Which commercials do you believe?  Too few!

Many commercials are produced these days with little thought of suggesting their message is actually believable. Continue reading ‘Commercials That We Don’t Believe’ »

How many times have people haggled over the price of something?  It is a regular occurrence.  But few are the times when people understand the real value of a thing or service.

In the creative business of advertising it is an on-going problem: It takes an instant sometimes to come up with a brilliant idea that is worth thousands to our clients.  Sometimes it takes a long, hard week to come up with an idea for a small space ad.

So how do we price our work? Is the value creating idea worth more than the small space ad?

There has been a convention to charge on a per hour basis.  But is that fair?

We can quantify hours.  We can calculate hourly rates relating to income, overhead and profit expectations and factor in out-of-pocket reimbursements.  So setting hourly rates is a well worn path to a model for charging.

But really is it relevant?  It is like saying a truck can go faster than a motorcycle because it has more wheels.  Quantitative difference, sure.  But spurious.

So we can price our hourly services.  But do we know the value?

Is it right that creative service companies should receive a share of the reward when an idea’s resonance creates significant profit for our clients?

It seems we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

But advertising companies are not alone.  Many of clients suffer from this same blindness.

Marketing communications companies are constantly being asked for help on small projects where “we don’t really have a budget” and “it is just a one time ad.”   Agencies comply to help out seeing there is no big benefit for the client.  But does the same client open their purse and say “We’ll pay extra for this because it is really important to us.”

The quality of something can be effected by the amount of time put into it.  Not on everything, but on most things.  And the value of knowledge is vastly underestimated.

I like to tell the story of the giant machine that worked flawlessly and old Bob who operated it.  Whirrr- whirr it went without a problem.  Old Bob retired and things went well for a while.  Then all of a sudden the giant machine started going whump-whump, whump-whump.  They called in engineers; they called in consultants.  No one seemed to have the answer.  Finally someone pointed out that the machine always worked when old Bob was running it.  “Let’s call in old Bob!”

Old Bob came it and was given a brief.  “Hmmm,” he said.  “I will need a piece of chalk and a sledge hammer.”  They got them for him.  “Turn on the machine,” he said.  Sure enough it started going whump-whump, whump-whump.  “Turn off the machine,” said old Bob.

He walked along the side of the machine, thought for a moment and finally took the chalk and put a big X on the side of the machine.  Then he picked up the sledge hammer and gave the machine a huge whack right on the X. “Turn on the machine,” said old Bob.

Whirrr- whirr went the machine as if nothing was wrong.  Everyone was jubilant.  The company president said, “Thank you, Bob.  What do we owe you?”

Old Bob thought for a moment and said “$10,003.”

“That’s a curious amount,” said the President.  “How do you get to that amount?”

“Well,” said old Bob, “I figure it is $3 for the labour – drawing the X and hitting it with the hammer.  And $10,000 for knowing where to put the X.”  So the price reflects a few minutes of work and a lifetime of learning to gain the right knowledge.  Not just a few minutes of work.

Clients have asked how we can create a commercial quickly, and I have replied that after the first few hundred, it is easy.  A few minutes of work, perhaps, and a lifetime of learning.

Nevertheless, the appreciation of quality is getting harder and harder to come by.  Computers make it easy to simulate advertising.  But appearing to be advertising isn’t real advertising.

We have all heard people mock modern art with “My kid could paint that!”  I always say, “If your kid is that good, get her into art school!  You will make a fortune.”  The mocking comment usually reflects more about the ability of the mocker to appreciate what they are looking at.

What is the value of quality in the communication arts?  Effectiveness.  Results.

The guy who says that advertising doesn’t work after doing it poorly means he doesn’t know how to do advertising.   Advertising always works if you put the right knowledge resources against it.

Coming up with the right message is the most difficult and important investment you can make in advertising.  Simulating it isn’t the answer.  Paying for the folks who have a lifetime of learning is worth it.

I am not old enough to have experienced the environment shown on Mad Men, but I worked on Madison Avenue in the 1970s and had quite a lot of interesting experiences.

The smoking and drinking on the TV show put me off, but they reminded me of one funny situation that I encountered while working in the headquarters of one of the largest advertising agencies in the world.

There was a particular area in the corner of one Creative floor, the eighth, where people would hang out and smoke.  Smoking was pretty universal.  Although I never smoked, my guess would be that more than half the people working in the agency business smoked.

But the smoking I am talking about here was not tobacco.  And this smoking was pretty broadly accepted in the industry too.  However, when the big bosses came down to the eighth floor the roaches were quickly tossed behind the radiators.  Time and time again.

Over the whole summer this would happen quite a few times, maybe once or twice a week.  But it never seemed to bother anyone, neither the smokers or the management who must have smelled it in the air.

The problem occurred the first cold day of the fall.  That was the day the radiators were turned on.  The result was a regional high.  No smoke, just a resinous haze coming from all those roaches.

Not sure much got accomplished that day.  But everyone felt good and was hungry for some snacks.

Advertising always seems to bring the hope out in marketers and clients.  They set goals for their advertising to achieve and then hope, hope, hope that those goals are achieved.

Hope equates to risk.  And advertising should always be about risk.  Advertising is about sticking your neck out to see if everyone notices you.  If they don’t notice it is not going to be effective advertising.

This counters most of our instincts about sticking out in a crowd.  Human behavior is mostly directed at “fitting in” with the rest of the crowd.  Who wants to wear a Hawaiian shirt and shorts to a formal dinner?  We shudder at teh social faux pas.  So we worry about social risks.

With advertising the conflict is about clients’ desire not to be too risky and at the same time making sure the advertising is intrusive and provocative.

Number one priority is making sure the argument is clearly presented for the viewer to understand.  If it isn’t advertisers are relying on pure hope – no logic.

Advertising can err on losing the clarity of the message by being so provocative that the message gets overwhelmed and missed.  Careful balancing act between hope and the real message.

Experienced creators of advertising programs realize and draw on their thousands of hours of experience and hundreds of commercial messages created to deliver this balance.

Psychologists reckon that one requires ten thousand hours to really be proficient at a complex skill like creating advertising.  The delicate balance of attention and consolidating the strategy of the advertising proves that it is true.  No one falls out of bed with this fully developed skill.

If that is so, why does the advertising industry crave – even go out of our way – to use inexperienced people to do our creative work?  Is it based on that same hope?

I guess we believe that popular culture, of which advertising is a paid member in good standing, is renewed from the 20somethings who are the biggest users of music and video entertainment (that includes movies).  But is that a valid assumption?

You certainly don’t have to be a product user to know how to sell a product.  You have to be a master of the craft in putting together the message that provokes and appeals to the user.

Personally, I have worked on feminine hygiene products (biology won’t let me use them) and many other products and never used them.  I have worked in a few languages I didn’t speak ro write.  These things don’t matter so much as long as the argument in the strategy and the message are well crafted.

Based on that I would say that experience will trump hope when creating an effective message.  Give me the master craftsman over the excited apprentice any day.

Many of the great disappointments in life are when our fantasy or imagined expectation does not match with reality.

More often than not people blame reality not their imagination.  In the battle between expectation and disappointment it is easier to blame the other guy, not the image makers in our brains.

This is a issue that advertising must address.  After all, advertising is the purveyor of expectations when we tell people about products and services.  We help create the expectation that our clients deliver on when purchases are made.

It does make some sense to ask the question “Why do people rely on their imagination more than they rely on reality?”

I think it has to do with learning.

We imagine outcomes from a set of assumptions and then correct our models of expectation with reality.  That’s effective learning.  If I put the money in the vending machine, the reward drops out.  I expect it and reality confirms it.  So I can put money in again and I will get another reward.  Basic behaviorism or S-R theory – see B.F.Skinner or even Pavlov.

Sure, but with social situations our predictive mental models are not as accurate.  We don’t always have the correct information, or understand what the other person(s) motivations really are.

My wife is constantly talking out loud when she is driving.  Asking, rhetorically, “Why did that person do that!” (Expurgated version of dialogue).  Since she never gets a real answer I wonder why she keeps asking.  She never stops another car and interrogates the driver – as if the driver even noticed what they did or understood why they might have done it.  So her disappointment is often a lack of understanding for the other person’s motivation.

In advertising we are creating expectations of performance.  That is, we try to show what the product or service is and how it works.  Not all advertising is cognizant that viewers will not necessarily understand this basic.  Advertising that assumes viewers know what the product is had better be entirely certain or the advertising will be near useless.

If advertising does not clearly explain what, particularly, a new product is why would someone buy it.  I find this often the case with technology, specially technology toys.  The advertiser assumes that people know what the gadget does and starts to explain minor differences between their gadget and a competitor.  Not everyone understands the difference between an iTouch and an iPhone or an iPod.  As the market grows into those not obsessed with the item advertising runs the risk of excluding potential buyers by being too clever.

Advertising not only creates expectations of product performance, advertising creates expectations of context.  When is it socially appropriate to use a product and how does one use it within a social context.  Is it acceptible to walk or drive down the street drinking a Coke and eating a sandwich?  It didn’t used to be.  Now it is.

Advertising showed it to be okay.  Fast food marketers supported this with the development of a drive through window.  When Wendy’s introduced it, they thought people would be picking up food to take home.  Not so.  They wanted to eat it NOW!

Then automobile companies responded in the 1980s by including cup holders to reinforce the appropriateness of drinking beverages and eating while driving.  And if you can’t use your cell phone while driving (in many jurisdictions, and many more to come) who says it is safe to eat your burrito while you cruise along at 100 kph.

Now back to expectations versus disappointment.

We cannot cure rampant imagination.  What we can do in advertising is make sure we accurately show a product in its operation and its social context.

One of the key problems in the advertising industry is the concept that an ad is a form of expressing a legal contract.  Really?

Somewhere in the days following Mad Men, the idea took hold that a commercial was an offer of a contract so all the legal conditions and disclaimers started to be added.

This was an extension of the need for commercials to be truthful.  Which, by and large, is in the advertisers best interest anyway.   Duping people rips your reputation a new one.

Anyone with a brand worth millions of dollars would be a fool to be untruthful.  Shady… well maybe.  But back to the contract question.

Most commercials are not looking to make an immediate sale.  They want the viewers to go somewhere else for the transaction – either to a bricks and mortar retailer or a website or somewhere.  That is where the details of the transaction should be ironed out.

The advertising is simply a lure.  True advertising should be honest; and so should lawyers.  But not all of them are.  Adding a bunch of mouse type that no one can read, or throwing in some disclaimers that make some lawyer happy but are otherwise of no benefit.  They obfuscate rather than clarify.  Which is what lawyers do.  Their goal is to get you to use their services, not to resolve things.

Some advertising, like that directed to children, does need to address the fact that kids don’t always understand everything.  But even then studies show kids grasp way more than adults generally give them credit for.

To me, the overall impact of the paragraphs of legal disclaimers in commercials like those for car deals is to suggest that the offer is disingenuous, shifty, insincere, laden with catches.  These undermines the sincerity of the offer.  Think of all the car advertising you have seen.  The big 3 American companies have been peppering us with legal mouse print for years and that has led us to distrust them.

An even bigger joke are the drug commercials.  The notion there is that your doctor is a dummy and doesn’t know to recommend “midixaflopin” for that serious condition you think you have.  Keep in mind, say the lawyers, that your suggestion may cause anal leakage and any of a range of side effects, including death.  So if you are stupid enough to recommend this compound to your doctor and die from it, well… we warned you – amidst a full bafflegab of other stuff pointing you in all directions.

My point again is that the concept of advertising as an offer of contract is flawed.  No one in their right mind takes every comment as being a legal comment?

A lot of our lives are led outside the limited vision of law – If I say “Have a nice day!” am I guaranteeing your happiness for 24 hours?  I think not.

Developing creative within legal parameters is like a game.  Thankfully, lawyers look at the words and never really understand it is the total impression of the message that matters.  That’s why they like contracts.  Contracts are two dimensional.  Video is three dimensional and can even add suggestions that create a fourth implicit level of communications.

We have had great success in dealing with legal parameters and skating with them.  But it takes a skilled copywriter to be effective within the legal muffler that is often applied.  (Some assembly required.  Batteries not included.)

Advertising should not be considered a form of contract.  But the power in today’s times are with the lawyers, not reason.

Just like other media, there are many many choices on the Internet, many media buyers throw their hands up in the air , saying its too fragmented. But there is an opportunity – in that fragmentation it’s often very easy to find highly specialized sites and user groups that contain a very specific target, who are avid users and very interested in your products and services. On top of that the less-avid users or potential users are going to end up reading the reviews, comments , complaints and stories of these customers.

When they do a search before buying something the trusted reviewers pages are going to come up first (usually).

Sometimes it’s as easy as using the user and geographic targeting tools sites like Google and Facebook have, with their large userbase it’s fairly easy to get to your audience with the tools they provide you.

In more niche categories you’ll want to find out where the customers are congregating online. Usually a couple hours of legwork will give you a good idea of where people interested in a topic visit frequently, and you end up with a good shortlist of sites to buy ads on or participate on.

Pretend to be a user looking to buy or research your product, see where searches get you.

It comes down to – advertise where the customers are. Sure fine-tune it and try to get it exact as you can on demographics but really all that matters is finding what site(s) your customers are visiting.

5 Mistakes Advertisers Make

Ever go into a car dealership and ask the sales guy to tune your engine?  You don’t really think that he/she would know how to do it, do you?

Sales people sell cars they don’t provide highly technical engine adjustments.  The dealership has trained mechanics for that.

Everyone has a skill set and certain talents. We call on experts, or those more expert than we are, to complete tasks we are less proficient at.

We don’t do our own open heart surgery, our own dentistry, or usually our own taxes. And lawyers say that someone who defends themselves in court has a fool for a client.

So why do retailers think they are experts at creating advertising campaigns? Is it because they think they can speak English, so they believe they can write copy?  And does watching TV make you an expert in media buying?

Once I cold-called a prospect and asked him who did his copy. He said it was his secretary (back in the day when people had secretaries). To which I replied that she was under-utilized. “She should be writing screenplays, there is more money in that.”

We didn’t get the account — didn’t think we would want it anyway.

My sarcasm aside, the power of having the right advertising campaign is not something left to amateurs. I recently read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He endorses the idea that someone needs to have 10,000 hours doing something before they are expert at it.  Then you can get the benefit of that expertise in a Blink!

Advertising agencies have well developed and disciplined processes for the development of creative. We define a strategy before hand to make sure we putting forward the right message to the right target.  It takes years of training to get this right.  The power of having the right message in the right place can increase the impact of the media investment in many multiples.

What’s it take for a retailer to gain this benefit? The courage to ask for professional help.

What about the cost? Some retailers are afraid of the cost. Really?

They should ask, “how much media money are they wasting by not having a potent message”? Does a doctor operate first and diagnose second?  Mine better not!

Radio stations and newspapers will assemble a commercial or ad for FREE! Their view of the message is – do what the retailer wants and get it done fast. So not much thought or added value goes in.

It is a total waste for the retailer, when all that media money puts across a lame message that does not hit the mark, isn’t provocative, or compelling or persuasive.

Retailers are usually great at operations. Making sure the their stores operate consistently and efficiently.

Advertising people are trained to think differently. They think from the customer’s point of view.

This means when a retailer does hire a professional, they should listen to the advice they get and consider it.  Don’t try and redo it yourself.

Ask the question “does this achieve what I am trying to do?” instead of the more typical question, “Is that how I would do it?” – Of course it is not how you would do it!  That’s why you hired an expert with a different perspective. You don’t buy a dog and then bark yourself.

It is the wise person who knows what they can and cannot do.  Professional advertising advice can pay for itself and then some.  Give it a chance.

Now where’s my chainsaw, I have an appendectomy to do.