way. If you can recall the 1950s Superman show (George Reeves, poor soul), you’ll remember there’s always a scene in the Chief’s office where Lois says something like, “I want to cover the dock workers’ strike,” and the blustering Perry White inevitably asks, “What’s your angle?”

That’s the big idea.

So, I ask students to write a 5-page paper – which to me seems like an easy task; to them five pages is a brick wall. I tell them to focus on a controversial subject. Check with me first, I warn.

OK. Here are some typical topics they’ll profer:

Civil rights

Abortion

Legalizing drugs

Creationism v. evolution

Equal pay for equal work

How in God’s name can you cover the entire civil rights movement in five pages? Or Dr. King’s Birmingham march or his assassination or his famous Washington speech? You can’t, of course; and if you try the result will be a 1/64 of an inch thick analysis that will be scattered, trite and meaningless. The big idea is too big.

Instead, focus on, say, the mood of your hometown when the news came about Dr. King’s untimely death; how your grandparents reacted; how some were so callous while others in tears. You see? Small but excellent big ideas.

When we write ads or present products we almost always say too much… include too much, try to cram it all in and down the throats of an intimidated or uncaring audience. And by doing so we are having our own ‘dig me’ moment: look how smart I am, I know so much more than you.

So my Zen koan boils down to simply this: when writing any marketing piece, any presentation (and life is a presentation, right?) lower your ambitions and shrink your ego. The results are much more interesting when you dig deeper in a small area. When you have more to say about less you have a very, very BIG IDEA.

New Wave Marketing 101: Stop Whinging and Sell Something!

I was getting ready to post about a recent conversation with a potential client: a B-list reality star who wants her own cosmetic brand.

But why moan about the same old story?

It’s the nature of the business to speak with people who KNOW all there is to KNOW about marketing even though they have never marketed a thing. This inane conversation (where the ultimate price point she wanted minus the 55% discount to distributors, minus formula costs, production, airless pump and ‘glamorous’ packaging left a whopping $9 gross without a cent spent for marketing) followed an earlier one in which a client didn’t need help identifying social media opportunities or developing an online persona because, “I went to a seminar last month.”

Wow! Three whole hours of marketing wisdom.

I'll just move on and keep my chin up… while being ever more convinced that if we marketers are good at what we do, we should sell our own products so we finally have complete control, on one hand, and no more excuses (as the existentialists say) on the other.

Our success will prove the validity of our creativity and strategy and become a model/template for those rare clients who recognize what they’re good at and where they need help.

God bless ‘em. Now get out there, get your hands dirty, pony up your time and money, and sell something.

Left Brain or Right Brain? Stay Right If You Want To Create Mythic, Memorable Marketing

Every once in a while and more often than parents admit, our children teach us things, particularly when they’re grown and have the advantage of a good education. I can say that about both of my children. At times we have conversations that sound like a college classroom. I taught college for a long time and was always lecturing around the house. Now they lecture me to the point that I’m getting headaches trying to keep up.

Here’s the latest revelation.

We were speaking about marketing and advertising and movies and wondered what makes something stick with you… be it a painting, an ad, a joke, a sporting event or just one of life’s random moments?

My argument is usually less scientific, more humanities based, so I’m generally talking about Jungian archetypes and myths: the more mythic an idea, a story, the ‘deeper’ it hits your psychological home and the more likely it will find a place to stick. When a story reaches your archetype you can’t help but pull it in.

My son who is just out of UCLA with an Master’s in Film Production agrees, but thinks it has to do more with right side/left side of the brain. Maybe. After all, it’s common knowledge that the left side is logical and the right side is more intuitive (for right-handed people, of course).

Long story short, after watching Jill Bolte Taylor on TED, she of “Stroke of Insight” fame, he says: “The left side of the brain is ‘me,’ my ideas, my ego, it’s exclusive; while the right side is ‘us’ what unites all humans, what makes us the same… the great ‘Oversoul,’ the universal mind, the collective unconscious.”

I never thought of it quite in those terms.

He continues: “The ‘me’ side of the brain limits information input to only what’s important to me. The left side is full of bullet points. The ‘us’ side, on the other hand, accepts more information; it’s inclusive and pulls in more data so it has a fuller picture of the universe and fills in with a broader, more inclusive brush that adds depth. The right side tells stories.

OK – stay with me. So, the question then becomes, “What makes a master: Bankei, Picasso, Einstein, Muhammad Ali, Hemingway, Godard, or David Ogilvy? Talent and intelligence, sure. But a lot of people are smart as hell and have talent. It’s more than that.

The ‘master’ resides in the right side of the brain, more in the ‘us’ than does the common man. He or she is inclusive and sees unlimited resonant connections… to cultural myths, universal human stories, common symbols and shared fears and joys. That's why a master can write about a female character living in 18th century Madrid and make it stick with you while he sits in 21st century New York. It’s all about what makes us the same. It's 'enlightenment.'

We live, for the most part, in our tightly-focused left, logical world with just a small foray into the right intuitive side. Our daily work is mostly logical. And we need a degree of logic to live. Remember, Taylor’s stroke left her living totally in the right side. She was happy, overjoyed, one with the universe, with heightened senses; yet, she needed help feeding herself.

Problem is, we in America and Western Europe have all but abandoned the intuitive right side and it’s to our demise. The result? We work but feel unfulfilled; we have things but don’t have happiness; we sense something is missing but we don't know what. This was the argument of The Modernists like Pound and Eliot and why Surrealists and Dadaists, (and Lady Gaga, come to think of it) try to blast us out of our rationality. Why Jim Morrison wanted us to break on through to the other side.

Interesting, but what’s the marketing point?

When trying to connect with people – be it through advertising, poetry, novels, art or movies – the ‘master’ tips the balance strongly toward the right side, the intuitive side, the shared experience side.Here's where memorable emotions are made.

The rational side wants to bludgeon people with facts; it wants to win the argument at all costs. The intuitive side simply wants to point out universal truths we may have missed. And when we see these new connections we’re astounded, overwhelmed, sometimes moved to tears… and these ‘revelations’ stay in our psyche.

“The Godfather” sticks while “Maid in Manhattan” does not. “Where’s the beef?” is a phrase known by 300 million Americans, many of whom weren’t born when the old lady made the commercial. But that simple line cut through the rhetorical bull of most advertising and remains a part of contemporary myth and symbolism.

A mythic movie or advertisement literally remakes the relationship between the artist and the viewer, between the consumer and the brand. And this relationship cannot be shaken by all the facts in Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica.

When you’re writing and trying to evoke a reaction you need to tip the scales strongly to the right side of your brain and lighten up with the left side. Hemingway did. Einstein did. Great athletes do. It's not easy but it is essential.

Remember: You can’t really change anyone’s perceptions until you connect at a deep human level. Facts aren't made to do that.

Let me end with a quote from Mr. Einstein:

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Or my favorite:

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

Great art, great marketing help reveal the ongoing, universal monomythic miracle. 

("Monomythic?" you ask. "Is that even a word?" Hmmm… you haven’t read your Joyce, have you?)