 Let's rename item-and-price advertising for what it is, shall we? I admit it. I'm still losing sleep over item and price advertising. We need to rename it. Let's call it "piece-and-price." A piece of merchandise is an item, right? And "piece and price" lets us use the acronym PAP. Yay! Acronyms! PAP advertising! And "PAP" is fitting, eh? As you may know, the word "pap" has two definitions. 1) "Bland soft or semiliquid food such as that suitable for babies or invalids." 2) "Reading matter that is worthless or lacking in substance." Synonyms for "pap" include "nonsense," "drivel," "rubbish," "trash," and "noise." The latter is my favorite. "Noise" is a direct reference to communication science. Noise stands between the sender of a message and the receiver. In our case, noise is a barrier between advertiser and customer. And PAP advertising is just noise. Look at so many car dealers and appliance stores. "Picture! Price! Buy now!" Zero effort to engender a good feeling about their business. Back when I was in radio, my most successful car dealer advertiser sold out their inventory every month. They did it by advertising one thing: Brand. Every message compelled you to feel good about their dealership. They made you want to buy a car because it made them sound like people you want to be friends with. Contrast that with the unbranded competition: "Yeah, we sell that, too. Buy it now!" But...being king is different. Can you be the king of the PAP you advertise? Remember when big-screen TVs were unusual and expensive? Every day, lots of PAP advertisers were showing you big TVs and big prices in their race to the bottom. But not The King. In California, a famous retailer called himself "The King of Big Screen TVs." He had PAP advertising. Big TVs! Low prices! However... The King also showed you his face. He told you his name. He promised same-day delivery and 100% happiness. He said the customer is always right. He also promised, in every ad, "I AM the king of big screens!" He had a brand and he advertised it. One can argue: it is an imperfect brand. But it IS a brand. It is not just PAP. And for 30 years, he built a reputation as the leader in big-screen TV sales. At his peak, he was selling $30 million in big TVs-out of a single retail store. Yes, TVs. One store. 30 million bucks a year. When he died in 2015, he was famous. Big newspapers and magazines wrote stories about him. He remains a celebrity even today. His brand outlasted his business. People loved him. Nobody loves PAP. Unbranded PAP is racing to the bottom of the barrel. Human beings are irrational, emotional creatures. They make decisions using emotion. This is not my opinion. This is Nobel-prize winning science. Winning people over requires appealing to their emotions over the long term. Your business must feel right. Making it so requires brand. What if you are afraid of paying too much for a big TV? Who would you trust? a) The generic appliance retailer, no branded personality, displaying pictures and prices (PAP!) of washing machines, refrigerators, ranges and, oh, big TVs? Or... b) The guy who spends 30 years displaying pictures of big TVs at low prices while saying "I'm the king of big TV and you're the boss!" It's not high art. It doesn't need to be. It needs to be authentic, resonant and consistent. It needs to feel good. It needs to be something besides PAP. Know someone who needs to electrify their branding for business as unusual? There's still a free copy of Lightning Branding: How to Generate Revenue Faster With An Electrifying New Brand is still available by clicking here. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City
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 It's a challenge and it's troubling.
Last week, we were asked about an advertiser who insists item and price advertising is king. "Branding is a waste of money." How could this man be persuaded otherwise? I don't know that he can. Maybe if he's presented with the right question. This advertiser lives in a world filled with brand advertising. He sees it and hears it. It's done by businesses bigger and more successful than his. Yet he is 100% certain that he is doing it right and those businesses are doing it wrong. So he spends his own money saying, "Here's my item and here's my price, buy now!" I used to work for a guy who insisted item and price advertising was king. One day, he bought a direct-mail marketing package that couldn't survive on item and price advertising. So I became his copywriter. For a year, I wrote brand-based marketing copy that was fun, engaging, informative, and effective. Every time a marketing piece went out to the mailing list, there was a corresponding bump in sales. It was right there, on the page, in hard numbers. We could prove these brand-building advertisements were effective--yet he canceled all of it. He refused to acknowledge a correlation. Yes, he had a bump in sales each time. But the mailing contained no item and price advertising. Individual sales could not be directly attributed to the mailing. Therefore, the advertising was a failure. "Yes, I have my desired result--but it defies what I know to be true. Therefore, the evidence is wrong." People do not crave items and prices. They crave relationships. It's simple psychology. Relationships make us feel important. Strong branding builds a relationship. Item and price advertising is an instruction to buy now. It does not make the customer feel important or appreciated. It reduces the relationship to a transaction. "Give me the money. Thank you and goodbye." The right branding makes the right customer feel important. Here are two examples. For 35 years, Motel 6 has been crushing it by making the budget lodging customer feel important. "We'll leave the light on for you." That says, "Hey, you are important to us." Their brand advertising follows suit. And oh, by the way...Motel 6 also has a unique selling proposition: "The lowest priced room of any national chain." There's your item and your price. No, there is no number. That's because those numbers change all the time. Why do you think they put the price on a lighted sign outside the motel that can be changed all the time? Ritz-Carlton branding is also making the luxury lodging customer feel important. Their motto is "We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen." Customer service is part of their branding. Their branding tagline is, "Let us stay with you." Their website says, "The Ritz-Carlton stands ready to create unforgettable moments from some of the world's most treasured destinations. Every day, every guest, is our chance to create a lasting memory. What will you remember?" Ritz-Carlton and Motel 6 each you ownership of the experience. But Ritz-Carlton doesn't need item and price advertising. You already know the price is very, very high. That price is part of their branding. Along with all the luxurious images in their brand advertising, you know you're going to feel important. Motel 6 or Ritz-Carlton: branding is not a waste of money for either one. It is an investment in their future sales for a core customer who is not ready to "buy now." COVID has branding, too: that of a beast devouring the economy. Everyone is talking about pivoting their business. But is anyone talking about having better branding? Better branding builds a relationship. Better branding makes the customer feel good about your business. Better branding makes the customer want to work with you tomorrow. "Buy now" is a lowest-common-denominator tactic for right now. "You are important to me" is a strategy for a lifetime. And the businesses who come out on top tomorrow will have done it using better branding. But, will the item and prices advertisers survive? Know someone who needs to electrify their branding for business as unusual? There's still a free copy of Lightning Branding: How to Generate Revenue Faster With An Electrifying New Brand is still available by clicking here. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City  Go ahead. Try. It's not easy to make me laugh at your funny advertising. I might laugh. Or smile, just to be polite. But what you should expect is me a) looking at the ad (or listening to it), then b) trying to figure out where it went wrong. Or how it could be better. Or how the sales pitch failed. Or why there's no organic link between the laughs and the product. Or why the ad is even trying to be funny. This might come from a lifetime of fixing the work of others. Between years of screenwriting and standup comedy and over two decades of writing advertising, I've fixed a lot of jokes. But once in a while, I see a funny advertisement that makes me say, "I wish I'd written that." And then, sometimes, an ad is so good, I'm just happy that it even exists. This is one of those times. How to have laughs in your COVID-era advertising Sure, the first reaction is: why would I make people laugh at COVID advertising? To that, my answer is: Why not? If it's appropriate, have some fun. People need a laugh right now. But an ad I saw last week is still giving me a giggle. It continues to tickle. (If you were among the 500 or so folks who sat in on the Local Broadcast Sales webinar this week, you've heard me talk about this and may even have seen it. If so, I acknowledge the redundancy.) Here is that commercial in all its glory... Yes, I'm a sucker for mock pomposity.
I enjoy comedy that make fun of self-important, cause-oriented messages. Maybe this is one of those times. And maybe it feels so good because it is funny, it pretends to be self-important, and then it does actually support a good cause. All this to say: Yes, you can have fun, get a laugh, and be on-brand. This is one of those times where I want to salute the writer who did something ridiculous. "Stay home of the Whopper" is a simple and fun twist on the legacy brand. And "couch potatriot"? That is phrase is genius in its stupidity. This is so much better than the moldy Whopper of many months ago. What were they thinking? It doesn't matter how beautiful the photography is. It doesn't matter what point they were trying to make. The human animal is hardwired to be repelled by moldy food. That message doesn't make you feel good. This couch potatriot message, however? It doesn't even show the food. It just shows the silliness of the situation and invites you to play. And in "these uncertain times" of stoopid, hackneyed phrases and maudlin sentiment, evoking a good feeling and encouraging play are valuable things to give your customer. Not yet downloaded your free copy of Lightning Branding: How to Generate Revenue Faster With An Electrifying New Brand, there's still time. Just visit http://www.lightningbrandingbook.com. For information about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City  "Less advertising. More fun."
This is so freaking hard. You have no idea. Each week, someone asks: "How can we write better ads?" The answer is simple and deceptive. Ready? Stop working so hard at writing advertising. Have fun with it. We will condense this into a succinct recipe. First, please feel the pain below... Did you know that writing advertising is not a calculus exam? One of the most pernicious falsehoods perpetrated on the ad-writing public is Claude Hopkins' assertion that there is such a thing as "Scientific Advertising." That was 1923. It suggests that there are clearly right and wrong answers. Nope. At the outset of writing advertising, there are no wrong answers. The writer has been given the opposite of a math test. The writer has an official authorization to frolic. Yet, the person forced to frolic advances to the idea of writing from a place that falls on a well-defined spectrum containing a range of opprobriums and vituperations. (You know: un-fun stuff.) At one end of the spectrum is "Inconvenience." In the middle is "Fearsome task." At the far end is "Colonoscopy." The person tasked to write an advertisement follows a process thus: Sits at computer. Opens new Word doc. Looks at blank screen. Gets up, goes to get coffee. Stops in cubicle farm and starts conversation with least favorite inhabitant. Returns to office 20 minutes later, puts coffee mug on desk. Decides to venture to gender-appropriate lavatory facility. Spends three minutes longer than necessary washing hands. Returns to office. Whoops. Detours to accounting. Opens discussion re controversy of replacing traditional cost allocation systems with those that are activity-based. Returns to desk 30 minutes later, numb with detailed insight regarding accuracy of JIT production systems over product costs without ABC. Looks at blank screen. Thinks about writing ad. Grabs phone, searches contacts for gastroenterologist. Calls about moving colonoscopy from February 2021 to this afternoon. Finishes coffee. Repeats. Resistance is futile! Resistance is pain. Resistance leads to crap ads. as if to remind me of this, just last week a new assignment slapped me in the face. Resisting for only a moment, I sat down to write. In about half an hour, I wrote three entire radio scripts that would never see the light of day. Did I know that while writing them? No! I just wrote them without thinking about it. Instead of resisting the task, I approached the sandbox. I embraced each idea as it came to me. I had fun with each. On starting the fourth script, something happened. The concept of the ad became more lucid. It was as if a great velvet curtain had parted. Behind it, floating on a cardboard cutout of a cloud, two angelic-voiced high-school thespians clad in gossamer sang over and over, "Ah-ha! This is the one! Ah-ha! This is the one!" They were annoying but correct nonetheless. Yes, the fun eventually ends. First comes embracing the fancy and running with it. Next comes time to make it functional. Darlings must die! But good ideas still rule. Taking said script, I wrote, polished, and submitted it to the client, who then said unto me, "Oh, this is fantastic! Oh, this is terrific!" Then he smited me with edits. That "fantastic" script went through seven iterations. In each iteration, less than 5% of the copy changed. But the message evolved until something happened. The client could no longer find a single word to change. He said, "A++. Something very rare. Every word serves a purpose." There is fun in the creativity. There is sport in refining it. There is satisfaction in knowing it will go on to produce results because it doesn't sound like an ad that was speed-written for all your advertising needs right before phoning up the gastroenterologist. It happened because first it was fun and then it was refined. Sandbox segues to workshop. So, the bottom-line recipe for writing better advertising? Have fun. Refine. Repeat. Not yet downloaded your free copy of Lightning Branding: How to Generate Revenue Faster With An Electrifying New Brand, there's still time. Just visit http://www.lightningbrandingbook.com. For information about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City |
AuthorBlaine Parker is prone to ranting about any and all things related to brand. In many ways, he is a professional curmudgeon. While there is no known vaccine for this, the condition is also not contagious. Unless you choose it to be so. Archives
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