Beer And Headaches And That Awful Cramping

Chuck Blore once told of a study he did for CBS. Beer drinkers were surveyed as they entered his testing facility. They each proclaimed a preference, as well as an explanation of why they they had chosen that particular brand of beer.

The participants were then given tasting cups, and were told to help themselves to any of the 20 beers available for comparison tasting.

As they finished and were leaving the testing facility, the participants, all 104 of them, were again surveyed as to their preferences.

Interestingly, not a single partcipant had changed his or her mind. Each had found validation in the actual testing that the beer he or she had preferred on the way in was indeed more robust, or smoother, or lighter.

Blore never told them that all of the samples were exactly the same.

His conclusion: Advertising makes beer taste better.

Let's look at another example.

If you were suffering from a headache would you be more likely to take Midol Menstrual Formula^® or Excedrin Tension Headache^®? If you were suffering from menstrual cramping which would you be more likely to take to relieve your symptoms?

They each have the same active ingrediants: acetaminophen and caffeine.* My conclusion: Effective advertising makes pain manageable.

But notice something else at work, here. By limiting themselves to headache relief, or to menstrual pain relief, aren't the makers of Excedrin™ and Midol™ (McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals and Bayer Corporation, respectively) limiting the number of sales they could make to people with backaches, toothaches, or sore muscles?

Absolutely they are.

They will probably make no sales to those people. And it doesn't matter.

Name three other products marketed for the relief of menstrual pain. Go ahead, I'll wait.

I'm waiting.

OK. Were you able to name three? Two. Most of us named only one.

Now, which would you rather be, one of a dozen products for general pain relief, or the one product that comes to mind when a customer is suffering a particular ailment?

By specializing and becoming the solution to a specific problem, you automatically become the most likely choice of consumers who are experiencing that particular discomfort.

When customers ask for you by name, you've succeeded at genuine branding. The lack of branding is the single biggest reason most business advertising isn't as effective as it should be.

Your first step getting them to ask for you by name is to help shoppers figure out what they get from you that they can't get from anyone else.

What is it? You sell the same products. You deliver the same services. What differentiates your business from those of your competitors? Why should anyone think of you as the solution to their problem?

Well, why should they?

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* The active ingrediants are acetaminophen and caffeine. Midol Menstrual Formula^® also includes 15 mg of Pyrilamine maleate, a diuretic to relieve water-weight gain.

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More Advertising Thoughts From The Road

1) If people don't know you exist, they can't buy from you. (You've heard before that it pays to advertise).

2) Just because customers don’t complain doesn’t mean they are happy.

3) Don’t assume that everyone is like you. Other people don’t watch the same television programs you do. They don’t live in the same part of town you do. They don’t share your tastes in anything. Never assume that your marketing dollars should be spent on those things that would satisfy you as a customer.

4) Most small business marketing is focused on what the owner wants, instead of what the customer wants. Customers respond by ignoring the ad. Stop talking about you. Shoppers don’t care about your hours of operation, your location, or the number of years you’re claiming as "experience." They want to know how you can save their time, make them money, or make other people think highly of them. Talking about yourself may be gratifying to your ego, but it also wastes your money.

5) If you make sales presentations to people who don’t need what you offer, it’s a tough sale. Your advertising will have an equally difficult time in converting shoppers who don’t need what you offer. Stop trying to reach everyone. The narrower you target, the more successful your marketing will become.

6) An effective ad is focused. Like a hammer driving a nail into a hard board, an effective ad drives a single message into the mind of a prospective buyer. If you have more to say about your business, say the rest in another ads.

7) Make it easy for people to buy from you. If they’re interested in what you’re selling, tell them in your ad exactly what to do next. If you don’t, many will take no action at all.

8) Give people a reason to want to know how to get in touch, and they’ll figure out how.

9) You don’t need your phone number in your radio or television ad. Never say "we’re in the yellow pages," and direct your prospect to your competitor’s ads as well as yours. Instead make sure shoppers remember your name, and remind them to find you in the white pages.

10) Stop putting your address in your ads. Use your location instead. Don’t say "4321 Liftoff Lane." Say instead "At the corner of Liftoff Lane and First Avenue." Can you tie in a landmark ("across from the water tower")? So much the better.

11) Shoppers don’t call a logistics strategist when they want a package delivered. They call a shipping company. By the same token they don’t buy insurance from a financial services company. They don’t buy telephone systems from an integrated information systems specialist. People talk in terms of specifics, rather than in generalities. Tell them, in simple one or two syllable words exactly what you do.

12) The client almost always tires of the ad before the buying public does.

13) Good marketing is art. It is also science and business. It rarely works instantly. Sometimes the most important part of your marketing is patience.

14) Effective ads involve news that will impact shopper’s lives. Do you know what news is?

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Advertising Observations From My Hotel Room

Some people when they visit a new community look for the typical “touristy” kinds of things. Others wonder if there’s a casino nearby. I study the local ads.

This week I’ve traveled through four major southern cities. As you might expect, I have some advertising observations to share.


Example Number One:
Earlier this week I dropped in to visit a radio station because I’m a friend of the program director and morning disc jockey.

While we were catching up, he played an ad for me that had a strong character espousing the client. The character was hammering away the copy points in a way that was nearly impossible to ignore.

The client wants it re-done with a “regular announcer.”

I told him that it was too bad that the client was intent on making the ad less attention getting and less memorable.

Observation:
When clients insist on making an ad sound like or look like an ad (ie. “professional”) they are effectively insisting that their ad be just like all the others.

Estimates are that Americans ignore nearly 3,500 advertising impressions a day. Shouldn’t we be working to make our ads less like everyone elses?

And please note that I’m not suggesting being different for the sake of difference. As the great jazz bassist and composer Charlie Mingus said “Anybody can play weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

Example Number Two:
Ads that have attorneys screaming, “I’ll FIGHT for YOU. I’ll get you the money you deserve for your pain and suffering.” are probably running in most markets across the country. Does the same guy produce them all? They all appear to have the same script.

Observation:
This is transactional marketing taken to an extreme.

Sobering thought: these ads must be producing results for the lawyers to keep running them in prime time.

Example Number Three:
You can’t build a positive image by piggybacking on someone else’s slogan. In a single community over the last thirty days I’ve witnessed “Got Insurance?” “Got Real Estate?” “Got Teeth?”

Observation:
Honestly, what do you think of these variations on “Got Milk?”

Are you driven to do business with them?

Do you get the feeling that these various businesses are able to solve your problems?

Or do you suspect that they have nothing to offer, and are trying to cash in on someone else’s notoriety?

Example Number Four:
Why do the graphic artists who compose yellow pages ads insist on putting the client’s logo as the headline? I have the Memphis Bell South yellow pages open in front of me as I write this. I’m looking under landscaping.

Here are the headlines.

Bob Hollandsworth Landscape
Complete Lawn & Landscaping Service
Designscapes By D
Growth Spurts Landscape And Irrigation
Landscape Creations, Inc.
Naturescapes
Paradise Allscapes
Tee Time Landscape
Total Yards Landscaping

Yes, I'm aware that these are the names of the businesses. That's the point.

Observation:
It appears each of these companies is proud of their name. Unfortunately, as a shopper, I want to know what they can do for me. I’ll fix ‘em for making me do all the work. I’ll ignore ‘em.

Now, among all of these easily-forgettable ads are two that hint at the ability to help me.

When Skies Are Blue, We Rain – Blue Skies Irrigation

From Concept To Completion, Your One-Source Solution For A Beautiful Landscape – Pugh’s Landscaping.

Better, but I still have to think about them in order to see the advantage to me, the buyer.

Therefore, the winner is clearly:

Give Your Yard An Exciting New Look - Germantown Landscape Company

At last, a clear promise of benefit. I now know what's in it for me.

Take a peek at your yellow pages ads. If the headline is your company's name, you're wasting money.

Final Example And Observation:
You probably shouldn’t assume that everyone knows how to find your store. “The oldest, ugliest building on Tanner Road” doesn’t mean anything to anyone who doesn’t know which section of Tanner Road to look in to find your store.

Cleverness like this can actually cost you business. If you make shoppers solve a puzzle in order to respond to your ads, they’ll take the easy way out and file you permanently under “ignore.”

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You Can't Bore People Into Paying Attention

Usually, I warn about clever and creative advertising. Clever and creative is dangerous, because it's too easy to get sucked into the creativity, and forget that our purpose is communication and persuasion. If your attention is drawn to the cleverness of the ad, rather than to the product, it's a bad ad.

Today, however, that same warning applies to dull ads. Our purpose is communication and persuasion. You'll do neither by boring people.

About a week ago I received a phone call from a representative of a nationwide yellow pages publisher, who said "Hi, Chuck. I've been handling Abraham's yellow pages advertising since he first opened his business fifteen years ago. When I called him today he gave me your number and said I should deal with you. His ad is ready to go."

I asked him to fax me a copy. When he did, I rejected the ad, and told him I'd submit a different one later that day.

"Chuck," he said, "this ad's ready to go. You don't understand yellow pages. What's important in yellow pages is size and position. The bigger the ad and the closer to the front of the category the more likely it is to be read."

Is he wrong? No, not completely. When all other factors are equal (as they never are in real life) a larger ad will be noticed more easily than a smaller ad. And there is some evidence that being listed earlier in the category improves the odds of being noticed, too.

However, a bad ad won't be read regardless of size or postion. Adding color won't ad to your persuasive ability, and getting noticed does not directly lead to persuading anyone to buy. Size, position, or color don't communicate a message.

You'll recognize a bad ad by it's focus. Bad ads are about the advertiser. Good ads are about the customer. A bad ad says "This three stone diamond pendant is only $299 just in time for Mother's Day." A good ad says "She'll kiss you like you've never been kissed before."

What's the most important part of any ad? The headline. It draws attention and naturally leads the reader into the rest of the ad. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

The ad which had been faxed to me used my client's logo as the headline. Can't you just see a potential customer's eyes glazing over as she sees page after page of yellow pages ads with business name after business name as the focal points of those ads? Unfortunately this kind of design is all too common in the yellow pages.

Think about this: people go to listing media when they have a problem to solve. They go to the business category that seems most likely to address their problem. Page after page of business names makes the customer do all of the work. And make no mistake, trying to figure out whether your business can help IS work.

The name of your business doesn't say anything of interest to a customer searching for a solution to her problem.

Make it easy for a prospective customer. Make your headline promise a big benefit, which will naturally pull the reader's eyes to the rest of the ad. Once the customer is confidant that you understand her immediate need, include your name, address, and phone number - at the bottom, where they belong.

How does this story end? I re-wrote the ad.

The headline now promises a benefit to the reader. The information that the client had been "serving the community for fifteen years" was replaced with body copy and an illustration which expands on that promise. Finally the client's logo was reduced to a reasonable size, and his address and phone number were placed at the bottom of the ad, where they become the last thing a potential customer reads.

If she's been persuaded, she'll now pick up the phone and call.

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