The Most Neglected Part of Your Advertising Campaign

So far, we've covered two of the three elements of the Formula for Advertising Success.

Here's the Formula: http://sclohonet-thebook.blogspot.com/2010/09/formula-for-advertising-success.html

Here's the first element, Reach: http://sclohonet-thebook.blogspot.com/2010/09/are-you-reaching-your-potential.html

And the second element, Frequency: http://sclohonet-thebook.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-one-big-ad-is-waste-of-money.html

Today, I'll dig into the third element, your Message.

First a bit of background. Growing up I enjoyed listening to the radio, not just the music, but the personalities too. When I was 15, my high school started a radio station and about 30 of us volunteered to spend our summer studying for a test required by the Federal Communications Commission in order to work on the air at a radio station. 20 of the 30 passed.

Those 20 were given the opportunity to volunteer at our new high school radio station. That launched my career as a radio disc-jockey and air personality. At my 5 year class reunion, I was the only one that continue that career path.

One of my least favorite parts of the job was recording commercials. The scripts were usually pretty bad, and the reason is in radio, often the person who wrote the ads, was the salesperson and he/she had no training in advertising, only sales training.

One day, when I was 25 years old, I decided to re-write a pizza commercial with two voices, a bit of sly humor and then I produced it along with the boring commercial the sales guy gave me. They used my creative ad and within 6 months, I found a job writing and producing radio commercials in Detroit.

It was hard work, but I loved it. I was fascinated by the techniques that I could use to persuade people to action through advertising. This became a passion of mine is why I do what I do today, 25 years later.

Unfortunately, not much has changed in the advertising world in the past 30 years as far as message creation. (That's your ad.)

I now work with advertising agencies that are responsible for creating ads for their clients, and even some of those are pretty bad.

The adage that any news is good news, even bad news, as long as they spell my name right, doesn't apply to advertising.

Your advertising message must be targeted to the people you want to reach.
Your advertising message must be created with a goal in mind.
Your advertising message needs to break through the clutter of all the other advertising messages that you and I are exposed to daily.
Your advertising message needs to be uniquely yours, not interchangeable with your competitor.
Your advertising message needs to touch emotions first, logic second.
Your advertising message needs to be appropriate for the advertising venue/advertising medium you are using.

Regarding that last item, there is a huge difference between the content of an ad on a Billboard, a newspaper, and radio/TV.

Oh, and just because, you are paying someone to create your ad, that doesn't mean it is worth what you are paying them to create it.

Make the person who is creating your advertising message justify why they are saying and doing what they are creating. This is not a job for amateurs, or interns.

This is your business that you are paying to promote with your advertising dollars. It is your investment in your future. Don't neglect it.

If you are in the Northeast Indiana Area, (Fort Wayne), contact me if you would like help. Scott@ScLoHo.net