Two rules of effective advertising

What makes effective advertising?

There are classic volumes and numerous listicles that purport to answer this question.  There are numerous research methods to pre-test advertising or measure it in-market.

Data only help us make well-informed decisions; data can't write copy for us.  Despite the advent of language-generating programs like GPT-3, data won't drive creativity, although it can (and perhaps should) help us formulate strategies.

How do I know if advertising is effective?

These are not rules for how to write effective advertising.  Every copywriter has rules and methods that work for them, as it should be.  Very few will consult a 12-point article when sitting down to create an advertisement and a 2-rule blog post would be no less presumptuous.  These are rules for the rest of us to keep in mind when writing a creative strategy or evaluating creative work.

Rule 1:  Impossible to tell someone about it without mentioning the product.

You know advertising is memorable when someone is willing and able to describe it.  The retelling will only be as accurate and complete as the ad's story was compelling.  But the retelling doesn't matter if the product isn't part of the story.

Two ads that make the product part of the story are Amazon's tale of two friends, a priest and an imam, who order the same gift for one another, both using Amazon's mobile app, and Metamucil's "The Regulars," in which three co-workers visit the restroom at the same time daily, due to the, uh, product benefit.  (This latter example also shows you what a product demo can be, as well as offering a pack shot that goes with the story.)

Rule 2:  Impossible to forget what brand created it.

You know advertising is persuasive when the recipient remembers the brand as well as the product. Common ways to improve the odds of success are a brand name linked to the product benefit (Chapstick, although they've let people use the name generically), a brand associated over the long-term with a clear positioning or benefit (Nike, athletic performance) or campaign elements consistent enough over time that they're easily recognizable (IBM, still using the blue letterbox treatment for almost 20 years).

Rule #2.

The two ads cited above follow this rule, too, mainly because the brand and product are so closely linked.

Be careful, however, because the degree of difficulty goes up if you're launching a new product that would take your brand into an adjacent category or even segment.

DO try this at home

Be a consumer.  Try this as you encounter advertising during the day, even/especially banner ads, billboards, any form of ad.  See if it's impossible for you to tell someone about the ad without mentioning the product, or impossible to forget what brand created it.

If you try this experiment at work -- well, be careful.  Look closely at messaging strategy and product portfolio.  Almost every time, advertising that breaks these rules came from business strategy that failed to consider them in the first place.

What is Ad Majorem?

Thank you for visiting my blog, Ad Majorem.  When it started in the late 2000s, it was a view on modern marketing from within a large advertising agency.  Now it’s a view on modern marketing from the perspective of a CMO.

The title, Ad Majorem, is part of a familiar Latin phrase and loosely translates to English as “to the greater.”  As in, there is always an opportunity for better marketing: stronger consumer insights, more powerful ideas, channel-neutral marketing plans, and accountability so we know what sells and what doesn’t.

 

There’s also always an opportunity for better marketing people.  It’s important to me that team members keep learning as they go, staying curious and maintaining a perspective of continuous improvement.  We’re happier when we’re learning and growing, so that will continue to be a theme here.

The “ad” in Ad Majorem means all marketing communications, from social media to direct mail to Internet gaming to television commercials. To most consumer audiences all of these are advertising. My professional experience

in these channels provides a perspective that is part specialist, part generalist.

A lot has changed since 2009, not all of it “to the greater.”  We’re at a very inauspicious moment, with uncertainty, threats, deepfakes and divisions.  This blog has always avoided politics, and will continue to avoid politics, because there are too many wannabe pundits in marketing and advertising already.

That said, there’s always hope for the future, so the tone here will be hopeful as well as honest.  Don’t come here for dirt, fear or loathing. The closest I’ll come to that is self-criticism of the marketing business. Occasionally I’ll stray into a review of a campaign but only in service of a larger point.

Please comment. Otherwise this wouldn’t be an honest look at an industry where communication with consumers should be two-way, not just one-way.

One thing hasn’t changed since I started this blog.  Ad Majorem’s reason for being is to keep myself honest on embracing the challenges and changes of modern marketing. My hope is that you, too, will derive some professional growth from it.

Greetings from Startup Land

Which one delivers results?

This past month on Ad Majorem I've described in a series of posts how I went from Ad Land to Startup Land.  My hope is that you found it interesting or helpful or both.

There are a lot of differences between the two worlds.  I'd argue that one big thing Startup Land can teach Ad Land is how Technology and Marketing can work together.

One big similarity?  I've seen that whether you're in Ad Land or Startup Land, the only way to create real value is to focus on delivering results.

Here's an index to the whole series.  Thanks for reading.

How I Went from Ad Land to Startup Land

Startup Land Has No Boundaries

Startup Land, Where Technology and Marketing Work Together

In Startup Land, Management Really Is Nimble

Results Also Matter in Startup Land

Book Review:  Quick and Nimble

Book Review: Quick and Nimble

Quick and Nimble:  Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation

By Adam Bryant

Henry Holt & Co., 264 pages

While writing the series Greetings from Startup Land, I noticed this new book by Adam Bryant, the Corner Office columnist at the New York Times, titled Quick and Nimble.  So, as a bonus extra to the Startup Land series, here’s a nimble version of the Ad Majorem Book Review.  (Slightly less nimble book reviews here, here and here.)

Bryant starts on the premise that big companies can learn from startups how to be quick and nimble.  A competing theme is that companies in general can learn from so-called innovative companies how to be more innovative.  The book doesn’t really deliver on either of these promises.  Instead, it’s a collection of Things Big Company CEOs Have Learned.  Which probably makes sense, because the source material is Bryant’s weekly profiles of Big Company CEOs Who Have Learned Things.

In fairness, much of what emerges from these interviews is a response to the generally bureaucratic nature of big companies in an era when technology has made interpersonal communication much more instantaneous.  In other words, communication has been democratized and corporations are still catching up.

So if you are currently in a leadership position, or wish to be, this book requires two hours for a speed-read, or four to six hours for more careful consideration.  Either way, you’ll probably take away a couple of techniques worth emulating.  But it won’t make your company more nimble.

Results Also Matter in Startup Land

Decades ago the Ad Land pioneer Rosser Reeves asked, “What do you want from me?  Fine writing?  Or do you want to see the sales curve start moving up?”  We may argue, half a century later, as to how widely Ad Land holds that sentiment.  Startup Land depends on it – or at least depends on the sales curve rising fast enough to beat the burn rate.  

Or does it?

Years ago, Eric Schmidt described Google's business strategy as “URL” -- Ubiquity first, Revenue Later.  That worked for Google, but many venture capitalists who invest in technology seem to take it literally.  There is a lot of money poured into companies that may still be in the red for years, like Amazon, Pinterest and many others.

Dollars and Cents

Sadly, most people in Ad Land are insulated from business results until the moment when agency layoffs are unavoidable.  Agencies have been slow to embrace results and accountability.  One pundit says clients are complicit.

Last of a series

Because Startup Land is for the most part small and nimble, it’s impossible to be insulated from business results.  Everything is very out in the open.  If your company hasn’t gone public, you’re still accountable to your investors, whose money you’re spending to grow the business.  Our investors hold us accountable, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Traveling in these circles, however, I am struck by how few investors really do their homework on the day-to-day operations of the companies they invest in.  Some are far more interested in financial instruments – credit facilities, warrants and the like – than in what makes the sales curve go up.  Many investors love seeing stock prices rise on the possibility of future results.  (Today's news suggests that caution is order.)

Kiss a Lot of Frogs

There’s an old saying, repeated often in Startup Land, that you have to kiss a lot of frogs before getting to the prince.  It applies both to raising capital (which we recently did) and raising the sales curve (which we are always doing).  As I’ve mentioned a couple of times in this series, it’s easy to get impatient.

Impatience may be a virtue, but don’t lose focus.  Whether you’re in Ad Land or Startup Land, focus on delivering results, not just the promise of them.  It's the only way to create real value.

In Startup Land, Management Really Is Nimble

Maybe it’s just because startup companies are small by definition, but management really is nimble.  In our company, “management” is three people:  the CEO, the CTO and the CMO.

I’m still not sure if we’re nimble because we can be (there are just three of us) or if we have to be (market forces move so quickly these days).  Maybe a little bit of both.  I do know that big companies want to be nimble.  When Google founder Larry Page took over as CEO, he said he wanted “the nimbleness and soul and passion and speed of a startup.”

Interestingly, that quote lists four characteristics that form a sine qua non daisy chain of Startup Land merit badges.  You can’t have any of these without the others.  In other words, you’re not nimble if you don’t have soul or you lack passion or speed.

Dance, Startup Boy, Dance!

Happily, things in Startup Land move much faster than things at a big holding company in Ad Land.  When we took over our little company, it was clear we had to put costs in line with revenue, modify the business model and clean up the code.

Fourth of a series

Coming from Ad Land, “costs in line with revenue” is usually a synonym for “employee layoffs” but that wasn’t the case here.  As in many startups, the company was just burning through too much investor cash on things that didn’t really drive the business.  You see those things quickly when there’s no bureaucracy hiding them.

We also very decisively focused the company’s business model.  We’re winding down a legacy business in managing proprietary hardware – call it “owned media” – for institutional advertisers.  We stopped licensing software to clients, which yielded very little revenue and more than a few operational issues.

We inherited an excellent software platform, but like any such platform it needed regular updating.  The CTO started a project, working closely with Marketing, to release new versions every four to six weeks.  This allowed us to prioritize what we needed and get it to market faster, rather than waiting for One Big Release that might come months later.

Some things just can’t get done right away.  You only have so much time and talent available.  For example, we are only just now revising the website.  But we made that decision ourselves versus being held hostage to a corporate process.

Impatience Can Be a Virtue

In the first post of this series we mentioned that Startup Land requires patience, and that’s still true.  Impatience, however, drives nimbleness.  You want to make things happen quickly, so you do. 

To resolve this apparent paradox:  Be impatient with what you can control, and patient with what you can’t.  Which leads to our next post.

Next:  Results Also Matter in Startup Land

What I Learned from a Real-Life Mad Man

“He loved watching Mad Men.  He lived that life.”

That’s what Dick Mincheff’s daughter told me.  The only thing is, Dick’s story has a happier ending than Don Draper’s.  But more about all that in a moment.

Tribute to an Ad Man

Dick Mincheff

Dick Mincheff, a Leo Burnett veteran who started at the agency in 1961, died recently at age 74, survived by his wife, Monica, four children and five grandchildren.  He earned a journalism degree at Miami of Ohio, served in the U.S. Army Reserves psychological warfare battalion, and went to work at Burnett, spending many of his years on the Philip Morris business.  He had a hand in building the Marlboro brand and repositioning Virginia Slims.  He retired from the agency in 1999.

When I joined Burnett, Dick was in the autumn of his career, running the Unocal (Union 76) and Dewar’s Scotch accounts.  One day I was promoted to AE and found myself reporting to him directly.  This would prove to be a formative period in my career, which was a good thing because I could benefit from his experience, his seen-it-all sense of history, and his personal integrity.  Not only that – he was so cool he made the Rat Pack look like a bunch of nerds.  No, really.

If you called Central Casting looking for an ad man, Dick is what would show up.  Tall, tan, always dressed in an impeccably tailored suit.  When we went to Los Angeles, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel or the Bel-Air, he was in his element.  Equally, though, in the conference room, his command of client business information showed the substance behind the style.  Substance – that’s what truly reassures clients that we’re professional enough to be trusted with their reputation.

He had a way with clients.  They sensed he had their best interests in mind, and on top of that, his power of persuasion was formidable.  My first major TV production project was the annual package of four or five commercials for Unocal – the old Murph campaign.  The price tag was a little higher than usual, and Dick made the phone call to sell it.  I was told to be patient:  “Dick is in there ‘Minching’ the client.”

Minch – that’s what we called him – knew and worked with Leo Burnett himself.  In fact Leo asked Minch to write a point-of-view on copy strategy, which turned into a six-page memo that I was privileged to read one day.  The memo was titled “Stratagem” and had Leo’s notes all over it, written in his trademark green ink.

You know from watching Mad Men that in the ‘60s cigarettes were common in agencies and the advertising they produced.  While researching this article I found this document detailing his role in a Philip Morris marketing seminar.

Requiem for a Mad Man

That brings us to the Mad Men part of the story.

As of this writing, Mad Men just finished its latest season with the calendar set at November 1968.  Don Draper’s lot in life seems dismal, the result of his own bad choices.  It’s too early to say whether his story has a happy ending, but it doesn’t look pretty.

Dick Mincheff’s life turned out way better.  Sure, he made some bad choices of his own.  Dick would be the first to admit those.  Unlike Draper, however, Dick helped others.  He had a knack for encouraging, cajoling and pushing colleagues to do their best.

Helping others continued in his retirement.  Dick counseled business owners and recently laid off senior executives via SCORE, the Service Corps Of Retired Executives, a program of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Lastly, and most importantly, Dick kept his family together.  He and Monica were married 54 years.  Three of their children lived nearby in the Portland, Oregon area; the other lived in Chicago.  That’s where I last saw him, when he was in town visiting his daughter.

3 Lessons from a Real-Life Mad Man

This blog is about embracing the future.  So what can we learn from a real-life account guy of the ‘60s?

Genuinely love the ad business.  Dick took great care with the creative process, not only knowing how to recognize a strategy, but how to make it inspiring for the creative team.  He was a student of the business, always observing newly-released campaigns and what they meant.  He made a habit of checking out what was in development around the agency, constantly curious about what friends were creating.

Genuinely care for your client’s business.  Minch knew that clients innately understand when someone at the agency doesn’t respect them.  He set the tone for me and others by showing enthusiasm for the client’s business and interest in learning everything about it.  This is far from the cynicism you see Sunday nights on AMC, and way above the crank-stuff-out mentality of today’s project management culture.

Genuinely respect your co-workers.  To be sure, some co-workers annoyed Minch.  But he never ranted about them or saw himself a better person; he tried to be patient and kind.  He also showed respect by setting high standards.  Expecting great things of people communicates that you believe in them.

Minch wasn’t famous, but he was respected, and my hope is that you find some inspiration in his story.