It’s Time For Rewards Not Awards

Being a graduate of the “Mad Men Days” in the advertising business, I have a deep appreciation for great copywriting. In musing over the state of the ad industry, I began to think that this talent has become a rare commodity.

With the dearth of great print ads or outdoor, where is one to find moving copy that speaks to the consumer and makes them sit up and take notice? The answer strangely enough is to be found on the Internet.

In the early days, the only measuring tool was consumer response measuring in the old adage: “It’s not creative unless it sells”.

When one looks back at the greatest ads ever written, like Volkswagen’s “Think Small Campaign” it becomes obvious that brilliant concepts created brilliant sales. The funny looking car became a huge success all because the advertising was able to capture both the essence of the brand and the imagination of the consumer.

These same qualities can be seen in great home or landing pages on today’s Internet.

Just like yesterday’s sales results, clicks can provide a valuable measurement standard for any web-landing page. If the copy is great, the customer stays and acts and even puts up his or her money or email address. It’s the same kind of instant feedback and reward that would have made all those guys on Mad Men stand up, have a smoke and a martini and gleefully give each other hardy pats on the back.

What a wonderful world.

Meet The $5 Dentist And Open Wide

So, you wake up with a terrible toothache. Your head is pounding and feels like it weighs about a ton. You know that you need a dentist and you need one pronto.

What do you do?

You go on the Internet of course and look for a dentist to treat you for five bucks…

That’s the basic idea of Fiverr. It’s a wildly successful new website where creative people can offer their services for five bucks. Check it out and you’ll see there are copywriters who will write five hundred word articles for five bucks. The fact that their own posting has two spelling mistakes and enough grammatical errors to fill a textbook, heck it’s only five bucks.

Why spend good money on an ad agency to develop a strategic plan when there’s a faceless guy in India who will do it for five bucks?

Silly to get a jingle done by a great, experienced radio production company that has Clios lining their walls. No, go to Fiverr and for five bucks you can have a jingle done in China.

My point here is that you always get what you pay for. Whether that’s hamburgers or advertising advice, good quality costs money.

And the good news is it’s time for your colonoscopy!

Every advertising or marketing agency needs new business. There I’ve said it.

The problem is that getting that new business is never going to be easy. The chances you bump into the president of some big company that’s itching for a new marketing partner and offers you a huge retainer to take on their business is about the same as winning the lottery.

The only way you are going to get new business is the painful way. That’s right, new business development is a painful part of growing your agency. That’s why so many agencies I meet with tell me they don’t have time for new business or they are hoping their new white paper or redesigned website is their new business tool.

Let’s face it they hate new business because it’s so damn hard to do. There’s the detested cold call. Picking up the phone and trying to pitch someone you don’t really know. You expect rejection (ouch), you and secretly hope they won’t answer your call because it’s easier on your psyche to leave a recorded message than actually have to pitch someone. Then there’s the dreaded warm call. You know the person you met or someone has introduced you to. You know that calling them demeans you in some way. Are you begging? Are you lowering yourself by asking them to consider using your services? So distasteful, so off putting…why do any new business scouting now, I could be working on a new piece of creative or planning some media….anything will be more fun.

Sadly, in the past few years new business has become as popular as cancer. Making a cold call is like a colonoscopy, you’d love to put it off but in the back of your mind you know that postponing it will not help.

So here’s what I want you to do.

I want you to force yourself to actively find a new piece of business in the next 30 days. Put that goal on a piece of paper and stick it somewhere prominently in your office. Every time you look at it, make a call, send an email, write a letter (yes letter writing is back and blows through the clutter of day to day emails). Swallow that pride and beg, plead or cajole someone to give you their account. Offer them free creative for the first 6 months. Tell them you will review their existing media plan and make recommendations absolutely free. Provide them with some public relations ideas at no cost. Do what you have to do. But do something. One win, one glimmer of hope will be the only reward you should expect within that first 30 days. And here’s the good news. If nothing works and no business comes in, you get to do it again next month.

This Year Try A Little Superbowl Brain Surgery

2015 New Years Marketing Resolutions

Every year I try to look back at the marketing landscape and devise a list of New Year’s Resolutions. With the arrival of 2015 I once again put flying fingers to computer to compile my Top 5.

Number One

No more client directed copywriting.

Over the past few years as the ad business became more and more competitive clients seemed to have started to really push their agencies’ around. You can blatantly see it in the copywriting. As a Senior Creative Director I can spot client directed copy from a mile away. It’s always flat, uninspired and speaks not about the personality of a brand but rather about what the brand does. It has no place in modern advertising and should be left to corporate white papers and bad handout brochures.

Number Two

Stop Talking For Yourself.

Nothing says, “I just couldn’t think of anything”, more succinctly than TV and radio commercials where the owner, manager, sales manager or invento

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r does his or her own commercials. In the early days of TV it was kind of entertaining, nowadays it’s just plain unprofessional and irritating.

Number Three

Call centers need to be banned.

“Hi it’s Steve, I’m calling from Acme construction with a special offer”. These unwanted calls are now coming at you from Bangladesh, India and who knows where. They usually come at dinnertime or when you are in the middle of hanging wallpaper or taking the dog for a walk. You never want them, they keep calling and it drives everyone nuts. Who in their right mind told the folks at Acme this idea would help their business?

Number Four

Outdoor advertisers need to drive by their ads.

Outdoor advertising is one of the best vehicles for notoriety around. It’s targeted, effective and relatively inexpensive. The problem is few advertisers seem to know how to effectively use billboards. Here’s a tip, next time you create a billboard, drive by it at 30 plus miles an hour and see if you can read and comprehend the darn thing. Pass this simple test and you will be on your way to using this media properly.

Number Five

No more New Year’s Resolutions…

Now I know why Creative Directors get mad

Over my career I’ve worked for a number of Creative Directors from wild to mild. Some I thought needed professional help others lead by example. In any case, new research suggests that people who get mad get more creative.

In the latest Miller-McCune Tom Jacobs writes:

Writing in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, a research team led by University of Amsterdam psychologist Gerben Van Kleef describes an experiment involving 63 undergraduates. To begin, each filled out an 11-item “personal need for structure scale,” in which they rate the degree to which they agreed with such statements as “I become uncomfortable when the rules in a situation are not clear.”

“Individuals scoring on the low end of the scale are more inclined to search for and incorporate new information when making judgments,” the researchers write, “whereas people on the high end strive to maintain simple structures.” In psychological jargon, the first group exhibits high epistemic motivation, the second group low epistemic motivation.

Next, the participants performed two variations on a standard creativity test: They were given eight minutes to write down as many uses as they could come up with for a potato, and an unlimited time to think of as many ways as possible to use a brick. In between those two sessions, they viewed a video clip in which an actor read a list of instructions, telling them “the more ideas the better,” “the more unusual the idea the better” and “combine and improve your ideas.”

Half the participants saw a version of the video in which the actor was emotionless. The other half saw a version in which “he frowned a lot, spoke with an angry and irritable tone of voice, clenched his fists and looked stern.”

His palpable annoyance affected different people in different ways. The researchers found exposure to the angry man increased the creativity of participants with high epistemic motivation (those relatively open to new information), but decreased it for those with low epistemic motivation (those with a strong need for structure).

“Individuals with low epistemic motivation are less likely to consider the task-relevant implications of others’ anger,” the researchers note. “Rather, they develop negative reactions toward their co-worker, which leads to disengagement and lower performance.”

Further analysis found that “among individuals with high epistemic motivation, expressions of anger also increased relative originality — that is, the number of unique ideas relative to the total number of ideas generated. This indicates that expressions of anger do not just lead individuals to generate more ideas, but also to generate more original ideas.”

So, if you’re a supervisor trying to inspire creativity on the part of your staff, it would clearly help to understand each of their personalities before deciding who would benefit from your sharply expressed displeasure. And, the researchers add, it would also be wise to save your potentially inspiring irritation for the right moment.

“Given that variables such as time pressure or environmental noises have been found to decrease epistemic motivation,” they write, “these findings suggest that expressions of anger are unlikely to increase creativity under such conditions.”

If you have ever worked in advertising, this information may make you wonder about some of the creative people you worked with. Hopefully, in your case the anger was kept to a minimum perhaps except in the heart of your favorite Creative Director.