Sample Issue - Issue 4, Volume 1

Too Clever By Half

You might describe me as a progressive reactionary. The progressive in me is as eager for new ideas and new techniques in advertising as a young beagle chasing its first hare. But the reactionary in me tends to view innovation with the kind of sour suspicion with which Scrooge greeted Marley's ghost. Why? Because a lot of what is new tends to be clever - and, all too often, too clever for its own good.

I'll explain. The public, at whom the mass of consumer advertising should be aimed but often isn't, aren't vastly interested in cleverness as a whole, let alone cleverness of copy and art. The kind of ad that the average person considers to be good is apt to be the kind of ad that causes the average copywriter and designer to feel like reaching for the Prozac. This, admittedly, is a sorry situation, but it is one of the sad facts of life.

And it is to the average person that we look to spend the money to buy the products we advertise and keep us in meat and potatoes with an occasional splash of gravy. Why is it, then, that a large proportion of advertisers (terrestrial and internet) set out to make fools of their target market by feeding them material that they patently won't understand?

To prove my point, take a look around you at the huge number of ad illustrations that have no bearing whatsoever on the product. And also at the myriad headlines which, likewise, have no bearing on the product. The sales message, if they have one, is lost within the slickness of the design and the obtuseness of the copy story.

The advertisers concerned may be overawed by the beauty of their artwork and the cleverness of their words, but they are convincing nobody but themselves. And if the consumer fails to understand the sales proposition at first glance, he will very quickly go and spend his money with someone else.

Quite right, too.

Help!

It is one of our tasks at AdBriefing to send out several hundred welcome e-mails each month to new subscribers. Given that this can be somewhat labour intensive, we decided to employ an on-line smart auto responder. These outfits profess to automate such tasks and keep the e-mails flowing painlessly.

The problem is, to operate within these sites, you need the brain-power of Albert Einstein and the patience of a saint. I don't know whether they deliberately set out to make things difficult, but their instructions on how to make it all work are close to incomprehensible.

Given this, it struck me that there is a lifetime's lucrative work for some bright copywriter. All he or she has to do is troll the net and find commissions re-writing, in words of one syllable, those so-called Help Tutorials that nobody understands - including the people who wrote them!

I reckon there is a small fortune to be made with this gambit. The queue starts behind me.

Cuff Note 7

The problem for newcomers to the business when trying to write headlines is that they often tend to go off half-cocked. They consider the marketing brief, then bash down a headline or two to satisfy it. After that, they write the body copy.

Experience shows, however, that if you write the body copy first, the odds are that there will be the makings of a headline within it struggling to get out.

Body copy is, or should be, a carefully worked and logical encapsulation of the marketing brief. In other words, the whys, the wherefores and the benefits of owning the product or service. It makes sense, then, that if it is properly written, there is a very real chance of finding an embryo headline lurking within it.

Why not give it a whirl? You may be agreeably surprised.

What's It All About?

I was mildly incensed by a recent correspondent to this Newsletter - who is cordially invited to go and jump in the lake - who says he doesn't approve of people like me who pass judgement on ads.

Most of today's advertising, he argues, is tailored meticulously to a specific audience (a debatable point if ever there was one) and that nobody who is not a typical member of that audience should presume to give an opinion on the ad in question.

In other words, if an ad is not trying to influence you personally, you have no business entertaining any views about it. Taken to its logical conclusion, this means that nobody should write an ad unless they are typical members of the audience being addressed. Which is poppycock!

Thus, ads for denture cleaner would be written exclusively by people with false teeth. Ads for nursing homes by octogenarians. Ads for football gear by the forward line of Manchester United. So advertising agencies would be stacked to the roof with specialist copywriters. And who would do the ads for baby foods?

We all know, of course, that there is more to the average ad than meets the eye; and we also know that anyone who criticises any advertisement, whether for money like me, or out of malice like you, is liable to be speaking of things that he understands dimly, if at all.

But this doesn't mean that we should all adopt a vow of silence. While I can't pretend that I have been lying awake at night fretting about it, it occurs to me that the pained cry of: 'You don't know the marketing strategy behind a given ad, so you can't criticise it', never was sufficient defence for obviously poor advertising, and never will be.

And that's that.

Cuff Note 8

Every ad, brochure, website or radio commercial should initially fulfil one very important task. And this is to raise the value of your product or service in the potential customer's mind.

This has nothing to do with a policy of low pricing or, indeed, cut-price offers. But it has everything to do with making a sales pitch that immediately demonstrates the outstanding value of your goods and services - no matter how much you are charging for them.

Look at it this way, a gallon of petrol costs around £4, but if your car runs out of gas on a lonely, rain-swept moor in the middle of the night, with the prospect of a 30-mile walk to the nearest filling station, how much would you pay for a gallon of petrol from a passing stranger? £10? £20? £50?

And there's the essence of it. The value of that gallon of petrol is raised in your mind by your circumstances. Likewise, the cost of a given product or service is in direct ratio to the importance of owning it.

Quote Of The Month

'I've learned so much from my mistakes that I think I'll make some more.'
Anon.

If you're stuck with copywriting problems, or suffering from writers block or can't quite come up with that elusive headline may I recommend our own sales writers' resource e-book Word Power III?

You'll find ready-made copy such as headlines, tag lines, link lines, calls to action, price defenders, guarantees and more, which you can lift straight from the page and adopt or adapt.

You'll also discover a sales writers' thesaurus in the form of a theme finder, which will cure writers block forever. You can see it at: http://red.jwhco.net/1fcf00

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