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 - Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Let's agree: marketing today is a mess: amateurs, cowards, copycats, and dead boring B2B. So stop complaining, I say to myself, and offer a solution.

Well, I have one... thanks to Roger Waters and Stephen Mitchell. You know the former Pink Floyd genius but not the latter. Mitchell is the author of numerous books on religion, zen, history, and poetry and did the absolute best translation of the Tao, hands down, bar none (see http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/transAdapt/taoTeChing.html). And his translation of Rilke's poetry can bring you to tears if you're so inclined (see http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/transAdapt/poetryRilke.html).

The advice these two gave me applies to Zen, music, and marketing: shine in your original brilliance, as Mitchell put it. Shine on you crazy diamond, says Roger Waters.

What does this mean? Well, the keywords are 'original' and 'crazy'. Once upon a time, we were brilliantly unique. Then circumstance, age, and experience made us dull and common—just like marketing today.

But I think Americans, in particular, not only (I took an advanced degree in American Culture, so I'm prejudiced), can slough off the dust with a playful shake (paraphrasing Walt Whitman) and return to our original brilliance.

How? Well... what made you want to be a writer in the first place? No one ever said, "I want to write so I can compose tired, dull ads that are mostly lies." No fledgling graphic artist ever said, "I want to copy other people's work and turn art into a commodity."

None of us ever sought to maintain the status quo. We all, at one time or another, wanted to push the boundaries, didn't we?

I'm not here to explain why we lost our brilliance. I guess most answers would start with fear: of losing our jobs, of not making a payday, of facing angry clients, or of failure itself.

There's no blame to place. Let's all agree that, say, we do something once a week for the sheer hell of it... something extraordinary to flaunt our talents, push the limits, and make people laugh, scream, or cry. Just once a week, let's promise we'll return to our original brilliance... the ideas, talents, and passions that made us want to be in this business in the first place.

If our brilliant work goes nowhere, so what? Unenlightened clients won't like it, but that's their loss, not ours. Let it be our way of showing that commercial success isn't the only thing we care about. Let it be our gift to younger generations... let them see what we once possessed and still possess. Let's show ourselves that we still have talent regardless of age, economic status, or level of success.

Once a week, show your original brilliance -- shine on you crazy diamond!

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!

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.”

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?)
 

Marketing Veterans Don’t Get It: I’m 100% Certain

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I ran across a blog/article written by some older guy (I’m of the approximate same age so I can say that with no disrespect) that demonstrates why so many marketing ‘veterans’ just don’t get it.

He’s on about eliminating weak words in marketing pieces… like ‘I think” or “We believe” or “Perhaps,” etc.

He wants us to replace conditional words with meaningful ones. “Be forceful… Use assertive language… As (someone) attempting to persuade an audience, your job is to provide them with as much certainty as you can. The way to get from doubt to certainty is to switch from the conditional to the declarative mood by eliminating the offending words.”

[Note: Your job is not to provide certainty. It's impossible.]

That’s writing 101 – I should know because I taught Comp & Rhetoric 101 at an Atlanta college for more than a decade. And yes, in student essays and some academic dissertations you want to eliminate (most) conditional phrases.

But ‘Mr. So-Last-Century' is big time wrong when it comes to advertising and marketing to today’s well-informed and sceptical consumers.

Here’s part of my response to the gentleman:

"Perhaps writing has more rules and exceptions than any other human activity."

That's my opening sentence and I stand by it. If I remove 'Perhaps,' what seems an equivocation to you, the sentence is weaker, not stronger... at least from an advertising/marketing perspective. The tone has changed from friendly and open-minded to dogmatic. Who am I to say definitively what rules writing has or does not have? If writing/marketing is about opening a conversation, and it is, the use of absolutes is often wrong. Absolutes stop discussion rather than encourage dialog.

I understand the ideological tenets from whence the old writer comes: show strength, say you're the best, be definitive… all of the old direct response rules right out of New York City circa 1960 or Sham-Wow. What goes unsaid is an inherent belief that  "people are ignorant sheep and need to be told what to do." That's the mantra of all the old school writers I've ever known (and I’ve known a few).

Look, physicians can't agree on the value of aspirin; yet this guy wants you to stand up and speak in absolutes: "Joe’s Widgets are the best ever, the only ones that really work; we are the #1 company for innovative, world class customer care; next year will be a record breaker for Joe's Widgets."

I don't believe any of it. And I don't like Joe... don't trust him as far as I can throw him.

Alternatively, "Our widgets can be found in many of the world’s most sophisticated designs. Next year could be a record breaker with a bit of luck, some hard work and the support of our customers" sounds truer to me and shows Joe is a reasonable, professional fellow with the same hopes and concerns and work ethic we all have.

I like that Joe. I trust him.

The earlier tell-me-what-to-do Joe seems shallow, as if he has no respect for me and, quite frankly, he seems to be just one more narcissistic prat with whom I don’t want to do business.

Pride is one thing; macho, egotistical advertising/PR is another.

Hercule Poirot had a great line: “A doctor who is 100% certain is an assassin.”

The same idea applies to old school marketers. Their blowhard ads are so ‘sure’ of the truth and so convinced that consumers can’t or won’t verify the facts, they’re murdering your campaign and, what’s worse, killing your relationship with customers… dead!

New Wave Marketing 101: Hemingway, Cezanne and What To Leave Out

This is deep: so much so that at first glance it seems easy. It’s not. It sits at the heart of artistic and creative endeavors, not the least of which is the marketing narrative.

Hemingway claims that he developed his terse, poetic style by looking at Cezanne’s work. That sounds a bit romantic and perhaps apocryphal. [We all realize that great artists often give enigmatic answers because they don’t like the idea of talking about art.]

Later, Hemingway said that the key to good writing is understanding what to leave out. An expert can leave things out because he knows them… the less knowledgeable and less talented leave out important things and include the obvious and the unnecessary.

These ideas mesh if you think long and hard.

As an impressionist/post-impressionist, Cezanne was obviously not trying to be realistic. Not every detail had to be exact or included. He painted only those colors and strokes and images that were needed to create the physical effect on the optic nerves and the emotional impact he was seeking. Not one stroke more or less.

You already know that Hemingway was the same. Read “Hills Like White Elephants” and notice how little description it takes to convey the emotional tension between the man and woman. At first glance, it appears that Hemingway has told you nothing of importance. The dialog is like eavesdropping on a couple at dinner. “Would you like a drink?” “No, I’m not thirsty.” “Hungry?” “Perhaps a little.” “It’s a simple thing, really.” “Yes, it’s always so simple.”

There’s seemingly nothing there, yet we’re emotional wrecks by the end of the story. That’s art.

We know that good marketing is both factual and emotional and I believe more emotional than facts because these days consumers hear so many contradictory facts that we’ve lost all scientific certainty.

So let’s say we’re trying to build an emotional connection with our audience by describing a scene… a couple on a park bench. Think – there are thousands of words and pictures we can use to describe the park, the sky, the couple, the bench, their clothing down to the color of their socks… skin texture, grass, birds, squirrels, etc. It’s endless.

You’re getting it. The artist takes a long hard look and chooses to describe only those things that best convey the emotion he or she is seeking… let’s say one close-up photo of the couple’s feet barely touching and short descriptions of their posture, the rickety bench seat and a child that goes running past. That’s it! From all the limitless possibilities (again, the weather, the sky, their complexions, the sounds, the smells, virtually millions of things) the artist has chosen the three or four essentials that few others have noticed, and has left out all the rest. That’s Cezanne; that’s Hemingway; that’s great marketing storytelling and design.

Most of us include too much of the obvious… and ironically we still manage to leave out the essential bits that someone like Hemingway picks up on. Why? Because he ‘knows’ about couples the way Cezanne knows how two colors placed side by side make a third. All the rest is just so much unnecessary bull that clouds the mind and kills emotion.

Plus, Hemingway and Cezanne took the time to really see; and they never describe the obvious things we all grasp at first glance. To do so is to be trite and tired.

Marketing is the same. You need to be an expert in humanity and emotions and have a keen eye for subtleties that contain the whole truth (all of this takes years); you don’t really need to be an expert on the product because you’re selling emotion more than facts – and consumers can easily find any fact they like.

Tell and show the consumer only those few, simple things to best convey emotion – and little else (facts here and there are fine, depending upon the product, if it’s B2B or B2C).

Be more like Cezanne and Hemingway and less like the directions you get in a box of IKEA furniture.

NOTE: This has nothing to do with length! It might take you 1,000 words and 10 pictures to convey a simple emotional truth. Rather, this has to do with your ability to get to the core of a product or a service or a cause with as few unnecessary words and obvious images as possible.

No one said this would be easy.

New Wave Marketing 101: There's a Lot To Learn from Antiques Roadshow

If you’re in tune with your surroundings, and all good marketers must be, you’ll see the telltale signs of changing cultural and consumer values everywhere you look.

Last night, I watched The Antiques Roadshow. I’m like all of you; I love the program… love to guess the prices while secretly hoping my bin-diving, charity-shopping, yard-sale-loving wife comes up with a heretofore-unknown Picasso that’s worth millions. [Note: my wife and daughter did indeed find a painting worth $2000, put in a dumpster by a Park City neighbor who was moving – a Harry Mintz, to be exact.]

These days, the Roadshow is rerunning the best parts of older shows and comparing the prices then with those of today. If a hand-cut vase was worth $5000 in 1998, what’s it worth in 2012? More or less?

This is a marketer’s treasure trove if you believe, as I believe, that the very nature of consumers has changed. [I should have prefaced this blog with the fact that I have an MA in American Culture, so I was trained to spot the signs, so to speak.]

In what way has our very nature changed?

The current trend is to value more cultural, historical and artistic items (you might say 'symbolic' things) over the practical arts like furniture, vases, antique appliances, 19^th century children’s toys and the folksy items and faux art things that usually dominate the show.

Example? A well-carved highboy from the 1770s that was worth $200,000 in 1998 is worth less today. Not by much, but less. A turn of the century pristine, all-metal child’s toy with a handmade clockwork driving the wheels is worth half of what it was in 1999. As are antique watches, baseball cards and collectibles of all sorts. Jewelry has remained flat in spite of historically high gold prices. Pop art pieces and modern American paintings have dropped in value unless they are from a handful or recognized masters.

Conversely, anything related to mythical American History – Lincoln’s autograph, a lithograph of a Revolutionary War battle, documents of even the mildest historical interest – have gone up in price by as much as 150%.

What’s this tell you as a marketer?

People have stopped collecting things: baubles, 1950s household items, Art Deco bits from the 20’s, old lunch boxes, Hollywood memorabilia, Tiffany lamps, pottery… you know, things… the things that used to dominate flea markets and antique shops. Dare I say it? Middle class, nouveau riche stuff is suddenly unpopular.

Why? Because we no longer have the time nor the extra income to buy anything that is valued on the whim of ‘collectors’, the so-called experts. Look where the banking and Wall Street experts got us. And if anything can drop in price as quickly as did our homes, why risk buying a so-called ‘collectible’ in hopes it will accrue in value? It’s always been nonsense… now we all can see it.

And suddenly, given the current economic shifts and nature of our day-to-day lives, the 1920s – 1950s seem like so much useless history that can’t teach us anything about 2012; and we no longer want to be reminded of high times that won’t come again. True or not, most believe the middle class is sinking.

Plus, jobs are hard to come by and most of us will be forced to move several times over a decade. We can’t be tied down with our collection of cute Disney characters.  Of course, the forced move to smaller homes means we don’t have the room for massive wooden pieces of furniture, even if they are Chippendale.

No, today’s consumers are leaner and meaner and less optimistic.

Conversely, there’s a longing for things related to America’s older, nobler past... when Americans actually pulled together to solve problems… when we were isolated from the trials of Europe and not worried sick about the value of the Euro… when politicians were named Jackson and Lincoln and Grant and Teddy Roosevelt, and not Romney, Obama and Newt. We’re holding onto these things; we value these things as a talisman reminder of when this country was young and fearless. Dare I say it, when we still felt good about attaining our share of the American Dream and were proud of our government?

So, if your marketing efforts can recall these days, reignite the feeling of our collective pragmatic, less ideological American spirit, or even make us feel guilty for losing the American sketch while offering a small solution – well, you’re onto something.

Final note: I said baubles and vases and carvings have lost value. That’s correct in all but one area. Care to take a guess?

Almost anything Chinese has doubled or tripled in price: Chinese jade carvings, vases, jewelry, ceremonial teapots have shot through the roof.

You don’t need a degree in American Culture to understand why.

New Wave Marketing 101: Dear Mr. Ogilvy... Where's the Enthusiasm?

If you read Ogilvy's book on advertising (and you should), you might remember his original ad seeking creative directors, which he called Trumpeter Swans.

Ogilvy was looking for personal genius, he said, and inspiring leadership. I like the imagery -- marketers as trumpeter swans: they want to stand out, and as I interpret it, they are enthusiastically creative and not afraid to flaunt it.

So, where are these swans? I sit in meeting after meeting with marketers, designers, B2B and B2C marketing managers,  CEOs, web guys, the lot, and it's like spending an afternoon in the morgue: no excitement, no buzz, nothing. It's as if these men and women are going to the gallows later in the day.

Marketing is 90% enthusiasm about your product, your service, your company. This excitement is essentially what we impart through ads and pr, etc. Passion goes a long, long way in marketing and in life. Why then is it in such short supply these days?

Marketing is meant to be creative, thought provoking and entertaining. How can it be any of these things when both clients and agency types are so low key, so ho hum, so boring?

If you don't have enthusiasm for what you do, stop doing it and try something else.

If I'm a company looking for an agency, I want to see three things: intelligence, creativity and enthusiasm. Two out of three ain't good enough. All three or nothing. 

From the agency side, I want to see the same traits in potential clients. Those who come to us with no excitement or enthusiasm, dragging their feet to the meetings, acting as if they're being forced to market and with no passion in their product offering or company... well, these clients will fail no matter what we do or try to do for them. Why get started and, as an agency, why get tarred by the brush of boredom these clients will surely bring? 

Two rules about marketing that have not changed since day one: frequency works no matter how mediocre the marketing; and, enthusiasm is the most important ingredient to a successful campaign or ad. 

OK, here's the third: start with a quality product or a superior service... quality breeds enthusiasm.

New Wave Marketing 101: Bring All You Have and All You Are to the Table

I believe that marketing, like writing, is an activity that requires you to bring all you are, all that you have to the table. That’s what I love about both.

This is a difficult idea to get across quickly but I’ll give it a shot.

If I say to a varied group of students in a basic writing class, “Write a few paragraphs describing your favorite person,” I might expect to get a very different essay from, say, a 20-year-old single woman born and raised in Georgia and a 55-year-old-married man from Liberia. (I did have these two students in one of my classes at Georgia Perimeter College.)

That makes sense, right? Two vastly different people should produce two very different essays.

It doesn't work that way.

As an adjunct professor for 12 years I can tell you that the stories will be amazingly and disappointingly similar and trite. “My favorite person is my wife (boyfriend). She (he) is always there for me and loves me for who I am.”

The problem? These two students didn’t bring all they are to the job. There’s no ethnic, cultural or personal detail... nothing about family or city of birth or life experience. Instead, they turned in what was expected, what they heard on TV last night, what they’ve written in other classes.

It takes courage to bring all you are to the table because if an instructor (or client) critiques the essay (or advertisement), he or she seems to be criticizing you at a deep, personal level. Plus, most people wrongly believe that their lives are uninteresting and unimportant. So why would you write about the details?

Same for products and brands.

I have worked with dozens of companies and hundreds of marketing people (oops, ‘executives’). When I suggest that they say something unique about a product, they reject the idea. Out of fear, I suppose… but also out of the same false belief as my example students: our stuff is not really that new or that interesting. And what if someone criticizes us… says we’re not what we claim we are… how will we defend ourselves?

I am from Pittsburgh. A lower middle class ethnic neighborhood of Italians and Lebanese. I spent eight years in college studying American Culture and 20 years as a musician, 10 of those years on the road. I love Pittsburgh sports teams, read a lot of literature and try to understand quantum physics. When I get angry I curse enough to make a sailor blush. Through my teen years the daily greeting among friends wasn't "Hi, how are you?", it was 'What the f, mother f?' (You can’t make this stuff up.)

So guess what? I’m an aggressive marketer. I sometimes ‘hate’ the f—ing competition… I love assertive direct response, but after reading great literature the copy/story has to be logical and a bit sophisticated. More often than not, I’ll use a literary style and even break into the poetic (because I’ve studied a lot of Modernists like Eliot and Pound). And it will all be framed in a perverse sense of gallows humor that comes from spending 10 years 24/7 with cynical musicians. I can cut like a knife if provoked.

That’s what I bring to the table with every ad, every marketing piece, everytime. It’s unavoidable for me... as it should be for you.

Look, your style won’t be applicable for every job… there are some marketing tasks you just won't do well… and your style should never overpower the product. But you should be able to see yourself in the work… in the insights you bring and the stories you tell… stories that come from your unique combination of upbringing, schooling and life experiences. Otherwise, you’re just like every other schmuck who loves his significant other because he or she is “there for you.”

[If you can’t bring everything you are to the table, try B2B. It takes very little to write copy or develop a campaign that basically says, “We’re pretty good, just like our competitors.”]

Think Don Draper. He killed his superior officer by accidentally setting him on fire. Later, when asked to come up with a tag line for a tobacco  company, Don offered: ‘Lucky Strike… It’s Toasted’. (Don’t tell me Mad Men isn’t the funniest show on TV.)

The Prufrockian question that all marketers must ask is this: “Do I dare disturb the universe?” 

F-ing right you dare. Go Steelers.

New Wave Marketing 101: Gravy Trainers, Quantum Stupidity & the Emotions of Quantum Shopping

Please indulge me as I start with a long aside...

Most people know nothing about quantum mechanics; and what they do know is usually wrong. Say ‘quantum’ and some wise acre will chime in, “Oh yeah, everything is relative, there is no truth, do whatever you want, there’s no right or wrong.”

Thanks so much for that tidbit.

Yet, this ignorance hasn’t stopped marketing agencies from trading on the term ‘quantum’. I Googled ‘quantum marketing’ and up popped scores of gravy-training quantum marketing companies.

I could barely stand to read the convoluted logic of these agencies. Here’s a typical paragraph:

“Quantum Marketing Group offers expertise and resources that have helped organizations maximize performance and identify hidden opportunities for profitable growth. Quantum helps small, medium and distributed enterprise organizations develop an effective sales automation process. Well designed and properly implemented sales automation improvements deliver a strong return on investment (ROI) and return on time (ROT). Sales automation improvements prepare a company for longer term sustainable growth. Sales automation, properly developed, provides tools, methods and processes needed to build and operate a successful sales and marketing program.”

As Blackadder said to Baldrick, ‘utter crap’. These geniuses broke the first rule of B2B marketing which is NEVER WRITE ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR COMPANY THAT THE COMPETITION CAN SIGN. How does the above statement make these guys different? And what happened to quantum? Sales automation = quantum? In what parallel universe?

What does any of this tripe have to do with the observer’s perspective or individual packets of data or the speed of light or electron clouds or collapsing wave functions or space-time or Neils Bohr or Schrodinger’s cat or Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle or branes or gravity or space-time? Read this slop again: Quantum Marketing Group hangs its hat on sales automation, whatever the hell that means… but I know this much, it has NOTHING to do with quantum anything – unless there’s such a thing as quantum stupidity.

These guys and the other 100 ‘quantum’ agencies are gravy trainers: “let’s say ‘quantum’ because it means nothing but sounds scientific and oh, so modern.” Is that the kind of thinking you want from a marketing company?

Glad I got that off my chest.

Now to the issue at hand. In 2006 some guy called Danziger came up with the ‘quantum theory of shopping’. Yes, he gravy-trained the name, figuring that because he developed a mathematical formula as to why people buy, it must be ‘quantum’.

Forgive him… because his formula is dead on. Here it is:

P = (N+F+A) ×E²

P is the propensity for a shopper to buy

N is need

F is product features

A is affordability

E is emotion

Notice that there are two tangible factors: F (features) & A (affordability). Intangibles are N (need) & E (emotion).

[As I look at this, Danziger has an argument about using ‘quantum’ because part of this formula relates to position and perspective (as does quantum mechanics): the buyer’s emotional perspective on what’s needed and what’s important at the moment of purchase is in the ‘quantum’ ballpark.]

Like quantum mechanics, when it comes to shopping/purchasing there’s more unknown than known. We do ‘know’ the features and the affordability (to some extent); but we’re working with probabilities when it comes to need and emotion, particularly E.

[Notice, that you multiply by E squared – it’s the equivalent of the speed of light in Einstein’s E=MC² (that’s 186,000 miles per second squared or one hell of a number). For Danziger, E (emotion) is that ‘big’ number.]

Emotions, excitement and pleasure and even fear that people associate with a product, can transform need into desire: enhancing perceived product features and increasing attraction. And we all know that emotions can make people pay a higher price than they ever intended (no explanation necessary to anyone who’s ever bought a home).

Building an emotional response is what marketing is all about. That's true for B2C and B2B, although the B2B ‘marketers’ will never, ever admit this because they and most of their clients just don’t get it.

What’s the best way to build an emotional response? Tell a good story for god’s sake. Facts and bullet points and “we’re the best” approaches are cold and unemotional. They are not marketing, in spite of what 99% of B2B agencies think.

The right words with the right images, often shown to consumers in unexpected places, create the E² – sometimes at the speed of light.

Look, marketing has changed completely, at least in the way stories are told and what emotional triggers stimulate today’s consumers. But what hasn’t changed is Danziger’s formula (with my addendum): E (emotion) drives sales and S (story) builds emotion.

This isn’t rocket science… or it it?

[NOTE: This formula applies to in-store displays as well as web sites: they too contribute to the E in Danziger’s equation. The more you can make customers feel pleasant and positive during the entire selling process, the more you enhance their shopping experience and the more emotion you build… and that emotion creates need, improves perceived features and expands the concept of what’s affordable.]