The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [66]
Marketing Weapon 1: Advertising
If you have the budget for it, advertising has the broadest reach and creates the most top-of-mind awareness. When I worked for Charlie Munger, I headed up a four-year study of what kinds of ads got the best response. Every so often we’d find that one ad was pulling 10 times more response than other ads for similar products in the same magazine. Invariably, the best-pulling ads all followed a specific formula. Using this insight, I started designing ads that helped our clients pull a much higher response. Over the years, I’ve designed more than 500 advertising campaigns and, because of the learning curve from our study, have maintained a very consistent ranking among the best-pulling ads in the magazine.
There are four rules for creating high-response-generating advertising:
Rule 1. It Must Be Distinctive
The first important thing about your ad is whether or not it attracts attention. The best response-generating ads catch the eye and hold it. There must be something in the ad that is distinctive and really stands out. I recall an ad in an airline magazine where there was a fellow looking into the camera and behind him were two velociraptors about to pounce. It stopped you cold. Another ad that stands out in my mind was for a graphic design firm. It was a shot of a herd of zebras and one of them had all different-colored stripes, like a roll of Life Savers—this, against a sea of black-and-white zebras. The headline that went with that ad was great, too: “In the corporate jungle, identity is every thing.” Clever, distinctive. But we’ll get to headlines in a moment. So the first question is, what can you do to really stand out?
Let’s talk TV for a moment. We all know that the majority of people at least mute their commercials if they’re not already fast-forwarding through them using TiVo or DVR. This challenges TV advertisers to be creative, to develop ads that stop you dead in your tracks. They need ads that are so intriguing that you’ll unmute to hear what goes along with the bizarre images on the screen. Or ads that, as you are fast-forwarding, make you stop and rewind to see what the ads are saying.
As of this writing, there is a Gap campaign that features Audrey Hepburn wearing skinny black pants and dancing to AC/DC in and out of scenes from her movie Funny Face. This ad stands out. Victoria’s Secret ads also stand out, with amazon-sized women in provocative stances, emphasizing the romance or sexy appeal of the image Victoria’s Secret wants to create. Yet, there aren’t many TV ads that make you stop to watch or even make you curious about the content that might go with the images you’re fast-forwarding through. Every company using TV must stop and ask the hard questions: How can we be distinctive? What can we do to stand out and stop people in their tracks?
Rule 2. Capture Attention with a Screaming Headline
Back to print. The most effective ads have a headline that follows this important rule: “Tell me what you want to tell me in 3.2 seconds.” The headline should give a benefit and focus on the prospect by using “you” or “your” instead of focusing on yourself by using the word “we.” It should communicate its message immediately and make you want to read on for more information. It amazes me that companies will spend $100,000 to be in a national magazine and a prospect has to work to figure out what the ad is selling.
I had clients who ran more than one million dollars’ worth of ads in Forbes, Fortune, and other prominent business magazines. The ad pictured an executive thinking about something and the headline was vague, along the lines of “Thoughts are things.” What is this ad about? You have no idea. Worse, the body copy didn’t really explain much more. This