The Oddest Spot of 2013

Gain revolving door
We may be in here a while. How does he taste?

I’m still having a hard time believing this Procter & Gamble Gain commercial is real. Or that it isn’t some satire of the old Brand X comparison concept of the ‘sixties.

It starts off with an oddly framed shot of two people in a laundromat; in which the Gain-using man’s arm is inexplicably foreshortened to make him look deformed. It took a couple viewings to ascertain that he wasn’t an amputee.

But then the most ridiculous comparison is made: A distinctly soporific voice-over claims that  “a single scoop of Gain gives more freshness  than a whole box of this other stuff.” The “other stuff” clearly being an ill-disguised Arm & Hammer, which is also shown as half the size of the Gain box.

They never define what they mean by “freshness”. But as the spot unfolds, you get the idea that it means perfumes because the man gets trapped in a revolving door with several other people and they start sniffing him with expressions of rapture on their faces. Clearly he smells good? I guess?

Now, the idea of being trapped in a revolving door with a crowd of people all sniffing me is not my first idea of bliss. Could they be thinking, “we may be trapped in here awhile and we need to think about who we’re going to eat.”? So it was definitely an odd demonstration.

I’m sure they thought it was creative. But the analogy I got was, using Gain is about as much fun as being trapped in a tiny space with carnivorous zombies.

At the end of the spot, a hero shot comes up and the soporific voice delivers the product promise, “Get more freshness from Gain. Or get your money back. Guaranteed.”

More freshness than what? Does this mean that if I can prove there is not as much “freshness” in their box as they claim, I get a refund? How would I prove that? What do they mean by “freshness”? Is there a freshness scale? Can you run it through a mass-spectrometer or a freshometer to calibrate the freshness?

And “Guaranteed?” A guarantee of squat.

Of course, all this spot did for me was to remind me why our family uses Arm & Hammer to begin with; precisely because it’s free of perfumes and dyes. So thanks, Gain, for reaffirming our brand choice.

The Courtesy of Seduction

Ever feel that irk, right in the middle of an especially intimate conversation you’re having with someone at a restaurant–say you’re about to ask them to to marry you (or move out)–when the perky waiter pops in to ask if you’d like your iced tea refilled or if you’d like to see the dessert menu? Magic gone. Moment lost.

Of course, the waiter doesn’t know you were in the midst of a life-altering conversation. He’s just doing his job (though I think he really does know, mischievously). But this isn’t about the bad timing of waiters, it’s about empathizing with your advertising audience’s feeling of being interrupted.

Whenever you run an ad, you’re interrupting somebody. They may be reading a fascinating article. Or watching a nail-biting movie. Or trying to watch a viral video of some stupid idiot falling off a roof. Or listening to an infuriating conversation on talk radio. Suddenly, at the worst possible time, in you pop, like that interrupting waiter, to tell them they may be paying too much for their wireless data plan. So chances are pretty good that your ad you’re so proud of has more than likely just pissed them off. Not a good start.

All advertising is just plain rude.

I  remember taking my very first ad design class at Art Center College of Design from veteran art director Ray Engle, and the first thing he said on the first day was, “All advertising is an interruption. It’s rude.”  He went on to say that when you conceive an ad, say a TV spot, you need to empathize with that person sitting on the couch . He isn’t waiting on the edge of his seat for your commercial. He’s watching a show. And you’ve just interrupted him and broken his concentration, and, more than likely, ruined his mood. Worse, if he was watching some program he was not that into, he’s much more likely to change channels. Or worse yet,  just turn the damn thing off to go out and enjoy the beautiful day. We can’t have that! Civilization as we know it would collapse.

The crits of our amateurish concepts in that first advertising class all started with Engle’s primary criterion, “Is this this worth the interruption?” If not, it got ripped off the wall (Art Center is a harsh school).

So it had better be worth it.

But what can we do?

But if all advertising is an interruption and is just going to piss people off, what can we do?

Well, for one thing, you can try a little old fashioned seduction. Make sure that if you do run an ad, it’s not dull. Or irritating. This is where creativity comes in.  Ads that entertain are not being gratuitously funny at the expense of the advertiser. Entertainment serves a vital function.  It holds the attention of the viewer just long enough to keep them from fast forwarding, changing channels, or clicking “Skip Ad”.

It also makes a peace offering, rewarding the person you’ve just interrupted with a joke, or at least something of interest…so they’re not as irritated. It’s sort of like the slab of steak the cartoon cat offers Butch the Bulldog so he can sneak past him to get to that evil mouse. Think of your intended audience as the bulldog and the mouse as his inner desires…and you’re the cat. Or pick your own metaphor. I don’t care.

In short, don’t sell, seduce.

Skip-proofing your message

Nowadays technology makes it is easier than ever to filter out advertising. And the only way to fight against that if you’re an advertiser is to make sure people don’t want to filter it. This is the role of entertainment. It’s the slab of steak. Or the cheese. And you don’t crave the steak or the cheese because you need protein and calcium; you eat them because they’re delicious. (If you’re a vegan then, of course, this doesn’t apply and you are impervious to seduction).

You’d think marketers would realize this. Instead I’ve read so many posts and heard so many advertising professionals denigrate the role of entertainment in their advertising, that it’s somehow just useless, existing only to keep childish creative people employed. Or that it isn’t professional. And that the new marketing all depends on getting to the psychometrically targeted customer, so you can close that sale as efficiently as possible. The new marketers have water glasses to refill and dessert menus to proffer and tables to clear. But since they don’t seem to appreciate that the people they want to sell to don’t necessarily want to be sold to (even if psychometrically targeted), they’ve forgotten the simple courtesy of seduction.

There’s nothing wrong with seduction.

Seduction is a good thing. It’s respectful. It’s at the heart of all brand marketing. It may be quaint and old fashioned but it’s still a part of human behavior.

Compare these two marketing techniques:

The quaint, old-fashioned, brand marketing way: You take somebody out for a nice dinner. You make witty conversation. You make them laugh. You laugh at their jokes. You listen to them and show you care about them. You call them the next day to see how they are. You make another date (if you both had fun on the first one). You repeat, cultivating the relationship into something meaningful and mutually fulfilling. You get married and have beaucoup kids.

(At least that’s how I think seduction is supposed to work. Hm. Maybe that explains something in my own life.)

The new, hot, direct marketing way: You find a targeted qualified lead with an online SEM tool and hit them with, “Hey, have sex with me! There’s a chance for dinner at a moderately priced restaurant. But wait, there’s more, if you’re willing to do some ‘other things’ (wink, wink) there might be a movie in it for you, too. But only if you act in the next hour.” You then add them to your CRM and invite them to “like” your Facebook page.

Which technique would work better on you? (See how I care about what you think.)

 

Talk about emotional

Sprint girl screen shot baby
Leo Burnett’s “Girl” spot for Sprint

I know it seems like all I do is bitch and grouse and criticize about what people do wrong in marketing. At least that’s what my daughter thinks I do. But I wanted to bring this spot to everyone’s attention. It’s a simple commercial from Sprint that started airing last fall. And I saw it again tonight. The concept is so simple and so beautiful, and being the father of a little baby who’s all grown up, emotionally knee-weakening.

Done by Leo Burnett, it features a “time lapse” of a little girl growing up before your eyes, all on a smart phone. The message is the longevity of Sprint’s service with the Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone and its unlimited text and data. A hand touches one phone to another, transferSprint girl screen shot 2ring the images of the talking girl instantly from one person to the next, as she grows older by the second. To me the gesture is so perfect, and reinforced by the poignant soundtrack of Alexi Murdoch’s “All My Days”. I was a goner. And if I weren’t so hip deep in my contract with AT&T (curse them!) I’d definitely reconsider Sprint. I may still.

I’m going out on an uncool limb here and state that it’s a great and memorable ad, obeying all of the 9 Unbreakable Rules of Marketing. But especially #3 Creativity, #5 Simplicity and #7 Emotionality.

But that’s just my empty-nester opinion.

 

 

 

How you pay your employees is part of your marketing budget

So here’s the thought experiment: Say you’re starting a retail business. Doesn’t matter what you’re selling; let’s just assume it’s something really nice, something people really want…the new iThingamabob®, for instance. Okay, now hire some people to sell it for you; pay them minimum wage, make them work long hours without overtime, don’t provide them benefits, treat them like paper towels, and let them know you’ll fire them if they sit down on the job or look at you funny. Now sit back and enjoy how they’ll work their butts off for you to sell your products and give your customers great customer service.

Of course, this is a “straw man” thought experiment. Common sense will tell you they won’t work their butts off and they won’t give your customers great service. They’ll be sullen and won’t care if your customers are happy or not.  They’re probably also exhausted because, in order to make ends meet, you’re probably only one of their employers. And they’ll be out of there the first chance they get to work for anybody who pays them more, or even treats them like human beings. So you’ll have to spend more money on a recruiting firm to keep replacing them. And your unemployment insurance premiums will go up. And you’ll have more shrinkage in inventory (they’ll get their compensation somehow). But hey, you’re at least saving your customers money by being stingy with your help.

Your employee costs should really fall under your marketing budget.

Employee compensation (not to mention simply treating employees like you value them) can actually be measured as an investment. In a recent article in The Atlantic by Sophie Quinton, the case is made that the incredible growth and success of three retailers, CostCo, Trader Joe’s, and QuikTrip, is a direct result of how well the employees of those companies are compensated. While an average checker in the U.S. makes about $20,000 a year (putting her or him below the poverty line), the average checker at these three companies makes double that. Yes, on the books that makes for higher cost of sales. And yet, in spite of those higher costs, those companies boast higher revenues and greater earnings, even during the Great Recession, and even more than low-cost rivals like Wal-Mart. (see MSN Business: Why CostCo is walloping Wal-Mart) Hmmm. Why do you suppose that is?

Could it possibly be because those employers are smart? Apparently they don’t see their employees as consumables, like cleaning supplies and cash register tape. They also realize that the morale and job-satisfaction of their employees has a direct relation to how they relate to their customers, and their customers’  experience shopping there.

In other words, they seem to regard their employees as part of their marketing.

It’s Rule #6: Give Love to Get Love

In our book, The Unbreakable Rules of Marketing, Rule #6 is Give Love to Get Love. It just doesn’t mean loving your customers (and your shareholders), it means loving your staff.

Your employees are the human face of your company. In order to get the very best from them, they have to feel like they are valued. Their morale has to be high. And they have to feel like they are taken care of. This includes not only making sure that their hourly wage is livable, but that they have health and dental, maternity leave if they need it, adequate time off, and an environment that is conducive to productivity.  As CostCo’s CEO, Jim Sinegal once put it, “This is not altruistic, this is good business.” *(See NYT “How CostCo Became the Anti-WalMart”)

As an actual experiment yourself (vs a thought experiment), go into one of these stores and notice the customer service, the attitude of the employees toward you and each other. Ask for help and see what happens. If you don’t have a CostCo, Trader Joe’s or QuikTrip handy, then you must surely have a Starbucks (another successful company that attends to the well-being of its employees). Then go into a store known (fairly or unfairly) for stingy employee compensation, say, oh,  I don’t know–Wal-Mart, for instance–and notice the attitude of their employees.  Again, ask for help and notice the level of enthusiasm. Is it any wonder why CostCo is stealing Wal-Mart’s lunch money…I mean market share?

Okay, that’s fine for retailers, but what about B2B?

Even if you are a B2B business, this Give Love to Get Love rule still applies when it comes to your employees. Countless studies from MIT’s Sloan and other business schools have demonstrated that good employee compensation leads to better products, more solid customer relations, more efficient operations, more productivity, lower turnover, and higher profits. Even while so much manufacturing has gone to low-wage countries like China and India in recent years, the “high-paid” U.S. still remains, per-capita, the most productive in the world, by a wide margin.

When I was just starting in my advertising career, I worked for an agency in L.A., DJMC (Davis Johnson Mogul & Colombatto–now Davis Elen). Even though my gruff boss, Bob “Collie” Colombatto, liked to hear himself say, “I don’t need to thank my employees. I thank them every two weeks in their paychecks,” he did thank us very warmly in those checks. We were extremely well-compensated. We had luxurious benefits (by today’s tightwad standards)–full medical and dental. And the company was overly generous with its holiday bonuses. As a result we all worked like maniacs for those guys. During the six years I was there, we in the creative department were not only raking in the meaningless industry awards, the company grew over 500% in billings to $100 million. So all that butt-reduction work and overly generous compensation was paying off–and the Bobs (Colombatto and Davis) were generous in sharing the profits with their employees. We would have done anything for those two, and they knew it.

Years later, when some colleagues and I started our own agency, we were resolved to create the kind of company we ourselves would want to work for. In my mind that model was DJMC. So we paid our staff well. Though we were a small company and weren’t mandated to do so by state law, we provided healthy benefits (medical and dental). We were generous with holiday bonuses. We were generous, too, with our employee policies. And when the company took a systemic hit from the economy, we, the owners, took the hit first in our own compensation rather than take it out of our employees.  The result was dramatic growth and profitability, an industry low in employee turnover, and extremely efficient operational costs. Our employees showed us their love by working like maniacs and bending over backwards for our clients. And our clients, in turn,  loved us by hiring us like maniacs. It was a maniac’s love fest all around.

It cost something. But it made us more.

It’s not an expense; it’s an investment.

I’ve said this before. And I’ll keep saying it: What you spend on marketing is not an expense (in spite of what your accountant may tell you), it’s an investment. You should expect a return on what you invest in marketing. But I’ll go further with this and state, categorically, that what you spend on your employees is also a marketing investment. Their enthusiasm to work their butts off for you, to represent you to your customers, either in the quality of the products they make or in the service they provide, will pay you back in direct proportion to what you invest in them. So invest generously. Then look for the return.

Let’s not kill our customers, okay?

This is a little quirk of mine. I’ve mentioned it to any and all who roll their eyes and say, “Yes, we know. Now get over it.” But I’m not quite blue in the face, so here’s my plea:

Can we in marketing stop referring to our audience as “targets”? Please?

A target is something you shoot at. Or drop a bomb on. When I was in the Navy, one of my (many) collateral duties, besides choosing the movies to show in my squadron’s ready room, was Targeting Officer. It was my job (along with all the other Targeting Officers on our aircraft carrier) to select, analyze, and recommend targets for destruction to our command. Mostly they were contingencies, just in case the country in question pissed us off and we got the order from the White House to unleash hell (coded and authenticated by two-man control, of course). But the operative word here was “destruction”.  That means wrecking property and taking lives. That’s the job of the military. And it was the specific task of targeting.

So now, when I hear the term used in marketing to describe the people who you’d like to buy your products, I wince.

Make Sales Not War.

A few years ago, long after we’d gotten over the national trauma of Vietnam and before we got into less traumatic Afghanistan and Iraq, it was fashionable to use the Marketing-as-Warfare metaphor. Marketing professionals (who had themselves rarely been in an actual war) loved to use martial language to put hair on their otherwise low-T careers. They talked about “taking the high ground,” “planting the flag, ” or “stealing a march” on the competition. They didn’t just introduce new products, they “launched” them, like you’d launch a missile. Like the military they grew to love TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) to describe otherwise banal abstractions like CPM (Cost Per Thousand–the “M” means “mille”), USP (Unique Selling Proposition), CTA (Call to Action), QSR (Quick Service Restaurants–you know, Fast Food), SEM (Search Engine Marketing).  It’s all been very Pentagony. The very term “campaign” came from bellicose origins. And potential customers, of course, were now “targets”.

The military origins have pretty much disappeared through overuse and these terms are now accepted as industry jargon. But, as George Orwell pointed out in 1984, the subversion of language can have a subversive affect on our view of the world. I’ve come to think that the hyper-aggressive language now used in marketing has colored our view of our customers. When we “target” them, I think we unconsciously regard them as marks, as prey, as the enemy. Language has that insidious power. We are horrified whenever someone uses a racial epithet because we are conscious that it diminishes and dehumanizes the person. But I would submit that using the term “target” to describe your customer, also diminishes and dehumanizes that person. Only we’re just not conscious of it.

When Mark Twain was writing Huckleberry Finn, few European-Americans were conscious of the offensive nature of the “N” word on our African-American fellow citizens.  It wasn’t until the Civil Rights movement raised all of our consciousness about the offensive power of that word, and the malicious intent of it, that it came to be proscribed. Now it is disconcerting to read that classic and see that now-offensive word so liberally (ironically) used in a conversational way.

I want to proscribe the term “target” in reference to our customers. You know, for Dr. King.

“Well, what else are you going to call them?”

I was actually challenged by a colleague last week, as if he couldn’t think of an alternative.

How about just “customers”? Or, we could fall back on the old phrase they used when I started in the business, “intended audience”.  Not as macho, granted, and a tad literal. But it’s descriptive. An audience is composed of people you want to entertain, to interest, to cajole, to entice…in short, to persuade.  Marketing isn’t just about selling stuff; it’s about persuasion. And it’s certainly not about destruction.

So, let’s just think before we speak, shall we? Maybe (and this is the ’60s in me coming out) if we stopped calling them a “target market” we’d subconsciously love them more. And maybe get better at persuading them.

Now excuse me while I go back to playing Call of Duty.

 

We all see what we want to see

.qxd
Math won’t help you, little fella.

CONFIRMATION BIAS IN MARKETING

Last week there was a sad story in the New York Times about a respected particle physicist at the University of North Carolina, Paul Frampton, a PhD from Oxford, falling for one of the oldest scams in the book. He’s now languishing in an Argentine prison for drug smuggling (actually, he’s just under house arrest at a friend’s). You have to read the original story for details (the Physicist, the Bikini Model, and the Suitcase Full of Trouble). But the gist of it is, here was this brilliant scientist, undoubtedly a measurable genius, who believed he was having an online love affair with a gorgeous, European model forty years his junior. They never met in person or spoke on the phone; only chatted online or texted. When she wanted to meet him in Bolivia, of all places (she was going to be on a photoshoot in La Paz), he leaped at the chance. And then, after he flew to La Paz to meet her, she texted him that her plans got changed (OMG) but could he pick up a suitcase of hers at the hotel and meet her in Brussels, flying through Argentina? She said an e-ticket was waiting for him at his connection in Buenos Aires and…

“ALRIGHT!” YOU’RE THINKING, “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”

How could a Beautiful Mind like this fall for such a blatant, old scam? Of course, any half-wit could see he was being set up as a drug mule. And of course, the Argentine authorities saw it as well. That’s why they were waiting for him when he landed in BA. But how could he not see what was happening? Even his friends were urgently shaking his shoulders that this was a scam; that he was being “catfished.”  But he wouldn’t believe it. Oh no, this twenty-something, gorgeous Czech model he’d met through online dating was madly in love with a 68-year-old particle physics geek. Why isn’t that plausible? What’s not to trust?

It’s because, genius or no, Professor Frampton was subject to the same tendency we all have when it comes to judgment; we see what we want to see. Don’t confuse him (or us) with the facts. It’s almost like we want to be rolled. So thousands of otherwise perfectly intelligent people every year still fall for Nigerian 419 scams. And college football players have what they think are real, online love affairs with young women they never met. And, of course, there’s snake oil we buy from DRTV ads, promising that our “Low T” can be cured by smearing this gunk on our armpit (just don’t get near any women or children).

MATH WON’T HELP YOU

Our hapless, lonely professor even used his prowess at math to “prove” he was right about his love object. This was the same person who had developed an algorithm to determine, to five standard deviations of certainty (99.99994%), that the experiments being conducted on the Large Hadron Collider were, in fact, seeing evidence of the Higgs Boson. He used (or misused) the same algorithm to determine that the probability that Ms. Czech Republic 2010 was in love with him had the same level of certainty. I’m not kidding.

Guess what. Math can’t prove everything. I got a C+ in Statistics 312 in college and I could have told him that.

BUT THE SECOND UNBREAKABLE RULE CAN HELP

In our book, The Unbreakable Rules of Marketing (now on Amazon! shameless plug), this almost self-willed blindness falls under Rule #2: Perception is Reality. People believe what they want to believe, and they see the world the way they want to see it. They’ll even select data and facts to fit their belief. This is a well-researched and proven behavioral phenomenon called Confirmation Bias. And it can be used for good. Or –as with the Professor and the Model–evil.

In marketing you obey this rule to cultivate loyalty in your customers, recognizing what they want to believe and gently reinforcing it or nudging them away from it. The application of the rule doesn’t itself constitute a scam, because you can (and should) use it to persuade people to believe beneficial things, or genuinely improve their lives. But you can use it to snooker people, too. Even PhDs.

The Second Unbreakable Rule is ethically neutral. It just describes how confirmation bias applies to marketing.

THE SMARTER THEY ARE, THE HARDER THEY FALL

The educational level or IQ of the person you’re cultivating doesn’t have any bearing on whether they can be influenced or not. In fact, I would contend, through personal experience, that the higher the degree, the more prone they are to manipulation…er…persuasion. That’s because, besides hobbled like the rest of us with confirmation bias (seeing what we want to see), they also suffer from over-confidence in their perspicacity. I call it the Rock Star syndrome. Success in one, narrow field leads to the self-delusion that you are an expert in all fields. Just look at me.

I’ve sat in on marketing focus groups with PhDs, listening to them describe themselves as being unswayed by the blandishments of brands; they pick their instruments based on hard, cold data. Then we all watched them get emotional about why they hated (not just didn’t prefer–hated) this brand of scientific instrument over another. When presented with the cold, hard data about the brands they favored or disdained, they said they didn’t believe it. Or, they picked out the data that conformed to their emotional prejudices. We all do.

So I love advertising to scientists, bless their hearts. Wrapped up in their intellectual hubris, they tend to be some of the more persuadable people because they are completely unaware of the role (or, in the case of poor Prof. Frampton, the roll) of emotion in their decision-making. They tend to think they are all Mr. Spock.

I know a sales-engineer with one of my hi-tech, B2B clients who describes a technique he uses called “The Illusion of Data.” Stick a chart or a graph in your ad, load it with irrelevant numbers like Throughput Rates, Torque, AXT (Alien Crosstalk–this is a real measurement), or Noodles per Furlong, and engineers won’t even look carefully at it; they’ll just assume that, “OMG! Look at the stats on that baby!”

I would never do such a cynical ploy, though. No. I respect the intelligence of my audience.

Wanna be my girlfriend?

How to write a Creative Brief

A Creative Brief is one of those things that can make or break a successful ad or marketing campaign. But in my experience, few know how to write a useful one. And the reason seems to be that the people tasked with writing it (whether account executives or clients) seem to be unclear on whom the brief is for, or what its function is. So I’m going to clear this up, as service to mankind and to countless unborn generations.

What is it supposed to do?

The Creative Brief is a kind of work order, a blueprint, for the function of the piece that is to be created. That piece is a device designed to persuade somebody to do something you want them to do. Doesn’t matter what; an ad, a commercial, a poster, a blog post, a website, any marketing tool. The very reason you’re doing an ad, say, is not to do an ad (that would be silly, though I’ve seen so many briefs start with “to do an ad”); it’s to change somebody’s mind. So make sure this is in the brief; what you want them to think or do after they see the thing.

Whom is the Creative Brief for?

The clue is hidden in the title. The creative team. They’re the ones who have to actually create the ad, the website, the brochure, the piece. Hence the adjective, “creative.”  And in order for them to have the best information to make an effective ad, website, video, brochure, or thing, they need a useful brief–written for them.

The Creative Brief, contrary to what most seem to think, is not for the client, or for the account executive. That would be another brief, not the “creative” one. It’s for the creatives.

But doesn’t the client have to sign off on the creative brief?

Of course! (Notice I used a bang. Because someone’s life is at stake.) The client (or if you happen to be the client writing the brief, you) needs to sign off because this brief is the thing you’re going to use to see whether or not the wacky ideas your creative team comes up with actually do the job you set it to do.  That’s why it’s fundamental to the brief to define that outcome.  So if your creatives come to you with a left-field concept, instead of reacting to it based on whether you simply “like” it or not, you can hold it up to the criteria in the brief and see.  And the creative team can hold it up themselves to see, even before they take it to you. Makes it a much more professional, efficient, and objective process.

How long should it be?

The clue to this answer is also in the name, Creative Brief. A good brief, even for something as complex as an integrated marketing campaign, should be no more than one page. That’s right. If your strategy is so complicated that it won’t fit on one page, go back and think a little more. You don’t get points for word count.

A Template for a Creative Brief

This template was first created by Dave McAuliffe at McCannErickson years ago, one of the most brilliant account executives I ever worked with. I have ported it with me ever since, sharing it with every AE at every ad agency. It is, as far as I’m concerned, the quintessence of how a good Creative Brief should be designed. And because I’m on a mission to improve advertising in the world (rather than join the cranky myriads decrying how evil and bad it’s become), I’m sharing it with you here. Feel free to copy and paste it under your own company’s format. It’s my gift to you.

The Creative Brief template is set up as a questionnaire. Answer the six simple questions and you’ve done a useful brief. Of course, add all the housekeeping stuff, like client info, job number and name, delivery dates, media etc.–do I have to do everything for you?

Now go to lunch.

ADVERTISING CREATIVE BRIEF TEMPLATE

What is the purpose of the ad?

What outcome do you want to see after the ad has run? Increased brand awareness? Lead generation? Product preference? Direct sales? Indirect sales?

What is the single main thought?

Describe the single most tangible thing about this product or service that the customer would care about. What problem does it solve?  This is the main thought that a reader should get right away, even if she doesn’t read or hang around for the rest of the ad.

What supports this?

Stick to the provable facts. “Because we said so” or our own claims to leadership won’t hack it.

Whom are we talking to?

Describe the person who will most likely act on this ad (not the client).

What else has to absolutely be included in the ad?

Charts? URLs?  Product images? Award medallions? Phone numbers? Promotions? Disclaimers?

What do we want the audience to do?

What action do we want them to take? Call? Go to our website? Buy? Sign up? Walk their dog? Stop smoking? Just keep us in mind?

How not to brand your business

Recently there was a scandalous story in Portland, Oregon about a bakery owner that not only refused service to a same-sex couple trying to order a wedding cake for themselves on the grounds that the very idea offended his religious beliefs, but proceeded, apparently, to personally berate the patrons to the point of tears.

This reminded me of a similar, larger story last year involving Chick-fil-A’s CEO Dan Cathy making anti-gay (pro-traditional marriage) remarks on a nationally-syndicated, radio talk show. Or years earlier, Carl Karcher, Carl’s Jr CEO, taking a similar, very public, anti-gay stand. Karcher, Cathy and the bakers in Oregon all said that the issue was about their 1st Amendment rights to practice their religion and voice their beliefs.

But the real issue is brand suicide.

When you’re in business, everything you do is marketing. And everything you do colors your brand. I don’t want to get into the constitutionality or  rights of anybody to practice and proselytize their personal religious doctrines. (There are already far too many self-appointed constitutional experts in the world.) But what I do know is that, constitution or no constitution, when you publicly make a spectacle of yourself, it can’t help your business.

Following the Chick-fil-A incident, thousands of people flocked to the fast-food restaurant to show their pro-traditional-marriage (or anti-gay, depending on your point of view) support. But then the story and the cause subsided and what was left was a bad taste in millions of other people’s mouths about the Chick-fil-A brand, millions of people that didn’t need to be offended. Millions who otherwise really liked the taste of Chick-fil-A.

What good does it any business to go out of its way to offend a significant percentage of its customer base? The foot-traffic bump the chain got from Dan Cathy’s public opinions and Mike Huckabee’s call for a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was more than offset by the long-term damage to its brand and sales. In fact, in the months following Cathy’s remarks, CfA, which had been rated quite high among QSRs (Quick Service Restaurants) by the market research BrandIndex, plummeted by 60% of its previous high ranking in measured brand perception. What good did that do anybody? Especially innocent, leave-me-out-if-it CfA franchisees.

In the brand CfA’s defense, Cathy only uttered his anti-gay (or pro-traditional-family) opinions when directly asked on a Baptist-oriented call-in show. He didn’t go out of his way to offend customers, as the Portland bakery owners did. And my hunch is, that in a city as indigo blue as Portland, the  brand-hit on a tiny business like this little cake maker will be far more harmful than that on Chick-fil-A.

In another example, here’s a case–not publicized at all–of a company, long known for its strong, socially-responsible, community-sensitive positions, allowing one of its stores to unthinkingly offend customers: Starbucks. I have old friends, Palestinian-Americans, who were shocked one day when they patronized a Starbucks in midtown Manhattan, only to find that it was running a little one-store campain to raise money to support Israel’s right to build settlements on the West Bank. I’m sure the manager had his heart in what he thought was a good place, but what he ended up doing was alienating a whole lot of otherwise loyal customers who will never, ever go into another Starbucks–even ones completely unaware of what happened at the one in New York.

I can’t imagine Starbucks corporate headquarters knowing about this, or allowing it. And I was at pains to explain to my understandably offended friends that it probably wasn’t the company’s policy. But the bell had been rung, and they didn’t want to hear reason. They were pissed. And Starbucks needlessly lost customers for good.

Can’t I just eat a hamburger without making a federal case out of it?

Now, admittedly, it’s getting so everything is so polemical lately that you can’t even buy a bag of sweat socks at Penny’s without making a political statement. I’ve never seen so many angry mobs trying to boycott this and rally around that. Most of us are just reasonable. We want to enjoy our soy Frappuccinos, our iPads, our bacon-chipotle cheeseburgers, and our organic, gluten-free kale chips in peace.

But if you’re in a business that depends on customers from a wide cross section of humanity, you might want to think twice about going out of your way to use your brand to flog a controversial cause. Some causes are, equally admittedly, strong enough to warrant the flogging, even with the risk. But consider the risk and calculate; can your brand take it?

And if you’re more offended by the lifestyle, sexual-orientation, race, religion, body-mass-index, gender, age, politics, citizenship, or ethnicity of your patrons than their money, then maybe it’s time to think of selling your business.

Here’s my advice to people trying to run a business: Its success depends on your customers. And every time you are dealing with customers, you are marketing not just to them, but to their entire network of friends. So, while you may not approve of some aspect of their lives–or even like them personally–remember, they are still your customers.

Just think first.  That’s all.

No Money to Market

I was having lunch with an old colleague and former partner, Cheryl Vandemore, yesterday and we were talking about ways to market yourself or your business when you’ve got zip to do it. Let’s face it, most small businesses are in this position.  You know you’re supposed to market yourself but it’s everything you can do to just keep operating, much less advertise.

But there are other ways…

She was telling me about her new hair stylist, a young woman who takes her profession and her business quite seriously. Shortly after Cheryl’s first appointment, she received an e-mail thanking her personally for the business and with a attachment of three photographs of different hairstyles that the stylist felt might be a good look for her. She invited Cheryl to look at them, think them over, and then call to talk about them.

So Cheryl picked one, called her up and made her next appointment. She said she was excited about the new look.

But she was also impressed with how this young entrepreneur had reached out to a new customer to cement the relationship. The stylist, in effect, sent Cheryl a little gift, a free consultation. She let her know that she was thinking about her and how she could help her.

This is damn good marketing.  It obeys all 9 Unbreakable Rules of Marketing at once; consistency, perception control, creativity, message management, simplicity, giving love, emotionality, effort, and integration.

And all she had was her cell phone.

Contrast this with other service businesses who, in the interests of improving their customer relationship management (CRM),  invite you to go to a website and fill out a customer service survey. The implication is (and sometimes it’s not even an implication; it’s made quite clear by the employee who writes her name on the receipt) that if you don’t give them a perfect 10, heads will roll. How does this make you feel? Suddenly, someone’s job is in your hands. You’re not thinking honestly about your actual impression, you’re just thinking these guys terrorize their employees. And you’re thinking also that they just want to capture your data for their automated CRM database.

And does anybody take these stupid surveys seriously? Is this supposed to be what passes for marketing metrics? Is anybody suspicious that so many perfect 10s come back?

But, getting back to the example of Cheryl’s stylist, she had the right idea about marketing: Make it simple. Make it personal. Make it useful. And show you really do care about their repeat business.

Also, don’t make anybody feel sorry for you. It isn’t about you; it’s about your customer.

Rules for Non-Writers

Not everybody likes to write.

This post is not for professional copywriters, or professional writers (copy or otherwise). You guys can go about your business. The points I’m going to make here are for the normal 99.99% of people who hate to write, who equate writing with their worst days in school, who think they are bad writers, but who, nevertheless, frequently find themselves tasked with writing something–like the content for their own website, an e-mail,  a white paper,  a cover letter, a Dear John letter, a term paper, or even a blog post. My sympathy goes out to you. Which is why I’m being so saint-like in writing this post.

So I wanted to give some little tricks you can use to overcome your aversion to writing. That’s easy for me to say, I know, because I happen to like writing. I love it, in fact. Some even think I have a syndrome somewhere in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) that describes my compulsion to write. But they’re nuts.

But even though it is easy for me to say, and while I can’t make you love to write, I can at least point out some rules you can follow to just get on with it. They aren’t an exhaustive list, but they might be helpful. So here are some rules:

1. Write like you talk.

The mistake that most people make when they start writing is that they write like they think the thing should sound. They imitate what other, similar pieces sound like. But what they end up doing is stringing together a series of banalities that mean nothing. They use words like “passion” and “commitment” and “solution” and “leverage” as though they were little silicon implants, packed in there to flesh out the prose. And when you read that kind of writing, your eyes glaze over. In fact, you’d better not read it while driving.

But think about it. If someone were to talk to you like that in person, would you think they were crazy? Or mind-numbingly dull? Or just full of gas? Well, why would you write like that to them? If your eyes glaze over reading it, why would anyone else stay alert while they read your version of the same?

So write like you talk. This doesn’t mean you should use slang, or incomplete sentences (unless for effect), or bad grammar. This doesn’t give you permission to commit the “Me-I” pronoun error. Nor can you let typos slide. But it does mean that, as you write it, the piece should sound like it’s coming from a living, breathing human being. I always tell people to imagine you’re having lunch with the person you’re writing to. Write that script.

Some writers I know say it helps them to read what they’ve written out loud to themselves or a friend chained in their basement, to hear what it sounds like as a script. I don’t do this, of course, except in my head. But some people say it’s useful. Whatever the technique you use, keep thinking, while writing, that you are actually talking to another person.

The bonus to writing like you talk, is that you’ll talk prettier, too.

2. Show some empathy.

Besides their aversion to writing, nearly every sane person has an equal aversion to have to read bad writing. Have pity on them. They didn’t do anything to you. Why would you want to bore them to death? Think how many more people would read the user agreements to software licenses  if they were written more with more empathy…or at least a with little more entertainment.

Pick somebody. If you can imagine for yourself a specific person you’re talking to while you write, it will help you enormously. Even though you may be writing something for millions to read (or dozens in the case of this blog), remember that they all read it one at a time. So pick one person out and think about them. Put yourself in their place. Would you want to read what you just wrote? Then rewrite it.

Speech coaches tell us, when we’re talking to a large audience, to pick out a friendly face or two in the crowd and make eye contact with them. It tends to make your speech more engaging because the eye contact is part of our social animal thing. Same goes for writing. You can’t make eye contact. But you can imagine it.

3. Put the gerunds down.

They’re evil, at least in place of actual, fully tensed-out verbs. This also has to do with the rule to write like you talk. Let’s say you bring a friend to lunch with the person you’re hypothetically writing to; would you say, “Introducing Monica.”? Or would you say, “This is Monica.”? See the difference? One sentence has a subject and a predicate, the other is just stupid. But how many times do you see ads or taglines written with the stupid gerund? “Introducing the 2013 Lexus!” “Announcing a breakthrough in the war on acne!” “Leveraging Solutions for a Brighter Tomorrow”.

The other problem with gerunds is that they epitomize the flattest, most passive voice. They reek of non-commitment. Generally it is better to lean toward a more active tone. It doesn’t mean you can’t ever use a passive “to be” verb. Sometimes it’s unavoidable (like in this very sentence). But just try to keep up and moving around. It’ll do wonders for your circulation.

So lay off the -ing verbs.

4. Read good writing.

My mom, who was a wizard in the kitchen, used to say that if you want be a good cook, you have to know what good food tastes like. The same applies to writing. Just immersing yourself in good literature can, by osmosis, improve your own output. The sound of language itself is musical. It’s often inspirational. The perfect word, a well-turned phrase, a memorable line are delights in themselves.

If you read good writing, then, or hear it in movies or speeches, then your brain will start to imitate it, just like it sought to imitate the “commitment to excellent solutions” kind of writing before. Reading junky writing is like eating junk food. The output (and your arteries) will suffer.

5. Watch the bangs, buster!

This is a special pet peeve of mine (and many of you already tease me like the playground nerd I am), but please, please, please, think several times before you put an exclamation mark at the end of your sentence. It doesn’t make it any more urgent. Or exciting. A bang doesn’t make up for a bad sentence anymore than Cool-Whip makes a stale cake better.

There are some who end every sentence with an exclamation mark. But, using the empathy rule above, don’t you see what this does? It comes across as yelling. And who likes to be yelled out? Okay, so you’re excited about the big news. Putting a ! on the end isn’t going to convey that excitement any more.

One of my first mentors when I was learning to write used to say that you should never use an exclamation mark unless somebody’s life was in danger. This is an exaggeration, of course. There are plenty of appropriate applications of bangs–“I’m going to be a father!” “Turn that racket down!” “The basement is flooded!”–but if you just shoot one off at the end of every sentence, regardless of content, you’re going to be out of bangs when something really important happens.

Challenge yourself. If you feel tempted, out of habit, to bang the end of a sentence you’ve written because you aren’t confident it conveys intensity, rewrite the sentence. After enough practice, you’ll wean yourself from bangs. Unless you really need them. I mean, really.

6. Strip out the extraneous, fluffy, superfluous, inessential, excessive, redundant, useless adjectives.

Some people seem to think that adding more adjectives to a noun will somehow bring the noun to life–like increasing voltage on the monster. Lawyers, in particular, seem to be adjective junkies. But look at any website and count the adjectives they don’t really need. Now look at yours.

But if you feel tempted to add them, think what would be lost if they were gone.

7. Practice. Practice.

Which, gets to me to practice. As with any skill, the more you practice writing, the better you’ll be at it. Think of any opportunity at the keyboard as a drill in honing your craft. You can even take time to write a better e-mail, a more thoughtful Facebook post, a text.  Write poetry for yourself. Write short stories. Write essays. Set up a blog. Nobody has to read it. But you’ll become a much better writer. That is, if you want to be.

Or, you can always hire people like me.