Salon Marketing – read on if you want to know one of the biggest advertising secrets…
by Greg Milner on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
This is quite a long blog post. Deliberately so, to be honest.
If reading ‘bores’ you, if the idea of learning something fills you with horror, if you have the concentration span of small Burmese grasshopper, this is not for you. It involves thought. So if your typical reading is four minutes with a copy of Who Weekly, this will make your eyes glaze over.
If however, you have even a passing interest in what actually makes people buy stuff (your stuff, maybe), what makes for ‘good’ advertising and what deserves to be instantly consigned to the trash, this will be rivetting, eye-opening stuff. (And particularly if you believe the nonsense peddled by so many fools about ‘people won’t read it if there’s lots of text’, and ‘fill it with lots of pretty pictures and not much else…’.)
Frankly, it’s mostly only of interest to our Inner Circle Premium marketing & mentoring members, so I’ve reserved the best stuff for them, but at least non-members reading this should ‘get’ that if you know absolutely nothing about advertising, you’re in good company.
Because most of the so-called ‘smartest guys in the room’ in the big ad agencies don’t know any more than you.
Take one of the world’s top car makers, Honda. This esteemed Japanese company spent no less than $US107,000 on a full page ad in the New York Times magazine in May this year. Take a moment to cast your eyes over this ‘masterpiece’ below.
For their $107,000, Honda – thanks to the geniuses at their high-priced agency – ended up with an ad that clearly gave the ‘creative’ art director a warm fuzzy feeling, but breaks almost every rule in the advertising book.
The Honda ad misses the mark in so many ways. Here are just a couple:
1) the entire premise of the ad is a single small headline in the middle of the page – “Our speakers can create an interesting sound. Silence” – followed by one paragraph of text so tiny you need a magnifying glass to read it. Here is what it says (clumsily):
Most speakers only create sound. Ours, on the other hand, can also take it away. Microphones inside the cabin constantly monitor unwanted engine noise. When noise is detected, opposing frequencies are broadcast through the speakers to eliminate it, literally fighting sound with sound. The result is dramatically reduced engine noise for a quieter, more comfortable cabin. Active Sound Control in the Acura TSX V-6. The most innovative thinking you’ll find, you’ll find in an Acura. Learn more at acura.com.
—Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
2) “The wickedest of sins,” said ad guru David Olgilvy, “is to run an advertisement without a headline.” This pathetic effort for Honda contains a bizarre headline of three blank treble clefs with no notes of music. Er, doesn’t the sound system in the Honda play music??
3) Then, in a tribute to laziness, the copywriter has left the remainder of the page entirely blank. A complete waste of (very) expensive real estate.
Ogilvy, the creator of the most famous ad agency in the world, Ogilvy and Mather, was a stickler for research. And that discipline produced some of the world’s greatest advertising campaigns.The writer of this appalling Honda ad clearly didn’t do any research. If he had, he would have been able to creatively ‘steal’ some of Ogilvy’s work.
(This article continues in the Members Only ‘sealed section’ here – where Members will discover some of the most successful advertising ever created, and why it’s so compelling.)
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A post by Greg Milner The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality. Greg is co-founder and CEO of Worldwide Salon Marketing, a writer, direct response marketing consultant, specialist marketing systems adviser and coach. |
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