Advertising Tips

This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

The story I am about to tell you is thought to be apocryphal, which is why I shall refrain from naming names. Nonetheless, it is a classic example of what advertising is – or, rather, should be – all about. It demonstrates that good promotional concepts, the ideas that sell product, are based wholly and solely upon (a) the product story, (b) the benefits of owning said product and (c) the image of the product in the eyes of its potential customers.

Step back with me, then, about 40 years, when advertising agencies were less dependent than they are now upon market research, consumer panels, think tanks, marketing strategies, consumer profiles, computer-based market analyses and all the pseudo-scientific claptrap with which agencies are these days lumbered. We are returning to a time, the late 60s, when creative people (writers and designers) ruled the ad agency roost. Indeed, many of the better UK agencies were then run by creative people and not by accountants as so many of them today are. And because of this there was a kind of freedom in the air. Writers and designers were given their head; they were allowed to do whatever their guts told them was right; and the resultant advertising was, without a doubt, the best that has ever been produced before or since.

So it was in my story that a large London agency, headed up by a brilliant writer, was invited to pitch for the British Rail account. As I’ve said, the MD of the agency was brilliant with words. He was also flamboyant in dress and in manner; and his reputed attitude towards clients was one of take it or leave it. As the rumours go, he would back his creative team to the hilt, and he would actually fire clients who did not express a generous enough attitude towards his agency’s work.

Anyway, accepting the offer to pitch, the agency invited the Advertising Manager of British Rail, along with his entourage, to its offices in salubrious Mayfair. On the appointed day, as the visitors filed in, a catalogue of events unfolded.

They were greeted, first, by an indifferent receptionist who had a cigarette poised between her lips. She barely acknowledged them, but pulled herself away from a magazine long enough to direct them towards an ante-room, telling them that the agency MD would be along in a moment.

Inside this ante-room, the décor was somewhat grubby and there were not enough chairs to go round, so several of the visitors had to stand. Also in the waiting-room was a coffee table littered with used coffee cups, torn magazines and ashtrays piled high with cigarette ends. There was also litter on the floor.

And the visitors waited…and waited…and waited. After fifteen minutes or so, they had understandably had enough of the awful waiting room and decided to leave. Just as they were exiting, the agency MD arrived. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he greeted. Pointing back to the room from whence they had come, he said: “This is the image that most people have of British Rail. This, by and large, is how passengers are treated when they use your services.” Then he smiled. “But I intend to change all that.”

Apocryphal or not, this story clearly shows that advertising is not just about presenting a product with nicely framed words and pictures, it is really all about knowing the essence of the product. It’s about understanding how to make the most of its attributes. But, above all, it’s about realising where its faults lie and how those faults may be corrected.

I can’t count the number of times, when working on a creative team, that we have spotted the downside to a product or service – something about which the manufacturer was blissfully unaware. It is, of course, very difficult to convince a client that there is something not quite right about his product, but a good writer or designer will do so as a matter of course…and to hell with the consequences.

Like our agency MD above, I reckon it’s all part of the job.

Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:

The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.

The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.

Word Power 1, 2 & 3.

© Markethill Publishing 2005.

For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.

https://www.adbriefing.co.uk

Copywriting Tips

This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.

FEATURES & BENEFITS – TELLING THE DIFFERENCE

John Powell

All the experts tell us that to produce good advertising copy, you must sell the benefits. That’s because it’s the benefits derived from a product or service that people want.

Since this lesson has been taught forever and to every kind of sales person, not just advertisers, it’s a little strange that there is still confusion about defining the benefits. That is, separating them from the features.

This problem is widespread, and it’s not only lay people who get it wrong. I recently picked up a brochure from an ad agency offering to produce brochures for corporations. On the back cover of their own brochure they listed what they called the benefits of using their service. The list contained 12 features and there wasn’t a benefit in sight.

So let’s take another look at defining benefits.

A benefit is a feature in action. And the best way to uncover the benefit of a feature is to apply Pat Quinn’s world-famous ‘So What?’ principle.

Like so.

This panel is made of aluminium. (Feature)

So what?

It won’t rust. (Advantage)

So what?

It will reduce your annual replacement costs by 60% (Benefit)

The above illustrates that a feature produces an advantage, and the benefit is the personal value a customer gains from the advantage.

Another example.

This washing machine has an economy cycle. (Feature)

So what?

It reduces energy consumption. (Advantage)

So what?

You save money in energy costs. (Benefit)

Or.

These security sensors measure mass. (Feature)

So what?

Pets and insects won’t trigger the alarm (Advantage)

So what?

You wont have false alarms, just happy neighbours. (Benefit)

Easy isn’t it?

© Markethill Publishing 2005.

For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.

https://www.adbriefing.co.uk

Copywriting Tips

This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.

KICK-STARTING BODY COPY

Patrick Quinn

Several correspondents to our newsletter, AdBriefing, say that they are having trouble writing body copy for ads. Their problem seems to be the age-old one of how to kick things off – how to make a start. Can I help? Of course, I can.

When you have been writing copy as long as I have, you will come to understand that there is an unwritten formula for writing copy. While I shudder at the thought of formulae in advertising, there is no doubt that copy should follow a logical sequence. A sequence that takes its lead from the message in the main headline.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, every headline should contain some kind of offer or promise. At risk of repeating myself, it should contain a benefit along the lines of: Buy this product and get this benefit. If it doesn’t do this, then to my mind there is no point in running the ad.

Ok – assuming that you have written a benefit-ridden headline, it follows that the first line of body copy should reinforce that benefit. It should enlarge upon it. It should take the initial promise and make more of it – much more. In other words, it should be a more verbose rendering of the headline statement.

It should not, decidedly not, be talking about something entirely different from what is contained in the headline – as a lot of so-called copywriters tend to do. This merely diverts your prospect’s attention from your major proposition. Always remember that the reason he is bothering to read your body copy is because he has been intrigued by your headline. He wants to be sure he has understood the message.

All right, with the opening para written, the rest should write itself. Your second para should talk about the features of the product. How it works. What it does. How fast it operates – that kind of thing. And if it has a lot of features, expand your writing into a third and fourth paragraphs if necessary.

This done, your penultimate para should refer back to the headline – once again reiterating the benefit. After that, all you need is a call-to-action paragraph; one that describes where, how and when the product can be bought.

And that, in a nutshell, is how to construct body copy. The formula, however, is not set in stone. Just so long as your first paragraph is always a re-work of the headline message, you can do more or less what you wish with the rest of it.

Simple – isn’t it?

END

© Markethill Publishing 2005.

For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.

https://www.adbriefing.co.uk

Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:

The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.

The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.

Word Power 1, 2 & 3.

Advertising Tips

This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.

HELP ME, SAINT BERNARDINO

Patrick Quinn

By the grace of a national newspaper, I am able to reveal to you a startling fact. There is a patron saint of advertising. And if this is news to you, it was certainly news to me too. He is, for his sins (or otherwise), none other than St Bernardino of Siena and, as the newspaper so neatly puts it, one of his functions is to protect the silk-shirted back against the ready dagger.

Well now, reading all sections of the advertising press and listening to current gossip, I’m inclined to think that Bernardino hasn’t actually been applying himself 100 per cent to his job.

I usually don’t like taking issue with saints because there’s no future in it – or maybe there’s no indefinite future in it, what with the saint holding all the aces and being perfectly able to conjure up a few more if necessary. But when, I ask you, was the last time Bernardino flung down a handy bolt of lightning on the head of a client who left a project until five minutes before copy date and then carped afterwards because ‘it wasn’t up to your usual standards’?

When was the last time he visited a plague of boils and pustules, plus a touch of scrofula, on the client who seizes on a piece of perfectly good copy and systematically emasculates it in order to satisfy his wholly mistaken literary yearnings?

What did he do about the egregious folly of banning advertising for cigarettes and imposing impossible rules for the promotion of hard liquor, when everybody in the business knew that boozers and smokers took absolutely no notice of the advertising for these products anyway – they drank and they smoked because they enjoyed it. And they still do, by the way. Which proves my point quite nicely. I happen to believe that if there’s one thing worse than promoting a (supposedly) deleterious product, it’s having people going around saving us from ourselves and applying their own particular prejudices to what they consider to be the public weal.

In any event, all that these bans achieved was to remove the jam from the bread and butter of the country’s benighted copywriters and designers.

What, also, has old Bernie done about the stupidities perpetrated by those well-meaning people at the Advertising Standards Authority, who spend their lives dreaming up rules which render it virtually impossible for the innocent advertiser to make anything approaching a direct statement? What they, and similar bodies have achieved, as they safeguard everyone’s rights, is to hamstring almost every radio commercial with a tag-end five seconds of mandatory gabble talking about such things as: ‘if you fail to keep up the payments, etcetera’, and ‘your statutory rights apply’, which everyone bar an idiot already knows and accepts. It has all come to a ridiculous pass, especially when one sees the legend on a pack of peanuts that ‘this pack contains nuts’. Unreal.

I’m not even going to mention St Bernardino’s patent lack of effort in respect of the government-proposed ban on smoking in pubs. I despair of our two-faced politicians who, on the one hand want us all to be politically correct and lily-white, but have no compunction whatsoever about bombing women and children in far off places.

There’s an old saw about ‘I disagree entirely with what you say; but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. This is one of the fundamentals of a free-ish society; but unless we keep on kicking and screaming in defence of this principle, it is likely to be continually eroded until it dies of that killing disease known as apathy.

And by we, I mean people like you and me. And, I sincerely hope, St Bernardino.

END

© Markethill Publishing 2005.

For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.

https://www.adbriefing.co.uk

Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:

The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.

The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.

Word Power 1, 2 & 3.

Copywriting Tips

This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.

WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT – COPY OR PIC?

When, some little time ago now, I first descended upon the advertising scene, we were a good deal more concerned than most people seem to be today about the nature of the business we found ourselves in. We were always holding debates – in the saloon bar of the Coach & Horses in New Bond Street, to be tiresomely precise – about the meaning of advertising, the significance of advertising, and the past, present and future of advertising. And an unconscionably serious lot we no doubt were. Not to mention drunk.

Among the hardy perennials of our debates was the relevance of sex in advertising, and also the question of whether the copy element in ads was more important than the visual or vice versa.

Of course, these were the days when it was possible for agency personnel to slope off round the pub during working hours and nobody on the management side of things turned so much as a hair at our absence. Just so long as the work got done on time, nobody gave a tinker’s cuss whether you were doing it in the office or down at the dog track. These days, agencies are a little more sanguine in their approach to creative people; and I recently heard of a designer being sacked on the spot for turning up at a client meeting wearing jeans – and I kid you not.

But back to our hardy perennials. The ‘sex in advertising’ question was a hotly debated topic, mainly because the copywriters and designers in my milieu were always anxious to attend the relevant photo-shoots, and not because sex was liable to help sell anything. Thus, we were constantly coming up with speculative ad campaigns that featured semi-clad females so that we might catch a glimpse of a naked thigh or better. Few of these concepts saw the light of day, but it was always worth a try.

As to the copy versus pic argument, this has still not been resolved to this day. Then, as now, I was on the side of the angels, holding that around 80 per cent of ads could, at a pinch, do without illustrations, whereas only about 2 per cent could do without words. (In regard to the other 18 per cent, you can make your own arrangements.)

Such an argument, as you’d expect, was met with widespread alarm by the designers, who saw that I was presaging their redundancy. Then as now, they would do everything they could to give their illustrations the prominence they thought they deserved. This usually resulted in a design in which the pic took up four-fifths of the ad, while the copy was relegated to eight-point solid and rendered practically illegible.

My attitude, obviously, was simply a debating stance – true though it undoubtedly is. I am not suggesting for a moment that 8 out of 10 ads should be wholly typographical. But if you take a dispassionate look around you, you might agree with me that a whole lot of ads (and brochures and websites, too, come to that) carry pictures for pictures’ sake; and that in quite a few cases the pictures, far from helping the transmission of a message, actually hinder it.

The biggest offenders in this respect are what might be describes as semi-industrial ads. Just leaf through a trade mag (or brochure or website) and you’ll see irrelevance in illustration well carried out. You’ll see, for instance, pictures of the factory or, as they call it these days, the production operation. You’ll see pics of two obvious male models in white coats staring idiotically at a computer screen or a blueprint. And you’ll see pics of two obvious male models, plus a female model, in white coats staring idiotically at a computer screen. The female is included in the latter pic because the designer had originally planned for her to be shot with her clothes off.

Here’s what I think. With today’s wonderful digital photography opportunities, with an instant replay of whatever has been shot, one might hope that illustrations in ads, brochures and websites might be made more relevant. They might actually show the product in action – demonstration is, after all, the soul of advertising. But, no, we still get pics which have nothing whatsoever to do with the product or its benefits.

I don’t mind admitting that there can be few people in the whole wide world who know less about photography than I do. What I do know, however, is that promotional material is far better off without an illustration if that illustration does not augment the sales message. So, in this respect, copy is more important than illustration.

Mind you, there is a lot of copy around that doesn’t augment the sales message either. But that’s another story.

END

Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:

The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.

The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.

Word Power 1, 2 & 3.

© Markethill Publishing 2005.

For a free monhly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.

https://www.adbriefing.co.uk

Copywriting Tips

This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.

SOME COPYWRITING TIPS FROM AN OLD HAND

Patrick Quinn

I have been in the ad game for a long, long time. I have trained hundreds of writers, and I’ve been responsible for moving of millions £ & $ in product worldwide. Here are just a few tips that I hope will help you do a better job, and make a bigger name for yourself.

One.

Whatever copy job you are working on – brochure, mailer, sales letter, press ad, website – always include a headline. A pertinent headline. A selling headline.

This headline will be, or should be, powerful enough or intriguing enough to draw your target into the compass of the body copy. If it can do that, you are on a winner.

To put it simply, your headline should be a snapshot of your sales message – a précis of your offer or promise. In other words, a headline that says: Buy this product and get this benefit.

Two.

Always remember, people don’t buy products, they buy the benefits of owning those products. A man doesn’t buy a sports car because it is precision engineered or aesthetically designed. He buys it because of the ego-boost it gives him. It shows the world that he has made it.

Likewise, a woman doesn’t by a cocktail dress by Camille of Paris simply because of the cut or the exquisite stitching. She buys it for the cachet that is attached to the label. She would probably look as good in a dress from a High Street department store, but she wouldn’t feel as good. And that’s the benefit.

Three.

Around 30% of all copy headlines are both useless and irrelevant. The worst of them often take the form of puns or are re-workings of current film titles or song titles. Puns are fine if they are appropriate, which they seldom are. And the writer who tries to demonstrate how cool he is by working his product message into a film or song title is usually doing a lot for the sales of movie tickets and CDs, but very little for his client.

The moral is this. State your sales proposition cleverly, wittily, stridently or emotively, but never ever employ a device simply because it’s the easy thing to do. If you can’t be original, at least be positive.

Four.

If it doesn’t quack, it ain’t a duck. And if your copy doesn’t make some kind of selling proposition, it isn’t advertising – it’s an announcement. So many writers these days fail to understand that copy is nothing more than salesmanship in print. They play with words for the sake of playing with words. They lose sight of the fact that they should be trying to sell something. Thus, copy must use the psychology of the salesman; and it must say, right up front: Here’s what’s in it for you.

Five.

Always be a little circumspect about experts who try to tell you how to write better copy. And that includes me.

End

__________________________________________________________

Patrick Quinn is an award winning copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh.

He publishes a FREE monthly newsletter, AdBriefing. Subscriptions are available at:

https://www.adbriefing.co.uk

Advertising Tips

This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.

Patrick Quinn

Rifling through my filing cabinet the other day, I came across two ancient, nicotine-stained items of literature. The first was a 1971 copy of Advertising Age magazine and that splendid book From Those Wonderful People Who Gave You Pearl Harbour, by Jerry Della Femina.

Anyway, after sweeping through Mr Della Femina’s book, which I strongly recommend to anyone with both a good sense of humour and no sense of political correctness, I took a look at Advertising Age. It featured a reminiscent piece by a certain Charlie Brower, one of the giants of the American ad business and a former chairman of BBDO.

He decided, in 1928 to pursue a career in advertising; and, as he himself said when he retired, he occasionally damn nearly caught up with it. His recollections contain one or two nice anecdotes from a time when the advertising business had a soul and was manned (and womanned) by a whole race of colourful eccentrics.

He tells of the legendary George Batten who could never remember names so he called everyone Harry. G.B. was a believer in the precept that a clean desk means a clean mind. He therefore went around the office sweeping papers off everyone’s desk on to the floor, thereby leaving his people with wonderfully clean minds, but ankle-deep in assorted papers.

He tells, also, of Albert Lasker, an advertising genius and head of Lord & Thomas, which later became Foote, Cone & Belding. Albert was red-hot on the idea that his staff should buy and use their clients’ products as a matter of course; so when he saw a pack of Philip Morris on a copywriter’s desk instead of the house brand of Lucky Strike, he hit the roof and demanded to know why.

The offending wretch explained that they were his wife’s and that he had picked them up at home in error. Lasker’s reply was crushing and unanswerable. ‘Your wife, I presume,’ he said, ‘has an independent income?’

Unhappily these days, all the loonies seem to have departed the advertising industry; and it now appears to be staffed by accountants, statisticians and sales analysts. Gone are the practical jokers, the booze cupboards, the manic drinkers and the three-hour lunchbreaks. Gone, too, are the crazy, creative geniuses of the sort I worked with in London agencies during the 60s, who sold all of their office furniture to a local second-hand shop and then stood back to watch the confrontation between muscular removal men and our prissy office manager. This crew also sent a telegram to the agency’s Managing Director, who was on a business trip to Czechoslovakia at the height of the cold war. The telegram bore the cryptic message: The red raven flies tonight; and everyone was hoping that he would be swiftly arrested by a suspicious KGB. He wasn’t, but as I remember it, the expectation was delicious.

Then there was the lapsed genius of a designer who always wore a false ginger beard, complete with ear-attachments, to attend client meetings. Why? Who knows. And not to mention the Copy Chief whose office had a balcony and steps leading down into the street. On a slow day, he would invite passers-by up for a drink, which meant that his office was often jammed with an assortment of street traders, road-sweepers and bowler-hatted businessmen – all inebriated grand style.

Those were the days, as they say. Or am I simply getting old?

END

Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:

The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.

The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.

Word Power 1, 2 & 3.

© Markethill Publishing 2005.

For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.

https://www.adbriefing.co.uk

Marketing Tips

This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.

AIN’T WE WONDERFUL!

Patrick Quinn

It may come as a surprise to you to discover that customers don’t buy your products or services because they feel that you have a right to make a profit. In other words, their motive for doing business with you is not to help you buy the latest Jaguar or put your children through college. You think this is a joke? Recent research shows that something like 60% of businesspeople place more importance on what they will get from a transaction than on what their customers will benefit.

In essence, their profitability is more crucial to them than is customer satisfaction. And it shows.

If you are in any doubt about this, cast your eyes over the myriad of ads, brochures, websites and so on that major on the successfulness of their organisation, as opposed to the benefit their products or services might be to the customer.

Certainly, they pay lip-service to customer satisfaction, but beneath this thin veneer of eye-shine is the belief, probably implanted at birth, that their bottom line takes precedence over everything.

Oddly, advertising agencies are among the worst offenders in this respect. Their promotional material illustrates what great work they have done, and states how many millions they billed in the last financial year, but none (and I mean none) tell you how much product their efforts have helped shift. To put it another way, none bother to demonstrate what benefit their services have been to clients.

The moral is clear. Rather than thinking what your customers can do for you, think what you can do for your customers. With this kind of philosophy, your profits will take care of themselves.

END

Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:

The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.

The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.

Word Power 1, 2 & 3.

© Markethill Publishing 2005.

For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.

https://www.adbriefing.co.uk