Emotional Advertising to the Universal Human Desires

Today more than ever, we need to maximize the impact of our advertising dollar. So keep your message focused on solving one or more of the three universal human desires:

1. To be wealthy and powerful
2. To be attractive and desirable
3. To be youthful and healthy

Which two basic desires does this Brylcreem ad hope to provide?

Always be thinking of the basic human desires, needs and problems of your prospects or your buyer personas, and how your company can solve them.

Once you have an emotionally charged ad, think of ways you can make it super easy and convenient to do business with you. Think of Zappos Shoes, and their no hassle returns, with free shipping both ways. Remove as many barriers to the decision process as possible.

And finally, never underestimate the impact of frequency and repetition of your value proposition to drive brand recall and preference. 

No Emotion, No Sale

My friend and creative partner Daryl Stevenette and I were recently talking about advertising, and what makes some ads effective and others flops.

We naturally came back to the topic of music. Songs are usually written to tell a story, a story filled with hopes, dreams, love, romance or adventure. And this is why songs and music are such a large part of our culture.

People love messages contained in songs, accentuated by the music and the beat, as they elicit feeling, emotion or memory. They can make us feel sad, happy, reflective, hopeful or energized, and they can bring us to another place or time.

And why do we turn off those “yell-sell” screamer ads? To begin with, they are insulting, abrasive, and intrusive. But they also lack everything we like about a good ad. They lack creativity, class, cleverness, wit, and the element of surprise. And they lack the rhythmic melody of a good music bed or jingle.

Good advertising sticks in the mind in a positive way. And good advertising includes those mechanisms that allow it to stick:

• Emotional appeal or connection
• An element of surprise, cleverness or a unique twist
• A catchy and memorable tagline or slogan
• Enough frequency, longevity and continuity to break through the clutter
• Usually a good jingle, music bed or stinger to help carry the message into the subconscious mind like a power line carries electricity

Think about bringing back creativity and jingles to make good advertising and branding work again. Because I believe that good music works on the senses and creates permanent brand recall.

I was at a concert recently, and after watching the crowd being emotionally moved, motivated to dance, sway, clap, scream and sing, all charged by song, video screens and lights alone. Going to a concert is actually a lesson in the power of music to persuade.

The theme of the tour, the set and the video screens were Caribbean beaches and tropical destinations. In fact I have coined a new term for Chesney’s music style; I call it “Caribbean Country.” And people seem to love it. Which is yet another testament to my theory that people seek and appreciate mental escapism and good music as an easy ticket for a cheap mental trip.

Pent up Demand--and Where the Economy is Working

If ever there was a time in the past 4 years to advertise those things that the average consumer has been putting off buying, this is it. And that includes automobiles, RVs, vacation travel, homes, appliances, remodeling services, and furniture.

Most people have put off these big-ticket purchases until they felt the economy was more stable and predicable, and their job was mostly secure. With unemployment rates down, home prices coming back up, interest rates at an all-time low, and the stock market very solid, people are finally replacing those worn-out products and cars, and selling the home they have been stuck in for 4-5 years.

As spending increases, and the stock market creates more wealth, more products will be purchased, and more jobs created. But the recovery is not, and will not be equally felt across every state, in either the speed of recovery, or the depth of the recovery.

If the current trends hold, we will see Texas, Utah, North and South Dakota, Wyoming and Virginia lead the pack, based on lower tax rates and more pro-business climates. In addition, Texas and Utah both enjoy robust growth in the high-tech sector. There are other pockets of high tech growth that will certainly help support the host state, such as San Francisco, Boston, New York City, Seattle, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina. Florida and Nevada are also beginning to see significant improvements in development, home values and job growth.

Why Do My Ads Under Perform In A Recession?

Lately I hear business owners tell me that their ad campaigns under perform based on their expectations, or based on the results they received a year or two ago. I would like to discuss some of the reasons why this may be so, some of the reasons I have found to cause the problem, and how to fix the problem.

1. To begin with, if you are comparing today's expectations against results from two years ago (2008) using the same gross rating points or target rating points, and you are using the same basic offer or call to action, you probably are getting fewer responses.

Why? because in a deep recession there are fewer people in the market for most goods and services. In other words there are fewer fish in the same sized pond. So what to do? Get yourself a bigger net and cast it further into the pond. This will allow you to reach more buyers by purchasing more audience share or rating points. And why not, the rates are lower now so you can afford to buy more rating points, more reach and more frequency for the same budget you spent in 2008. It will take more fire power but there always people in the market if you can simply reach more people.

2. Check your offer lately? What you offered before may not be the same bait the fish want today. In other words, when the market is slow, consumers are looking for greater value, savings, service, warranty and guarantee protection, and overall more inducement to part with their money. Recession advertising requires that you give them more bang for their buck.

3. Get creative, and look for ways to solve problems that people are facing today. It may be creative financing, bundling of services or products to provide greater value, or creating a new service that people need to stretch their budget, create income, find a job, feel better, learn a new skill, etc.

4. Make sure you are selling what the market wants to buy. If you have a new car dealership your new car sales are down by 30-50% over 2008 based on the triple blow of the recession, tightened credit and manufacturer bankruptcies. So what to do? Focus on selling and leasing used car models at price points that people are buying and can afford to pay. Look at a buy-here-pay-here and a rent to own business model on older used cars that does not require bank financing, which fewer people can qualify for today.

Here is an example of one companies experience. In 2006 they had tremendous response to a radio campaign. So much so that they literally stopped advertising due to the residual sales and income. In 2009 the bottom fell out of the market and their sales revenue was cut in half. In January 2010 they brought me in to start advertising again, hoping to repeat the success of the campaign in 2006, of which I was not involved.

They did not get even close. Why? I asked them what was different if anything about their offer and message in 2006 vs. 2010? They could not think of anything that was different. After conducting some research into their only competitor I discovered that the competition was busy, very busy. Why? Because the competition started offering what the client company used to offer, but abandoned because of their own success.

It turns out that the client used to offer a guarantee and Saturday hours. Both of which they dropped in 2007, but because the market was so hot they did not feel the impact.

It also turns out that the competition continued to advertise in good times and bad, creating confidence, top of mind awareness, and brand preference, which consistent advertising does, while the client was in and out of the market with no consistency or continuity.

To make it more interesting, I also built a new website for them with analytics to measure traffic volume, sources and visitor patterns. What I discovered was that the radio campaign was in fact a great success. Why? Because we had nearly 1,000 unique visitors to the site in 6 weeks, 70% of whom came as a result of direct type-in or searching for the keywords we used in the radio ads. They also viewed over 3 pages and spent nearly 4 minutes each on the site, which is a long time. But fewer than 100 requested more information. This tells me they were looking for something they did not find, which is what lead me to investigate, where I found what they were looking for was no longer offered except by the competition.

So there you have it: cast a wider net, check your offer, get creative, solve problems, and give them what they want to buy.

Proven Principles Work

Effective advertising today requires adhering to proven principles:

• Always build from a well produced and researched Creative Brief. This will keep your message and creative on strategy and consistent
  
• Your ad creative and offer/copy must grab the attention of the target audience
  
• The ad must be fresh and new, unless it is part of an ongoing branding campaign. Even then, you need to freshen it up while sticking to the brand and creative standards
  
• Your offer, unique benefit and call to action must be easily understood
  
• The copy and benefit must be relevant to your audience in today's market conditions
  
• Your creative and branding must stand out from the competition and be original
• Always sell the benefits that your target audience wants, not products and features

Advertising Can Work In A Recession

I hear advertisers these days say pretty much the same thing; "My advertising just isn't generating nearly the same number of leads as it was a couple years ago."

Then they begin to doubt the viability of the mediums they are using, or the advertising message they are promoting.

And it may just be that the mediums are not right for the target audience, or that the message is off key for the market. It is my guess however that more often than not, it is simply the fact that in a down market, there are fewer people willing or able to take advantage of their offer, so the same message and media schedule is simply going to yield fewer leads.

Its just a numbers game. In good times for example, about 14% of the population will replace their vehicle with a brand new one, or a newer used one in a given year. And this is often times followed by additional spending on insurance, aftermarket upgrades, and road trips. All which stimulate the economy further.

In good times 20% of the population will move their residence. Which also statistically means that within 6 months of a move they will make major purchases on home furnishings, appliances, remodeling and home improvements. All which stimulate the economy further. And believe it or not, within the first year of a move 20-25% will also purchase a new vehicle or RV!

Without these major purchases occurring in a slower economy, it's no wonder the market is down for everything else, as the residual spin off effect is not trickling down.

Lansing Michigan for example was home to Oldsmobile, and back in the mid 1970's 25% of every working adult was directly or indirectly tied to the prosperity of and the ability to employ people at Oldsmobile. When Oldsmobile began losing market share, and jobs, the local market really suffered, because those 25% no longer had the income to buy discretionary goods and services from local merchants, which meant that their marketing efforts became less effective, causing them to buy less media, and further exasperating the local economy.

But there is hope, a lot of of it, and proof that doing the right advertising in a slow economy is not only effective, but very much the right thing to do. Explore for yourself some of the proven methods and messages that other successful advertisers have discovered.

Make Your Advertising Work

I was driving around doing errands the other day and heard a radio commercial that was so right, and yet so wrong I felt it worthy of mention.

The spot was for cosmetic dentistry, and it was well produced and written, full of unique benefits that promised the fastest and most pain-free results of any process available. It sounded like a real cutting-edge process that was affordable and would generate a lot of calls.

Great voice talent and read, compelling copy, everything you would want in an ad of this type. Except one deal killing component. The phone number was read only ONE TIME, and there was not any name or brand associated with this wonderful service, and no web address provided.

All that great copy and production and air time wasted on an ad that will not generate any business because nobody knows who the advertiser is, or how to contact them, other than a phone number given one time which nobody will remember becasue it's not even a vanity number. People can remember company names, brands and web addresses ten-times easier than a phone number, especially when that number is given only once.