Business advertising

No doubt when you were a child you probably remember your parents referring to the advertising on television as being dictated by the Nielsen families. The Nielsen families are families chosen by the Nielsen ratings group to host a Nielsen box in their home, which recorded a log of what they watched with specific details of how long they watched it and when they changed the channel and other data.
These Nielsen families were then monitored over time to decide what America was watching and when they were watching it and in what quantity, as America's television appetite grew advertisers wanted a way to measure their effectiveness in the new medium. The Nielsen project was a great success and provided a tremendous amount of information for the advertising metrics of the day.
The Nielsen ratings methods were similar to the advertising metrics that are put to use on the Internet of the modern age every day. Simply understanding the concept of advertisement metrics requires concentration and understanding on the part of the user beyond what many normal average Webmasters can muster. Understanding the concept behind comprehending Web analytics and advertisement metrics means understanding the value of knowing intimate details about the visitors to your website or web presence. Understanding what visitors are looking for when they come to your site and what they find is an important part of offering the most effective online service that you can possibly put together and advertising metrics and Web analytics make a good way to record information about users that visit your site and where they go when they leave. In this way the webmaster can keep track of the keywords that users search as they visit the Webmaster's site, as well as understand where they travel to as they leave the webmaster's site.
Understanding your visitors can help you monetize your web presence much more effectively, and provide much more useful information and content for users in general by understanding what it is they're looking for in the first place. Rarely does a user look for one thing and find content that is not relevant and then choose to utilize it anyway. When searching for content, users are focusing on extremely targeted keywords that mean something to them and they generally expect results. When supplying what users require it is important to consider the role of advertising metrics as a way of determining exactly what it is that users are searching for when they visit your site.
This simple step of supplying what the advertising metrics software tells you that your visitors are looking for can boost your website's visibility and exposure tremendously, as soon as your content reflects the most popular search items you will receive that much more traffic and enjoy better conversion, repeat visitors and visitors will begin to spend more time on your website in general.

A promotion scorecard is exactly what it sounds like, a scorecard that compares all available essential information for promotions in a native application that brings all the information together and makes it easy for the webmaster and web user to view and understand in one glance. This information on the promotion scorecard can assist the webmaster in deciding what type of promotional programs that he or she might choose to use and the effectiveness of those programs as an ongoing concern. Promotion scorecards can contain all information and on what is critical to the user. While some users might consider some factors a priority in the promotion scorecard content, promotion scorecard has to be and modified for each individual user and their concerns. What ever priorities each user may have a their very likely to be distant from the priorities of others, while focusing on a few central things that may be similar. The ability to customize your promotion scorecard is an important facet of utilizing every available tool to effectively promote your business or online presence.
The promotion scorecard is a promotional tool that can provide a tremendous amount of help in deciding what type of promotional programs to utilize and implement in your attempt to earn and create a commercial web presence on the Internet. Utilizing the promotion scorecard, the webmaster can compare one strategy to another, prices, availability and any number of other quantifiable parameters and information in a single format, easy and familiar for the user to learn. As the promotion scorecard becomes more and more detailed and more information is filled out, it becomes simpler for the webmaster and web user to understand and make inferences between comparisons about the different promotional tools available. Using the promotion scorecard will assist the user in making these comparisons between promotional tools and keeping track of all available information and special options.
It's important to remember that the promotion scorecard is only as good as the information that it is built on. Faulty data and spotty information can affect the overall effectiveness of the promotion scorecard in general and can create other problems in the implementation of your promotional program and reaction to the data collected from the promotion scorecard. Without an accurate cross sampling of information, the promotion scorecard cannot accurately do it's job and provide the webmaster or commercial user with the information that they are trying to understand. This wealth of information, as long as it is accurate, can provide the basis for a tremendous amount of effective promotion scorecard applications that can assist in building a Web advertising and promotional Internet presence. Without the use of the promotion scorecard, the commercial webmaster would be somewhat handicapped in their ability to compare promotional offers and specials in a simple and easy to understand environment.
When filling out your promotion scorecard, take special care to be extremely accurate and make sure to fill out all spaces in the data field. The more information on a promotion scorecard, the easier it is to make the decision as to what promotional tools to use and special offers to implement.

The idea of using ads metrics to boost your site's ratings is nothing new, as this is the very reason that ads metrics were designed and put into use. Studying web analytics software and ads metrics can help the user understand what is bringing visitors to his site and how to improve their existing sites exposure and ability to attract visitors. These ads metrics software tools, usually found for free on the Internet, can fill in the blanks on many questions that the webmaster might have on the originations and destinations of the visitors to his or her website. Knowing more about where your Web visitors come from and where they go when they leave your site can help you in the effort to earn more from your web presence and your promotion efforts online. Studying the information and data that comes back from your Web analytics and ads metrics tools can assist you in making all manner of decisions regarding the promotion of your website and how to go about securing new revenue streams and sources of traffic through the use of new keywords and relevant key phrases. Through the use of ads metrics you can determine what these perfect keywords and phrases are, by seeing how website visitors came to your site and what keywords and key phrases brought them there.
Webmasters who used ads metrics tools to ascertain the most regularly searched keywords and phrases are accomplishing multiple goals and tasks by keeping abreast of how users search the web. Knowing what users are searching for and what items are high search traffic topics helps the webmaster keep his website relevant. Knowing what users look for every day and what is a popular search term and key phrase on the web will keep the struggling webmaster ahead of his competition, the main purpose of ads metrics and their use on the Internet. By defining what it is that users seek out when visiting your website you can provide more of that popular topic or item in order to attract more and more visitors and retain the visitors you already receive with better service and more prompt attention to detail. This concept of learning intimate details of what your visitors are searching for and what they searched for to reach your website can do wonders for the ads metrics efforts of your website and commercial web presence overall. Studying the ads metrics that relates to your site can provide you with a tremendous amount of information that can help you increase in earnings, generate more traffic and convert better on the traffic that you receive. While traffic is great, nothing beats extremely targeted traffic for its ability to convert into cold hard cash. Using ads metrics to target the visitors to your site more accurately is a common focus and simple task for the webmaster to accomplish, despite the fact it is of an ongoing nature.
As Web analytics and ads metrics software programs continue to advance with new technology, the effectiveness of Webmasters and their ability to understand users and their behavior online will continue to progress as well, giving the user the ability to focus on laser targeted ads metrics analyzed keywords for maximum effectiveness at traffic generation and visitor conversion.

Advertising metrics refers to the concept of tracking of impressions of end-users and keeping an assortment of data involving Web trends and user habits. Television advertising tracking is done by use of Nielsen ratings and Nielsen boxes. This is basically the same concept of advertising metrics.
Keeping track of the effect of advertising on users is an important aspect of advertising and marketing, as knowing what works and what does not work is powerful knowledge to an advertiser who don't want to repeatedly spend money on advertising campaigns that don't t work as they won't stay in the advertising business very long spending money frivolously, which is why tracking advertising campaigns is so important. Advertising metrics online is represented by a host of different software tools that allow users to track visitors to their websites as well as a host of other information that assists the webmaster in deciding what advertising campaigns have been effective and which ones have not been so effective.
Advertising managers can contain information such as where the user came from and what page they left from as well as what link they clicked on to leave your site. This information can give the webmaster a comprehensive overview of where to focus his traffic generating efforts overall, narrowing down the field of available advertising and marketing choices.
By making use of the extensive wealth of advertising metrics tools on the Internet, the webmaster can keep extremely close track of all the users that visit his site, and learn all types of information about them including what type of web browser they use, their operating system and other important features.
The most interesting feature of Web advertising metrics is the ability to determine what keywords and key phrases that users searched to find your website. In this way, webmasters can find out which words and phrases are most popular with search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and other popular web-based search engine software. Knowing how users are reaching your site and what keywords and phrases that they are using at search engines can allow the webmaster to tailor their efforts to meet these popular terms and phrases much more effectively, making better use of the keyword content and phrases that are already existing on the webmaster's site.
In this way, the webmaster can utilize the advertising metrics to inform him or her about the available wealth of information involving visitors to their site and what type of Internet vehicle brought them there, whether it was a link from another site, a visitor from google search or even a visitor from an image site. Knowing information such as whether they came from an image site or not is very important, although it might not seem that way at first. Websites with a lot of image hits convert poorly, although it is not widely known. Knowing what your traffic is doing on your site can be a big help to the webmaster and advertising metrics is the number one tool to provide this information.

The concept of an advertising scorecard might be completely alien to some people, but others latch onto the idea very quickly. The concept is simply the idea of separating advertisers by their effectiveness, costs and other services and levels of quality. By reading each and every advertising and marketing opportunity and keeping track of these ratings, users can create an advertising scorecard.
The advertising scorecard can help you decide between advertising methods and companies that offer similar products and services. While the Internet makes it even more difficult to keep track of available advertising opportunities, it is wise to conduct your due diligence in reading through all the available options and selecting those that most closely suit your needs. It is in this respect that the advertising scorecard is the most viable tool that you can implement.
Creating an advertising scorecard is a simple affair of listing all the possible advertising options and breaking them down into categories of price, reliability and immediacy as well as a host of other factors that are important to you. Considering all your options is critical at this stage, as leaving out an advertising opportunity can ruin you later on down the line. Comparing the opportunities available requires that you collect information and data from all sorts of different types of advertising, no matter how mundane.
While surfing the Internet and searching topics such as advertising prices and available media, it's important to keep in mind that the best way to determine local and regional advertising rates is to utilize the phone and simply call the advertising agency or other company and effectively engage them in conversation and ascertain the exact nature of the advertising service being purchased.
This step allows the user to negotiate and bargain with the proprietor of the advertising company or their representative. Simply leaving a name and e-mail address on a website is not enough to appropriate the best available advertising and budget considerations for your needs and requirements. Personal contact is always the best way to negotiate prices and any advertising effort should have the user conduct this initial step of first contact and began negotiating price right away. If you happen to change your mind later on, it is a no harm, no foul deal, since it is a sales situation if you find a better sale somewhere else then by all means it is your right to take advantage of it.
Once you have decided upon what type of advertising to use using your advertising scorecard to compare available services, you can move on to choosing the available purveyors of those services and comparing their prices and other features using the same advertising scorecard that you used for deciding what type of advertising to go with in the first place. Utilization of the advertising scorecard can save a lot of trouble and hassle later on, as a simple layout and comparison of available services and proprietors and establishments will grow by you with all you need to know about available advertising in your area, region or globally.

Remember, this is all about long-term relationships – attention to detail can work wonders for your business. If you are honest with your customers, they will respect you for it and usually bow to your judgement. Of course, this puts a bit more pressure on you to deliver the goods!
One good example of choosing the right copy and design is online banner adverts.
After five years of working with a group of people on a series of industrial websites, the group noticed that animated leaderboard ads (horizontal ads across the top of the page that display different messages or designs) were losing their appeal with visitors on certain sections of the site. They found that some of the highly technical content pages were still getting decent responses from animated banners, but other basic content pages with standard company news announcements were receiving a lower number of clicks from animated banners. When they tried a static banner (one that doesn’t rotate with different messages) they found that the responses improved on the basic content sections of the site. Although, they couldn’t fully confirm the reasons for this, they discovered that people who were viewing non-technical related material seemed to be more willing to click on a ‘less fancy’ banner ad. The production and sales departments could then advise companies on which designs to use on different sections of the site and this became a very good move indeed.
This attention to detail showed the customer that the company was actively monitoring response levels from different designs and it meant that they could work on a relevant design to bring in the very best results.
Note: Always take a close look at what is working in your media and advise your customers accordingly. If you are honest with them, it will form a positive rapport, as well as a good potential long-term relationship.
Andrew Long is an advertising sales consultant and expert in the field of generating revenues from websites and other media. He offers media companies a bespoke solution to selling advertising and making money from their websites and other media.

You need to advertise to attract customers. But what can you do if you have a limited advertising budget? Lots! The following methods are some of the best and cheapest ways to promote your online business with low cost advertising and no cost advertising.
-Link Exchange. Offer to trade links with other websites similar to yours. Your search engine rank will increase if your site links with a lot of other sites. This leads to more visitors to yours. Include a list of "Recommended Sites" on your website. Search under "reciprocal links" to find several good ones.
-Search Engine Submissions. Some sites will automatically submit your website to the top search engines. Submit to MSN, Yahoo, Google, etc. Even the minor search engines, foreign search engines, and directories can give you needed and valuable traffic. A great free service that will submit instantly to 40 great search engines and directories is Submitexpress.com.
-Write Articles. Write original articles and submit them to article submission services. As your well written original articles get picked up and published by other blogs and websites with your link back to your website you get more traffic, more links, and better search engine rankings for your website. A great service to submit your articles to AND to get plenty of new free articles to post to your blog or website is Ezinearticles.com.
-Start Your Own Blog. A blog is a website that you can quickly set up at no cost. Start a blog on a subject of interest to you or where you have expertise. You can post articles there regularly, advertise to get readers, and readers can post comments to your articles. You can add affiliate links from Clickbank and Google Adsense to your Blog to monetize (make money) from it once it gets going. Sign up to be an affiliate at Clickbank and you can find some suitable products to advertise on your blog, with your affiliate link, in the links section on your blog. Check the "Promotion" section at Clickbank. You can sign up for Google AdSense too. They will give you code to insert on your blog and when readers click on the ads you will make money and be sent a check from Google.
-Post On Blogs. Submit your article also as posts to high ranking blogs similar to your website. Or you can post a relevant comment and add a signature line with a link back to your blog, with maybe an offer of a no cost report on your blog. Check their posting policy, if any. Do a Google search for "(your niche) blogs" and post your article or comment to them with a link back to your website.
-Post To Ad Forums. Find some advertising forums with a Google search for "ad forums" or "advertising forums." Sign up for them and begin to regularly post your articles to them.
-FFA Links and Classifieds. Prospect Response and other FFAs and classifieds can bring in some traffic when you have time for them, and add links to your website to increase search engine ranking. Do a search for "FFAs" or "classifieds" on Google to find some.
That's it! Some great ideas to get you started with cheap ads and no cost ads!

Business owners go to great lengths to select the ideal names for their business. They know that a name plays a key role in creating a first impression about the business, and is an important consideration in making that impression both positive and memorable.
There’s a visual first impression that’s every bit as important as the verbal message delivered by the name. A company’s logo is a unique symbol that identifies a business or other organization. It represents the business in advertising, on wearables, on signs, and in every other way the business connects with key stakeholders. As people become familiar with the logo, they associate it with the company’s characteristics.
Business owners and marketing directors understand the value of having a logo, which explains why obtaining one is one of a new company’s first steps – and why a company that’s eager to change its image will often begin that process with a new logo. While they understand the need for a logo, few of those people have a deep understanding of the considerations that go into logo design, or about the most effective ways to create a logo that will stand the test of time.
Easy – or is it?
It seems that it’s amazingly easy to design a logo. After all, everyone from the local quick-print shop to the guy down the street who makes T-shirts claims that they’re capable. Unfortunately, sources like that typically design a logo that’s perfect for the immediate need but doesn’t accommodate all the other applications you’ll have. For example, a colorful logo that looks great on a computer screen might lose its charm when reproduced in black and white on a fax cover sheet. A logo that’s stunning on letterhead might be poorly suited for signage. And a dazzling, intricate design can drive the price of an embroidered golf shirt right off the course.
Those reasons and more are why it makes good sense for anyone serious about a new logo to turn to a professional graphic designer. Designers have the training and expertise to understand the many challenges involved in distilling a company’s personality into a graphic symbol, along with the practical experience to know the many ways in which that symbol will be applied.
Look for versatility.
A skilled graphic designer will consider the many places your logo may eventually appear (including some you might not have considered). That may include everything from business cards and letterhead, to vehicle decals, to store signage, to premium items, to advertising, to that familiar golf shirt. The designer’s goal will be to create a logo that provides a consistent image of your company, no matter how and where it is used.
The designer will also consider the various forms your logo may take. It may appear in full color on your signs, in just two colors on your letterhead and business cards, and in black and white in newspaper ads. It may be blown up to six feet wide on an outdoor billboard and shrunk down to a half-inch on a product label. Sometimes, it may appear in white on a dark background. As the designer moves from initial concept to finished design, all of those potential uses will be considered, and concepts that fall short will be discarded.
A step-by-step process.
Most professional designers will begin the process of logo design by asking you questions and listening carefully to your answers. They’ll develop a thorough understanding of your business and what makes it different from your competitors. You’ll probably have opportunities to review a variety of very rough sketches before the designer creates three or four recommendations. If the designer does not provide sketches showing how the logo will work in a variety of applications, be sure to ask for them before giving final approval.
Be sure to tell the designer about any special applications. For example, if it’s critical that your logo be etched into metal tools or applied as a decal to a service truck, knowing that will help the designer ensure that you’re not disappointed down the road.
How much?
Logo design is like many other things in business: prices are all over the board, but you’ll typically get what you pay for. That newspaper sales representative may create a logo for next to nothing, but when you try to use it elsewhere, you’ll find that next to nothing is about what it’s worth. If you work with a graphic designer or design studio, you’ll typically pay between $1500 and $10,000. When you consider that your logo will symbolize everything about your business, and will be used everywhere in your company, that’s a small investment.
How do you find a graphic designer?
A good way to start is by paying attention to logos you like. If you notice that a local business has an impressive logo, call the owner or marketing director and ask about the designer. If they’re happy with the work, they’ll usually also be happy to make a referral – and if they’re unhappy, you’ll want to know that, too. Focus on thinking
Once you connect with the designer, ask to see samples of his or her work. When looking at a particular logo, go beyond its appearance. Ask about the challenges the designer faced and what the client wanted to convey. After all, marketing and communications savvy is just as important in logo design as artistic taste – and there’s a big difference between a designer who takes an approach because it served a need and one who took an approach because it “seemed cool.”
Remember that you’ll live with the logo you choose for many years to come – and making a change down the road will be far more costly and disruptive than investing the time and money today. Your logo may never be as famous as Nike’s swoosh, but if it presents your company in the best possible light, it’s every bit as successful.

Everything we need to succeed in business has already been created. I know this is a bold statement but unfortunately it’s true. So it’s up to us to use our imagination to expand what already exists in the realm of the advertising world. We need to be creative with our marketing campaigns in order to catch and keep the attention of our potential clients and leave an indelible impression in their minds. If they can’t remember who we are or what we’re selling, they just won’t buy it – period.
Let’s talk about imagination for a moment. Just having a solid knowledge base about your clients or products isn’t enough. Without including a healthy dose of your own imagination into the equation, your ads just become empty words scratched on paper or heard over the radio or television. Imagination is really the offspring from our thoughts. If our minds are always picking up on different vibrations and remaining open to new ideas, it’s important to capture these diverse thoughts on paper so we can utilize them later on in our business.
Yet if you also forget to incorporate a sense of creativity into the equation to set you apart from every other Joe Blow on the block, your business stands to get lost in the crowd and become just another negative statistic.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.
Joe is trying to sell his house which needs some repairs. He keeps repeating in his mind that he just wants to get rid of the property and isn’t using any imagination in his sales pitch. His mindset of negativity is directly affecting the outcome of his sales brochures and advertisements. Instead of listing it as a ‘fixer upper’, he could have used more positive and vibrant words such as “excellent opportunity to make some extra cash”; a “fix and flip” venture; “renovator special” or “selling well below market value”. These phrases would generate a larger amount of positive interest in the property and most likely have helped it sell faster by using more creative imagery words.
Imagination is the creative mind constantly thinking and coming up with innovative ideas all the time. You’re merely shifting or renovating an ‘old’ concept into a ‘new’ idea. The primary function of the creative part of your mind is to organize your imagination and manifest these new thoughts into reality. If you can combine the power of your imagination coupled with the action of the creative part of your brain, you will be able to implement the “WOW” factor into your business. This will ultimately set you apart from your competition, which is still obstinately clinging to the old tried and true methods of running their business often with limited success.
Everyone has heard the expression “If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it”. If you can see what other people are missing, chances are you’re thinking outside the box and utilizing your imagination quotient well.
Try flexing your imagination this week and come up with one short slogan or sentence to describe your business/product that is totally outside your normal mode of advertising. You may be pleasantly surprised at what your mind is able to create once you remove the roadblock of sticking to your cushy comfort zone.

Do you accomplish what you set out to do for your customers? Do you provide more value than your competitors? Are you genuinely proud of what you do?
Most business owners and executives respond with an enthusiastic "Yes!" to those questions. But then I read their brochures, ads and websites, and I'm puzzled. If they're so convinced that they're the best around, why are those brochures, ads and websites crammed full of empty, meaningless platitudes?
If your company is the real deal, prove it. And one of the most effective ways to do that is through a simple yet powerful tool called the case study. In simple terms, a case study is telling the world what you did for someone, how you did it, why you did it that way, and what the results were.
When it comes to setting yourself apart, few tactics are as effective as real-world examples of what you've done. Explaining how your expertise or products helped someone else achieve goals or reduce stress connects with your audience. And if the company being profiled in the case study is widely known or well-respected, you'll bask in the glow of their reputation.
Case studies are compelling, powerful, and versatile. Your ads can make some vague promise that your veeblefetzers increase profits by allowing customers to core more radishes. Or, Joe Schmoe at Perky Produce can describe how they helped his company core 42 percent more radishes per hour with a 16 percent lower labor cost. That's positive, believable proof, rather than hype.
Your brochures, website and newsletters are great places for case studies. People like to read about the challenges others face. Case studies in email newsletters can include links to your customers' websites, which is a nice way of saying that you're proud to do business with them.
One of the best ways to use case studies is in trade magazine articles. Most editors hunger for meaningful stories that will help readers. Provide an article describing how a major radish processor boosted profitability, and you've helped fill their pages at no cost to them. By publishing your story, the publication lends third-party credibility to your message – and you can use reprints in your marketing efforts.
Worried that customers or clients won't want to share their stories? Most will actually be complimented. In fact, the biggest impediment to creating successful case studies isn't hesitant customers. It's time. Asking staff members whose plates are already full to create case studies is a recipe for inaction. Even if people do have time, it's easy for case studies to get shoved farther down the to-do list.
That's why it pays to set up an ongoing program that's built upon a schedule with firm due dates – and why you may want to consider outsourcing your program to a PR firm or a writer.
If you've got a case, prove it, and you just might find that the case you already have will grow into even bigger ones.

• Why 90% of today’s ad campaigns are a total waste of money … • How Madison Avenue sleight of hand turns savvy business people into drooling morons … • The four things every ad MUST accomplish to be successful … • A great opportunity for copywriters – in a place you’d never even THINK of looking … • Much more!
Sometimes I wish I had gone into advertising instead of direct response marketing.
I can see myself nestled in a posh Madison Avenue corner office, hauling down six figures a year, creating beer-swilling frogs, taco-eating Chihuahuas and other madcap characters … and of course, personally casting ads in which scantily clad babes with legs up to here and bushels of bouncing booty and boobage cavort in soapy slow motion!
I can see myself being worshipped as an “advertising genius” for this “brilliant” work … getting huge bonuses and promotions … winning armfuls of creative awards … and getting my smiling face plastered all over the cover of Ad Age.
The best part? Knowing that nobody will ever ask the question, “… But do his ads work?”
Unfortunately, I didn’t take that route. Instead, I wound up in direct response marketing – where every order and every penny generated by every ad, every direct mail package and every Internet campaign I create is carefully tracked.
Within a few weeks, days, or – in the case of TV and Internet promotions – a few hours, everybody knows whether I’m a genius or a hack.
If my client puts $500,000 in the mail, he expects at least $500,000 in net sales back – PLUS ten thousand or so new customers. If my copy does that for him, I’m gold.
If not, I’m a schmuck – and if I ever tried to convince a client that my bomb of a promo enhanced his “brand awareness” or “image,” he’d probably think I’d lost my mind.
That means I don’t have the luxury of sacrificing proven sales-boosting techniques in the name of creativity. Every promotion I create must accomplish all the things that are necessary to do in order to make the sale.
But most of the ad campaigns created by major ad agencies are NOT trackable. And that simple fact is now creating some of the worst advertising ever produced … costing American consumers a freakin’ fortune … and is at the root of what I am convinced is the greatest scam ever perpetrated in the corporate world …
How Madison Avenue’s black magic turns brilliant CEOs into drooling morons Imagine this: You’re the CEO of a major corporation – in this case, a brewery.
As the CEO, your prime directive is quite simple: Your bosses – the Board of Directors and your stockholders – demand that every corporate dollar you spend produces a positive return on investment.
You’re good at what you do. By producing a superior product and pinching every nickel until the buffalo squirts, your company has become the most successful in its industry and your market share is still growing.
Then one day, a guy from a major New York ad agency shows up in your office. He has bad news for you.
“You’re doing it all wrong,” he says. “What do you mean?” you ask. “Your advertising,” he says. “Your ads just drone on and on about how delicious and refreshing your beer is – and how superior it is to everybody else’s.” “So what’s wrong with that?” you ask. “No frogs.” the adman says. “Frogs?” “Absolutely. Fat, ugly frogs on lily pads in the middle of a mosquito-infested swamp, all croaking your product’s name.” “Will that sell more beer?” you ask incredulously.
The Madison Avenue wizard waves his hand slowly before your eyes. “You don’t care if it sells more beer,” he intones.
Your eyes glaze over and, in a trancelike voice, you mindlessly repeat after him: “Sales … not … important … ”
You can feel yourself slipping under his spell – the Madison Avenue version of the Jedi Mind Trick – but somehow, you marshal enough self-control to blurt out another question: “But … how will I know if these frog ads are a good investment?”
Another wave from the adman: “You won’t know … and you don’t care.”
“Return meaningless … don’t care …” You hear the words coming out of your mouth involuntarily as if someone else – a crazy person – were saying them.
You gather every remaining ounce of strength to ask your final question: “How … much … for … the … frogs?”
The ad wizard waves again, this time a double whammy – with both hands: “You don’t care how much it costs …”
The double whammy does the trick. You are completely under the wizard’s spell.
As you surrender, your eyeballs roll back in your head … a drop of spittle appears at the corner of your mouth … and you hear yourself chanting, “Sales meaningless … investment return meaningless … profits meaningless … just … need … frogs.”
Next thing you know, you – the Harvard MBA … the hard-boiled businessman who fought his way to the top of the corporate ladder … the CEO who, in every other area of business demands that every penny spent produces a trackable, measurable, positive return on investment …
… YOU are signing the check for a new $50 million ad campaign, complete with butt-ugly frogs.
Fooling All of the People, All of the Time The next morning, you awake with a hangover – and a severe case of buyer’s remorse.
Where are you going to find the courage to face the Board and tell them you just blew $50 million on an ad campaign – and you have no way on Earth of knowing if that fifty mill was a brilliant investment or money down a rathole?
“Well,” you try to tell yourself, “if sales go up, that means it’s working – right?”
Alas, you know better. You know that sales can rise for lots of reasons: Maybe it’s a heat wave in the South that’s making people thirstier. Maybe it’s a major competitor’s distribution problems causing his customers to buy your products … or maybe it’s just that his new ads sucked worse than yours did.
Heck – for all you know, your sales would have gone even higher if you had been running your old ads … or, for that matter, no ads at all! (Hey – when Israeli doctors went on strike a few years ago, the national death rate declined: How do we know that the U.S. GDP wouldn’t double if Madison Avenue went on strike?)
Of course, you reason, if sales go down, you can always blame everything but your ad campaign. Shoot: You could even claim that if it weren’t for those frogs, sales could have fallen even farther!
The fact is, since there’s no way to track each purchase back to its source, you will never know if you made a good investment or not.
… And therein lies your salvation.
Because nobody will ever know whether your $50 million decision was a good one or bad one – not you, not the Board, and certainly not your stockholders!
Advertising is Never Having To Say, “I’m Sorry.” Do you think – even for a minute – that the slick admen and adwomen on Madison Avenue are oblivious to the fact that they are NOT being graded on the sales they produce?
Do you think most of them even care if they increase their clients’ sales and profits?
If you answered “yes,” to either question, please give me a call. There’s a nice bridge for sale not too far from my office!
If you need proof that much of the junk passing for advertising today is little more than a scam, grab a yellow pad and a pen … turn on your TV … and after each ad, answer these four questions:
1. “Did the ad make me crave this kind of product?” 2. “Did the ad explain all the reasons why this brand is the only one I should consider?” 3. “Did the ad make me feel it’s urgent that I buy this product now – or at least soon?” 4. “Do I have everything I need to know to make the purchase?” I’ll be knock-me-down-with-a-feather AMAZED if 10% of the ads you see do all of the above.
And that means the poor schmucks who paid for the rest of the ads you see are being scammed … bamboozled … swindled … played for chumps … taken to the cleaners.
Ask a rational business owner, “Why advertise?” – and he or she will say, “To sell more products.” I mean – why else would a perfectly pragmatic business person voluntarily give money to an ad agency?
But if you ask an adman or adwoman the same question, you’ll get very different answers. One practitioner will explain that his job is to improve “brand identification.” Another will say she’s an expert at enhancing “brand image.”
But ask the ad geeks why any business would want such a thing – or to provide statistical proof that their image enhancing, name-recognition ads actually increase sales, and you’re likely to get a blank stare.
Madison Avenue just doesn’t get it How silly can it really get? Here’s a true story:
A few years ago, Nissan hired TBWA Chiat/Day and its creative director Lee Clow to create a series of commercials for its line of fine automobiles.
Clow presented the Nissan executives with some of the cutest, cleverest, most “creative” ads they had ever seen: Ads featuring toy action figures driving toy Nissan automobiles.
In one memorable commercial, a toy dinosaur dropped a toy soldier into a toy sports car. In another, a toy doll drove a Nissan out of a magazine ad and onto a real road.
As in my little flight of fantasy above, the ads were pure “entertainment-as-advertising.” Not a single word was said about the benefits Nissan automobiles offer … or why Nissans are unique – and therefore better than the competition. Nor did the ads suggest that viewers visit their local Nissan showroom or offer them any inducement for doing so.
No matter. The ads were “creative” – and that was all that mattered. The Wall Street Journal called the campaign, “... by many measures, the most successful TV commercial of 1996.” Both Time and Rolling Stone proclaimed it “the best ad campaign of the year.”
Creative Director Lee Clow was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame. The whole creative team was invited to appear on Oprah. Sony Pictures even made plans to turn the ads into a TV show series!
But there was just one teeeensy little problem:
As soon as the ads began running, Nissan sales CRATERED!
According to The Wall Street Journal, the month the “toy” ads debuted, Nissan’s sales fell 2.7%. The next month they fell 10.2% ... then 4.2% ... and then, 1.6%.
Meanwhile, the poor, unenlightened folks at Toyota – Nissan’s chief competitor – were still doing things the “old-fashioned” way: Trumpeting their products’ benefits ... driving home their Unique Selling Proposition ... positioning their products as head and shoulders above the competition – that kind of boring un-creative stuff.
And while Nissan sales went down the crapper, Toyota was doing a land-office business.
With sales falling off the proverbial cliff, Nissan dealers pouted … then complained … and then went into open revolt.
The company was deluged with thousands of telephone calls and letters from livid dealers, demanding that the company junk Chiat/Day’s ads.
… And that’s when Creative Director and Advertising Hall-of-Famer Lee Clow uttered the single stupidest thing ever said by any adman, ever, in the history of the universe:
“That’s car dealers. They’re forever bitching about something ... There are always people that like to damn things that are new.”
UNBELIEVABLE! Clow clearly didn’t give a flying fig about sales. As a “creative genius” – an “artiste” – he couldn’t be bothered by something as crass as common commerce.
The fact that his ads were driving dealers to the brink of bankruptcy and forcing them to lay off good, loyal workers was meaningless to him. They were merely cretins, unable to appreciate the sheer genius of his creativity!
Fortunately, the folks at Nissan were a helluva lot smarter than the preening, self-obsessed Clow. They canceled the idiotic campaign and returned to old-fashioned ads emphasizing their cars’ features, benefits, USPs and positioning.
And sure enough – as soon as Nissan tossed Clow’s brilliant, award-winning ads into the nearest trash can, the sales drought ended. Sales rebounded 10.7% in January and 15.5% in February.
The Wall Street Journal summed up the problem nicely:
“Not long ago, the conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue held that advertising was all about giving people a compelling reason to buy a product. TBWA Chiat/Day believed advertising could have a different goal: to create flashy images for a client and turn the company’s name into a household name.”
“There is just one justification for advertising: Sales! Sales! Sales!” -- John W. Blake Now, I’d like to report that Madison Avenue learned its lesson and is avoiding the whole “Advertising-as-Entertainment” and “Image-is-everything” fraud like the plague.
I’d like to tell you that these geniuses have learned what direct response pros have known for years: Benefits sell products. “Reason Why” copy sells products. Unique selling propositions sell products.
And most importantly, when “creativity” gets in the way of making a sale, it’s not creative; it’s just stupid.
But you watch TV. You read magazines and newspapers. And if I said something like that, you’d know I was lying my keester off.
The most tragic part of all this is NOT the fact that incompetent ad agencies are taking a bunch of gullible Fortune 500 fat cats and their shareholders to the cleaners. Nor is it the fact that in the end, we consumers pay the price for their ignorance and arrogance in increased costs for every product we buy.
To me, the saddest part of all this is that the Madison Avenue misfits guilty of perpetrating this fraud are the rightful heirs of the greatest advertising geniuses the world has ever known.
The great men who created modern advertising – who founded many of the agencies that now pollute our airwaves and our printed pages with this pap – must be spinning in their graves! Giants like John E. Powers … John E. Kennedy … Albert Lasker … Claude Hopkins … John Caples … Rosser Reeves … David Ogilvy and others taught us that the ONLY reason to advertise is to increase sales and market share. And, they taught us that to accomplish its mission, advertising must at the very least …
1. Create or intensify the consumer’s desire and sense of urgency to buy the product – by driving home the tangible benefits it will bring to his or her life … 2. Present compelling reasons why the product is unique and therefore superior to all others of its kind – and therefore the only rational choice for the consumer to make, and … 3. Provide a way for the prospect to purchase the product at the first opportunity – either by ordering directly or by emblazoning the brand in the prospect’s consciousness so it will be his first choice when shopping.
I am absolutely convinced that if every advertiser insisted that his ads did these three things, the U.S. economy would double virtually overnight – and it would do so without enlisting the services of a single frog.
Accountability is everything Fortunately, not everyone who creates ad campaigns for major companies today is an idiot or a scoundrel. Some are actually pretty sharp and reasonably honest. And some are even interested in being held accountable for the success or failure of their ads. While the dumbest ads are growing dumber by the day, many advertisers are actually helping to offset this cumulative drop in America’s advertising IQ. They’re doing it by using their creativity to find ways to scientifically measure the response to their ads. More and more are asking consumers to call a toll-free number or go on-line – or adding some other trackability device to their advertising: Like coupons, contests, and more.
Of course, mainstream ad execs will tell you that their products are different. Creating measurable, trackable campaigns just isn’t possible for the kinds of products they advertise. People buy their products in stores – not over the phone, through direct mail or on the Internet.
Sorry – that’s just an excuse.
Prescription drugs have to be the world’s hardest products to track. A consumer sees the ad for a new anti-allergy pill and is told to ask his doctor about it. The doctor then has to prescribe the drug. The consumer then has the prescription filled. How in the heck do you track that? Impossible – right?
Not when real creativity is applied!
For years, drug companies advertised their drugs simply by telling consumers to ask their doctors about them. But today, they’re asking consumers to dial a toll-free number to receive a full information kit on the condition the drug treats.