Here are some sample chapters of The Secret of Advertising. We hope you find them enjoyable.
The Secret of Advertising
J. Anthony Nino
What is this thing called advertising*?
“Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.”
– Marshall McLuhan
“Advertising is legalized lying.”
– H.G. Wells
Marshall McLuhan and H. G. Wells are obviously firmly anchored at polar opposite ends of the advertising opinion scale. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between. Only the worst advertising relies on lies, and every museum in the world is built around greater art. But advertising is indeed an art form, especially when compared to a science. And when nothing good can be said about a product, lies are often the last resort on the bumpy road to bankruptcy.
Good advertising, like a good movie soundtrack, is not designed to be admired, appreciated and obvious, but rather to make the product, admired. All advertising has to do is move people. Grab their attention and never let it go. Make your audience think about you when they’re not in the market for anything you have to offer – then turn them into customers when they are. If it doesn’t do that, no matter how much it might be admired or appreciated, it fails. The real difference between good and bad advertising is easy to hear, if you stand close enough to the cash register.
Creating advertising is not inherently hard. Certainly no harder than golfing under 80 or batting 400. As Cannonball Adderly said about playing the sax, “If it’s not easy, you can’t do it.” Of course, if it’s too easy, you’re not doing it right. However, you don’t have to be able to do it yourself to be moved by it, understand it, or be able to separate the good from the bad.
And what about those who claim that advertising doesn’t work, and most emphatically, doesn’t work – on them! If you look closely, you’ll see even those people drive advertised cars, wear advertised clothes, eat at advertised restaurants, stay at advertised hotels, and most probably found their first houses in an advertisement. I wish government “didn’t work” that well.
*The obligatory disclaimer:
I blame advertising great Jerry Della Feminia for getting me excited about advertising. He called it the most fun you can have with your clothes on, obviously forgetting heady nights of frottage in the back seat of a Dodge. However, I forgive him for that. Advertising is exciting. Invigorating. Maddening. And, when it works just right, highly profitable for everyone concerned.
Whether you can do your own advertising or not, if you’re in business, you need it. Whether it’s on television, in the yellow pages, on the web, or simply your store signage and design, you need to let people know: who you are, what you do, and why what you do is so great. You should also know what to look for in your advertising to see if it’s right for you.
There are of course some easy answers: If you have a great product, and you’re making money hand-over foot, then your advertising is working. If on the other hand, you have a great product, and your competition is making money hand-over-foot, it’s probably not.
Since clients generally don’t have the time or inclination to go out of business to realize that their advertising isn’t working, I am presenting some guidelines to understanding what makes advertising drive interest, move people and move products. The “Secret of Advertising” is not to be confused with an in-depth examination of the intricacies of advertising. It is an overview based mainly on creative aspects. It merely scratches the surface of a giant canvas that covers a world of corporate marketing and communication. It does, however, fill in some of the gaps that historically we have found to exist in many of our clients’ marketing and advertising knowledge and understanding over the years.
If you find yourself understanding everything I cover, and wonder why I spent so much time explaining the painfully obvious, then you need to move on. I heartily recommend Trout and Reis’, “Positioning The Battle for Your Mind,” or David Ogilvy’s, “Confessions of an Advertising Man” for a start. Then get into advertising yourself. You possess a vision that can help thousands of grateful manufacturers and producers reach their audiences. And, in the process, you’ll have fun. A lot of fun, compared to most things you’d dare to do with clothes on.
Drama:
“I need to be dazzling, I want to be rainbow high
They must have excitement, and so must I”
EVITA, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber
Advertising is theater. There are lights. Actors. Action. Magic. And a whole lot is done with mirrors. Instead of a single stage, there are a myriad dazzling venues: magazine pages, television screens, newspapers, billboards, articles of clothing, even search phrases on the internet. The star of the show is the product. No matter whether there’s a spokesperson or not, the product is the star. To be seen, it has to be bright. To compete, it has to be memorable. Your audience is on the run, and they don’t care about you unless you make them.
If there are golden rules in advertising they are: Be brief. Be everywhere. Be simple. Have fun. People like fun. People buy fun. There’s a little joy in every product or service. Why keep it a secret? Let people know what you have to offer. Give them a powerful emotional connection to the product, and they will want it. But they won’t buy what they don’t know or understand.
The best advertising creates an immediate emotional bond. Something visceral to latch onto. It communicates its message in a split second, so that even those with no interest in buying your product will be building a positive image of it before the page is turned or button pushed. When they’re finally ready to buy, that is the image that will push them in your direction.
At all cost, avoid the pitfalls of Blandvertising.
You and your audience are bombarded by 10,000 messages every day. TV. Radio. Net banners. Newspapers. Magazines. Billboards. Bus shelters. Bus boards. Taxi cab tops. Matchbook covers. Movie theater screens. So many messages. So little relief. What is amazing is not that advertising messages can disappear in the clutter, but rather that any of it can be recalled at all.
Despite the prevailing belief that there are no guarantees in life, There are in fact, foolproof ways to assure that your message will be invisible. Ads you can walk by, turn past, yawn at, miss, dodge and skip with the touch of a button are the essence of money wasted. You don’t see them. You don’t hear them. You don’t remember them. You aren’t affected by them. And there’s no reason to believe your customers and clients will feel any differently.
There are a litany of strategies that doom advertising to failure. For instance, relying on advertising that looks basically the same as your competition’s. Or worse, advertising that looks the same as every ad surrounding it regardless of product featured.
Ads without focus are the worst kind of blandvertising. They are also the most common. One need only skim through the morning newspaper to wade through pages of them. Quarter page spaces jammed with products that blend into the quarter page spaces next to, above and below them. Unless you are actively looking for a specific product in one of those ads, you don’t see them. You don’t have the time. And you’re not alone.
Bland advertising disappears neatly into the cacophony of competing clamor which becomes mere background noise. It drains your ad budget as it chokes your sales. Blandvertising is death. Few see it. Fewer recall it. No one is moved by it
Politics, Sausage and Advertising
We try not to think too much about it what goes into politics and sausage, because otherwise we might not be able to stomach it. That said, good sausage is really good. So is good advertising. However, you can’t just throw random parts into the mix just because someone else might have used similar parts. Sausage is good not because of the parts themselves, but because of the recipe, the planning that goes into putting those parts together in the right proportions. If the recipe is well thought out, sausage is delicious, and we can put the dribbling pig snouts out of our minds.
The same holds true for advertising. There are great ads that have used 3-D computer graphics. There are great ads that have used humor. There are great ads that have used spokespeople. However, they were not great just because they used those particular presentation techniques, but rather because of the recipe that those elements were a part of. In every ad, the message is the prime ingredient, and everything else is just spice.
Unfortunately, there are clients who truly believe that because they liked a particular presentation technique, they have to use the same one (of course creating an identical looking ad is one of the primary ways to guarantee that it will be ignored). In their minds’ eyes, however, they see, say, 3-D animation. Their own precious product, the one they’ve poured their life’s blood into, glowing brightly, swooping down from space, sweeping across the screen and into the faces of millions which might actually work for Crispy Alien Snacks, but would probably prove somewhat less effective for the powerful, patented Poop-R-ScoopR.
Can you say, “PIZZ-AGNA?”
Pizza is one of the most popular foods in the world. It is an entree of virtually limitless possibilities, with and without heaps of meats, cheeses, vegetables, sauces and shapes. Lasagna is a beloved and savory Italian specialty. You can have it with sausage, beef, thick or thin noodles, sauces tailored to your own individual preference, including taste tempting vegetarian alternatives. But even if you love both dearly, you’d never in your right mind consider trying to mix the two. Few things in the world would be less appetizing than a pile of rippled noodles sitting atop a baked bed of dough… Imagine the joy of lifting a steaming slice to your lips as noodles and sauce splashed into your lap. Now that’s why it’s pronounced, “Pees-on-ya.”
Unfortunately, it is all too common for client-side creative directors to demand pees-on-ya, “Do a lifestyle commercial, that is hard hitting.” As if in some alternative universe, normal everyday people actively seek to fit six or seven products (with a strong price/benefit analysis of course) into every 30 second conversation. Actually 30 seconds is a very long time. Time enough for a compelling lifestyle spot. Time enough for a compelling price/benefit analysis. Not time enough for both.
Fortunately, this type of conundrum is easily avoided if agency and client agree on goals, budgets, policies and procedures before beginning the creative process. These four elements and the nature of the product itself will drive the creative. At each and every point in the process, they can effectively eliminate doubts about direction. Does the concept achieve the goals? Does it fit within the budget? Does it follow the policies and procedures? When the focus is the end result, the individual steps to achieving it become clear.
However, that does not mean there can only be one perfect creative idea for each product, just like there is not just one perfect topping for every pizza . Still, if the creative doesn’t serve the goals for the product, wholly and completely, then no matter how much you like it, you have to reject it like crunchy chocolate sprinkles on pepperoni. It’s “Pees-on-ya,” and no one will ever swallow it.
Expand Your Expectations
It all starts with a goal. Ideally, it should be a goal that is specific, uniquely your own and also, hard to achieve. “I want to be the number one retailer of mermaid brassieres in the world.” From there, you will be able to set your target audience, your marketing plan, your interim goals, your positioning and branding plan, your advertising strategies and tactics, your budget and your time line… not necessarily in that order.
There are good solid business reasons to set a patently unrealistic goal. One of course is that if you shoot for the moon and miss, you’ll still end up pretty high in the sky, if you’ve done your homework. However, if you only aim for the end of the block and miss, you might not ever get out your front door. Of course, there is always the chance that you will achieve your goal, and if you’re going to hit it, why not hit it big?
But there is a more mundane reason: It helps you focus on the broader spectrum of challenges you are facing. When the businesses of Old Pasadena sought to improve their profits in a struggling economy, they first established a minimum goal: to promote and expand the image of Old Pasadena as a prime destination for shopping and entertainment. This was the minimum goal they were willing to accept. It meant they had to lure more customers and potential customers into this area of the city. But how? From where?
Their ideal campaign goal, “Become the number one destination in the market,” helped them concentrate on core issues. Their competition was not just the rest of Pasadena, or the neighboring cities of Burbank or Glendale, but also Downtown Disney, Universal Citywalk and Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Those venues have spent millions on their name recognition, and Old Pasadena didn’t have a fraction of that. The only reason they could compete was their name, which has enormous recognition not only in the market, but in the nation and beyond, because once a year the entire world comes to visit for the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl. And, they’ve been coming for over a hundred years.
Suddenly the impossible seems not quite so improbable after all.
For more of the Secret of Advertising, click here.
Here are some sample chapters of The Secret of Advertising. We hope you find them enjoyable.
The Secret of Advertising
J. Anthony Nino
What is this thing called advertising*?
“Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.”
– Marshall McLuhan
“Advertising is legalized lying.”
– H.G. Wells
Marshall McLuhan and H. G. Wells are obviously firmly anchored at polar opposite ends of the advertising opinion scale. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between. Only the worst advertising relies on lies, and every museum in the world is built around greater art. But advertising is indeed an art form, especially when compared to a science. And when nothing good can be said about a product, lies are often the last resort on the bumpy road to bankruptcy.
Good advertising, like a good movie soundtrack, is not designed to be admired, appreciated and obvious, but rather to make the product, admired. All advertising has to do is move people. Grab their attention and never let it go. Make your audience think about you when they’re not in the market for anything you have to offer – then turn them into customers when they are. If it doesn’t do that, no matter how much it might be admired or appreciated, it fails. The real difference between good and bad advertising is easy to hear, if you stand close enough to the cash register.
Creating advertising is not inherently hard. Certainly no harder than golfing under 80 or batting 400. As Cannonball Adderly said about playing the sax, “If it’s not easy, you can’t do it.” Of course, if it’s too easy, you’re not doing it right. However, you don’t have to be able to do it yourself to be moved by it, understand it, or be able to separate the good from the bad.
And what about those who claim that advertising doesn’t work, and most emphatically, doesn’t work – on them! If you look closely, you’ll see even those people drive advertised cars, wear advertised clothes, eat at advertised restaurants, stay at advertised hotels, and most probably found their first houses in an advertisement. I wish government “didn’t work” that well.
*The obligatory disclaimer:
I blame advertising great Jerry Della Feminia for getting me excited about advertising. He called it the most fun you can have with your clothes on, obviously forgetting heady nights of frottage in the back seat of a Dodge. However, I forgive him for that. Advertising is exciting. Invigorating. Maddening. And, when it works just right, highly profitable for everyone concerned.
Whether you can do your own advertising or not, if you’re in business, you need it. Whether it’s on television, in the yellow pages, on the web, or simply your store signage and design, you need to let people know: who you are, what you do, and why what you do is so great. You should also know what to look for in your advertising to see if it’s right for you.
There are of course some easy answers: If you have a great product, and you’re making money hand-over foot, then your advertising is working. If on the other hand, you have a great product, and your competition is making money hand-over-foot, it’s probably not.
Since clients generally don’t have the time or inclination to go out of business to realize that their advertising isn’t working, I am presenting some guidelines to understanding what makes advertising drive interest, move people and move products. The “Secret of Advertising” is not to be confused with an in-depth examination of the intricacies of advertising. It is an overview based mainly on creative aspects. It merely scratches the surface of a giant canvas that covers a world of corporate marketing and communication. It does, however, fill in some of the gaps that historically we have found to exist in many of our clients’ marketing and advertising knowledge and understanding over the years.
If you find yourself understanding everything I cover, and wonder why I spent so much time explaining the painfully obvious, then you need to move on. I heartily recommend Trout and Reis’, “Positioning The Battle for Your Mind,” or David Ogilvy’s, “Confessions of an Advertising Man” for a start. Then get into advertising yourself. You possess a vision that can help thousands of grateful manufacturers and producers reach their audiences. And, in the process, you’ll have fun. A lot of fun, compared to most things you’d dare to do with clothes on.
Drama:
“I need to be dazzling, I want to be rainbow high
They must have excitement, and so must I”
EVITA, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber
Advertising is theater. There are lights. Actors. Action. Magic. And a whole lot is done with mirrors. Instead of a single stage, there are a myriad dazzling venues: magazine pages, television screens, newspapers, billboards, articles of clothing, even search phrases on the internet. The star of the show is the product. No matter whether there’s a spokesperson or not, the product is the star. To be seen, it has to be bright. To compete, it has to be memorable. Your audience is on the run, and they don’t care about you unless you make them.
If there are golden rules in advertising they are: Be brief. Be everywhere. Be simple. Have fun. People like fun. People buy fun. There’s a little joy in every product or service. Why keep it a secret? Let people know what you have to offer. Give them a powerful emotional connection to the product, and they will want it. But they won’t buy what they don’t know or understand.
The best advertising creates an immediate emotional bond. Something visceral to latch onto. It communicates its message in a split second, so that even those with no interest in buying your product will be building a positive image of it before the page is turned or button pushed. When they’re finally ready to buy, that is the image that will push them in your direction.
At all cost, avoid the pitfalls of Blandvertising.
You and your audience are bombarded by 10,000 messages every day. TV. Radio. Net banners. Newspapers. Magazines. Billboards. Bus shelters. Bus boards. Taxi cab tops. Matchbook covers. Movie theater screens. So many messages. So little relief. What is amazing is not that advertising messages can disappear in the clutter, but rather that any of it can be recalled at all.
Despite the prevailing belief that there are no guarantees in life, There are in fact, foolproof ways to assure that your message will be invisible. Ads you can walk by, turn past, yawn at, miss, dodge and skip with the touch of a button are the essence of money wasted. You don’t see them. You don’t hear them. You don’t remember them. You aren’t affected by them. And there’s no reason to believe your customers and clients will feel any differently.
There are a litany of strategies that doom advertising to failure. For instance, relying on advertising that looks basically the same as your competition’s. Or worse, advertising that looks the same as every ad surrounding it regardless of product featured.
Ads without focus are the worst kind of blandvertising. They are also the most common. One need only skim through the morning newspaper to wade through pages of them. Quarter page spaces jammed with products that blend into the quarter page spaces next to, above and below them. Unless you are actively looking for a specific product in one of those ads, you don’t see them. You don’t have the time. And you’re not alone.
Bland advertising disappears neatly into the cacophony of competing clamor which becomes mere background noise. It drains your ad budget as it chokes your sales. Blandvertising is death. Few see it. Fewer recall it. No one is moved by it
Politics, Sausage and Advertising
We try not to think too much about it what goes into politics and sausage, because otherwise we might not be able to stomach it. That said, good sausage is really good. So is good advertising. However, you can’t just throw random parts into the mix just because someone else might have used similar parts. Sausage is good not because of the parts themselves, but because of the recipe, the planning that goes into putting those parts together in the right proportions. If the recipe is well thought out, sausage is delicious, and we can put the dribbling pig snouts out of our minds.
The same holds true for advertising. There are great ads that have used 3-D computer graphics. There are great ads that have used humor. There are great ads that have used spokespeople. However, they were not great just because they used those particular presentation techniques, but rather because of the recipe that those elements were a part of. In every ad, the message is the prime ingredient, and everything else is just spice.
Unfortunately, there are clients who truly believe that because they liked a particular presentation technique, they have to use the same one (of course creating an identical looking ad is one of the primary ways to guarantee that it will be ignored). In their minds’ eyes, however, they see, say, 3-D animation. Their own precious product, the one they’ve poured their life’s blood into, glowing brightly, swooping down from space, sweeping across the screen and into the faces of millions which might actually work for Crispy Alien Snacks, but would probably prove somewhat less effective for the powerful, patented Poop-R-ScoopR.
Can you say, “PIZZ-AGNA?”
Pizza is one of the most popular foods in the world. It is an entree of virtually limitless possibilities, with and without heaps of meats, cheeses, vegetables, sauces and shapes. Lasagna is a beloved and savory Italian specialty. You can have it with sausage, beef, thick or thin noodles, sauces tailored to your own individual preference, including taste tempting vegetarian alternatives. But even if you love both dearly, you’d never in your right mind consider trying to mix the two. Few things in the world would be less appetizing than a pile of rippled noodles sitting atop a baked bed of dough… Imagine the joy of lifting a steaming slice to your lips as noodles and sauce splashed into your lap. Now that’s why it’s pronounced, “Pees-on-ya.”
Unfortunately, it is all too common for client-side creative directors to demand pees-on-ya, “Do a lifestyle commercial, that is hard hitting.” As if in some alternative universe, normal everyday people actively seek to fit six or seven products (with a strong price/benefit analysis of course) into every 30 second conversation. Actually 30 seconds is a very long time. Time enough for a compelling lifestyle spot. Time enough for a compelling price/benefit analysis. Not time enough for both.
Fortunately, this type of conundrum is easily avoided if agency and client agree on goals, budgets, policies and procedures before beginning the creative process. These four elements and the nature of the product itself will drive the creative. At each and every point in the process, they can effectively eliminate doubts about direction. Does the concept achieve the goals? Does it fit within the budget? Does it follow the policies and procedures? When the focus is the end result, the individual steps to achieving it become clear.
However, that does not mean there can only be one perfect creative idea for each product, just like there is not just one perfect topping for every pizza . Still, if the creative doesn’t serve the goals for the product, wholly and completely, then no matter how much you like it, you have to reject it like crunchy chocolate sprinkles on pepperoni. It’s “Pees-on-ya,” and no one will ever swallow it.
Expand Your Expectations
It all starts with a goal. Ideally, it should be a goal that is specific, uniquely your own and also, hard to achieve. “I want to be the number one retailer of mermaid brassieres in the world.” From there, you will be able to set your target audience, your marketing plan, your interim goals, your positioning and branding plan, your advertising strategies and tactics, your budget and your time line… not necessarily in that order.
There are good solid business reasons to set a patently unrealistic goal. One of course is that if you shoot for the moon and miss, you’ll still end up pretty high in the sky, if you’ve done your homework. However, if you only aim for the end of the block and miss, you might not ever get out your front door. Of course, there is always the chance that you will achieve your goal, and if you’re going to hit it, why not hit it big?
But there is a more mundane reason: It helps you focus on the broader spectrum of challenges you are facing. When the businesses of Old Pasadena sought to improve their profits in a struggling economy, they first established a minimum goal: to promote and expand the image of Old Pasadena as a prime destination for shopping and entertainment. This was the minimum goal they were willing to accept. It meant they had to lure more customers and potential customers into this area of the city. But how? From where?
Their ideal campaign goal, “Become the number one destination in the market,” helped them concentrate on core issues. Their competition was not just the rest of Pasadena, or the neighboring cities of Burbank or Glendale, but also Downtown Disney, Universal Citywalk and Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Those venues have spent millions on their name recognition, and Old Pasadena didn’t have a fraction of that. The only reason they could compete was their name, which has enormous recognition not only in the market, but in the nation and beyond, because once a year the entire world comes to visit for the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl. And, they’ve been coming for over a hundred years.
Suddenly the impossible seems not quite so improbable after all.
For more of the Secret of Advertising, click here.