I have spent every day for the last twenty years thinking about advertising from a unique perspective. While most ad agencies distill sales messages down to 30-second spots or small ads, at my company we take sales messages and expand them. Instead of shortening the sales message into an ad, we turn it into information and then publish it.
Until recently, many businesses felt turning sales messages into information, such as newsletters and media coverage, was too much work. It was easier and faster to just list the features and benefits in ads, then blast them out to the public.
For a variety for reasons, the days of encapsulating the sales message into an ad are coming to a close. Advertising has gotten off course and in my opinion will never find it’s way back to the heyday it once enjoyed.
Super Bowl ads are a shining example of just how derailed advertising has become. If you look back at ads from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, you’ll see they are strikingly different than ads today. Ads back then were designed to sell, not entertain. They were a list of features and benefits strung together in sentences to form a straightforward sales message.
In the 60s 70s, and 80s, our lives got busy. Ads became a nuisance and we started to look at them as pesky interruptions. We’ve gotten handy with the remote control and simply ignore what we can’t delete. To compensate, ad agencies added humor to keep the viewers attention. Not only does the ad have to sell, now it has to entertain.
In the 90s and 00s ads have become so convoluted by clever writers that it’s hard to find the sales message anymore. Agencies have turned advertising into an eye-catching but irrelevant form of entertainment. Many people now watch the Super bowl as much for the commercials as the game. The funny thing is, most people remember the ads but they can’t remember who the ads were for. That can’t be good for sales.
In defense of advertising, many brand-name products don’t need an explanation like they once did. Look at the features and benefits in this Coke ad from 1954. “In 31 countries around the globe, busy people relish the pause for ice-cold Coca-Cola. It’s the world’s favorite way to refresh, for Coke gives a bit of quick energy and with as few calories as half a juicy grapefruit. No wonder Coke is the most asked-for soft drink in the world.”
Imagine rehashing those slim benefits for the last fifty years. It’s no wonder they resort to cartoon polar bears sipping Coke as they slide on their butts across snowy slopes. I guess as long as we hear Coke fifty-bazillion times, we keep drinking the stuff.
But what about you? Most of our clients don’t have products that have been around 100 years. And most of you aren’t selling hamburgers or beer. You have products that need to be explained. Some are so complex, your customers could spend a week at a retreat complete with lectures, training and testing, and still not fully understand your product. But the thought of turning complex messages into catchy little ads is enticing. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get some advertising wizkid to come up with a clever ad campaign that worked like magic? Each time your ad appeared, people would flock to you and order in droves. Your biggest problem would be filling the orders and counting the money.
I wonder how many billions of dollars have been wasted chasing this notion.
We have one client who spent $24 million on ads that produced $15 million in gross revenue. Last year they did much better. They spent $7 million to get $8 million in revenue. How much did they spend with us turning their sales message into information? Almost nothing. Could we have done better? I can hardly contain myself when I think of the influence we could exert on the public with $32 million.
I urge you to consider spending more of your marketing dollars packaging your sales message as information rather than ads. Tell your sales story in national magazine and newspaper articles. Create a radio show and broadcast it on your Internet site. Write long sales letters and fax and email them to as many people as you can. Have books ghost written about your products and promote the heck out of them. Start your own magazine or newsletter. Turning your ads into information elevates the status of your sales message. Stories find their way into public conversation streams, not ads. This is the way to advertising in the 2000s.
Sam Walton says, “If you are confused in business, go to your customers. They have all the answers and all the money.” Will your customer stop to watch your commercial? Would you? My hunch is, you flip the channels when the ads come on just like everyone else. And if you spend time reading ads in your newspaper, you’re an odd duck. I’ll bet you hate the blow in cards that fall out of your magazines, and the chances you bought something because you saw it on a billboard are slim to none.
Why not expand your sales message? Why not package it as information. That’s what people want.
My business goal is simple: Help clients use information rather than ads to sell their products.
There are three primary ways to publish information: print, broadcast and person-to-person.
Sincerely,
Lonny Kocina
CEO
PS. Here’s a little direct marketing trick you can use. Start throwing your junk mail in a box by your desk. Eventually you will notice that you keep getting some pieces over and over. The ones that come over and over are the ones that work. I’ve done this now for twenty years and have gained some good insight.
