The Slangster is a treacherous creature.
It covertly roils and boils. Everything seems delightfulighty and wordylicious and then—when you least expect it—the Slangster leaps out to derail your writing! This is important whether you wield the sword-like pen yourself, or others do so on your behalf. Here now, an example full of light… Over the weekend, The Fabulous Honey Parker and I were watching a national TV news magazine. This is a big network show, a legacy program from a legacy network that was once the gold standard in the news biz. Amid a parade of Christmasy stories, one anchor stepped to the side for a segment on the Jewish Festival Of Lights, better known among the hoi-polloi as Hanukkah. Among the Hanukkah traditions discussed was the dreidel. As you know, the dreidel is a little, four-sided spinning top. It’s used in a children’s game. Kids spin the top in an effort to win chocolate coins from each other. It’s like a child’s first foray into gambling. The exact phrasing the host used to describe the spinning top was this: “The whirling dervish called the dreidel.” Well, then. You can imagine the linking of ideas that took the writer to this metaphor. One plays the dreidel by spinning it. So, the writer made a connection from spinning to whirling. Then, the idea of whirling led to “whirling dervish.” This is not the most apt metaphor. For one, a dervish is a person. The colloquial definition of the phrase is a person who is energetic, in constant motion, possibly even chaotic, blathering and uncontrolled. That’s the slang usage. The literal definition of a whirling dervish is a member of religious order that practices an ecstatic ritual that involves spinning in circles. That religious order is, specifically, Sufi Muslims. So, on a notable Jewish holiday, an experienced national news professional comparing a dreidel to a member of Muslim sect is exceptional writing for the wrong reasons. At best, this kind of writing creates a mental speed bump. For anyone who’s paying attention, there’s a “What the…” moment that derails focus from the message and onto the writing problem. It certainly took the two of us out of the story. At worst, Jews (and Muslims) could take offense. Here There Be Slangsters! Why does a WASP from Connecticut who lives in predominantly Mormon Utah care about this? I care because I have great respect for effective, evocative communication. I also enjoy writing and having fun with words. (You can, too!) That said, it’s also necessary to know what the words mean. Writing with purpose and intent matters. Even writing with purposeful, intentional ignorance and offense has its place. But when using slang, it’s necessary to know what the slang means and that it’s being used correctly. We know a highly educated, high-level professional in a career where language is imperative. This person uses mangled clichés like, “I haven’t rested my laurels,” “Shift horses mid-stream,” “It’s a little chicken and the egg,” and “Head ‘em off at the path.” It’s a little like having a business consultation with Norm Crosby or Slip Mahoney. As far as the dreidel goes, what might have been the alternative language choices? For instance, what if the writer had used the phrase “spinning Tasmanian Devil”? It’s still a weird personification. But at least that’s not a potential religious offense. Though, it could be offensive to real Tasmanian devils, who do not in actuality spin like the drooling, frantic and hyperventilating Warner Brothers cartoon character. And the actual, literal Tasmanian devil is a surly marsupial with a voracious appetite for the raw flesh of other animals. So maybe that’s the wrong metaphor. Instead of comparing the top to a living creature, how about just using modifiers like, “revolutionary, gyrating toy top for fun and frolic”? But that sounds kinda stupid. We could just call it what it is... "The dreidel spinning top, a child’s game of chance and chocolate." It’s not exactly poetic, but it’s clear and definitive and alliterative. All this to say, in an effort to be an evocative communicator, watch out for The Slangster! Stock phrases and over-worn clichés do not always mean what we think they mean. Sometimes, they bite! And really, why not just make up your own stock phrases? (See the beginning of this missive.) Being original and surprising and delightful can be far more interesting and useful and profitable. Shalom and Happy Hanukkah, my friend! Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. 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!)
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Hasn’t Subaru has done a remarkable job of marketing? They ride around in all-wheel drive, convincing us that it’s better for the planet to drive their air-polluting machine made of environmentally unsound materials than it is to drive some other brand of air-polluting machine made of environmentally unsound materials. It’s an extension of their broader brand theme of love being what make a Subaru a Subaru. Love for your family. Love for your pets. Love for your planet. Subaru shares the love, but… At the end of the day? Everything in their business comes back to mining and drilling. They risk being precious. But they’ve done a great job dancing around it. “Fight for the environment covered in clothing made of materials not found in nature!” A huge outdoor clothing manufacturer loves suggesting their very expensive outdoor gear is better for the planet because the people who sell it hate environmental rape. It seems that a righteous belief in stewardship of nature justifies selling products of manmade fibers, plastics, metals, and other materials not found in nature. Don’t think too hard about that, and the facts are irrelevant. Standing arms akimbo atop a snowy peak of marketing while proclaiming objection to planetary rape by selling products made possible by planetary rape is an irony worthy of an Ayn Rand novel. Rebelling against the status quo is so fashionable! I was just reading one of the many tags that came on a new garment by another company. “Born from our rebellious philosophy to question everything, break the rules, and reject the status quo.” Their products resist, defy, and oppose the norm--right down to good grammar! Wearing their products tells you they represent freewill! So, the company’s modus operandi is rebellion and breaking things? Only insofar as it doesn’t endanger the norms of manufacturing, supply chains, online sales and brick & mortar stores. (Just a guess.) And the garment is resisting and defying the norm? Is it sentient? Give me two! Rebellion! Resistance! Defiance! Why does the garment have only two sleeves and one neck hole? Why not three sleeves and three neck holes?! Does the clothing come with a Molotov cocktail and a pocket to put it in? The precious can range from genius to disingenuous to jabber. But it’s all an effort to make the customer feel some way about the brand. Skillful or inept, the preciousness is intentional. The purpose is to take a position. And being precious with purpose and intent is better than being pablum. “What is pablum?” you ask? You probably know, intuitively if not literally. Pablum is a one-time brand name for processed cereal fed to infants. As a food, Pablum is an unchallenging mush. The word has also evolved into a metaphor. It means simplistic, bland, unappetizing, infantile, or (yes) mushy. So much ad copy is pablum. The writing takes a weak position. It has no zip. It has no attitude. It lacks pizzazz. It just lies there like a lump. Even the name: “Pablum.” The word is a lousy advertisement even for itself. Has anyone ever said, “More pablum, please!” Doubtful. The actual Latin root word for the name is “pabulum.” It means “foodstuff.” At least the extra syllable makes the word sound like it's trying harder. Say it out loud: “pab-yew-lum.” It sounds like it’s on the periodic table of elements between titanium and kryptonite! “Crank up the pabulum, baby!” I was looking at “pablum” and thinking: We need another word. An anti-pablum. Pablum is a descriptor for writing that is mushy and makes the customer feel nothing. We want the customer to feel something! Elegance! Excitement! Engagement! Electricity! Ah-ha! Electrium! Electrium is the anti-pablum. Are you writing copy? Is it just lying there? Ask yourself, “Is this pablum?” And if the answer is yes, and you know in your heart it can be better, ask yourself, “Where is the electrium?” Ask, “How do I electrify this? What electric words am I missing?” How can I scare someone? How can I make them excited? How can I give them hope? How can I make them laugh and feel the love? Use your words! Are your words are failing you? Thumb the thesaurus! Lexicon! Vocabulary! Onomasticon! Treasury of words! Shorter sentences! Attack words! White space! Silence! Stomp into the room! Find the Electrium and bring on the battle! Let the customer encounter the conflict. Somewhere in the sell, there is a fight between good and evil. Selling something good? There has to be something bad! In a noisy world, words must cut through. And in a polluted world, sometimes it sounds like shared love for family, pets and planet. Even if it gets precious, it’s better than pablum. Electrium! Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City www.SlowBurnMarketing.com www.CoupleCo.com www.LessonsInLightning.com LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. 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!) The quiet places are an endangered species...
Everywhere you go now, you find manmade noise. Even in the remotest parts of the world, it’s difficult to experience the silence of nature. Science believes this is unhealthy. Humans were not made to live this way. And if even the most remote and isolated places are infested by human-made sound, how overwhelmed are the places where humans live crushed together? Noise is pandemic. Noise is the new normal. Noise is also a barrier. Noise prevents communication. And now more than ever… Noise is standing between you and your customer. We already know that if we can’t see our customer in the copy, we haven’t written an ad. You know what else? We haven’t written an ad if our customer can’t hear us. And the customer can’t hear us when we are just part of the noise. Noise is like a glass wall. On one side, we have our words. On the other side is our customer. In a culture filled with glass walls of noise, we have to cut through the glass. Sharp thoughts. Clarity of purpose. Vivid intent. Hard-edged sentences. We must work at writing things that cannot be mistaken for noise. It’s about working at writing sentences that surprise! Committing to concepts that inspire the moment of, “Ah-ha!” Even if we say it silently to ourselves, “Ah-ha!” is our comrade and collaborator. When we are surprised by our own words, when we have an ah-ha moment while we’re writing, our customer can, too. The customer can hear “Ah-ha.” “Ah-ha” means micro-dynamite for breaking through. Whatever we are saying, we can always find a better way to say it. Whatever you're writing, blow it up. Do the math on your English. Don’t worry about writing different. Worry is noise. Worry stands between our pen and our page. Kill the worry. Just write it like nobody’s watching. Write it write it write it. Then… Refine it. Or maybe even start over. Dig a new hole you can launch yourself out of. The first pass is never ready for trotting out with the dogs and ponies. The first pass is just more noise. The fifth pass is where the diamond cuts the glass wall of noise. That’s where we cut through and connect our commercial to our customer. That’s when the customer hears us: when diamond-edged words cut the glass for clarity, purpose, intent, and action. The customer hears the words when we're writing words worth hearing. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. 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!) Many of you have asked about The Fabulous Honey Parker’s debut novel.
It’s been surprising and heartening, and I thank you. I’d been reluctant to push the book in this space, thinking it was off-topic. After all, the relevance of a book called Careful-ish: A Ridiculous Romp Through COVID-Living As Seen Through The Eyes Of Ridiculous People seems limited herein. Now, after digging into the marketing, I’m realizing now how on-topic it can be. Branding and the psychological science of decision making have been far more at play here than I stopped to realize. Silly me. There will be more about that to come. You're going to find it elucidating. In the meantime, would you like a Careful-ish deal? And before I get into this, did you know... You can read Amazon Kindle books without owning a Kindle device. There is a free app from Amazon, available in the App Store and Google Play. Download the app, and you can read any Kindle books on your phone or tablet. Why is this good? Kindle books cost less than paper books, sometimes they're even free, the app lets you highlight and make notes, and you can load your books across devices. (I love reading books on my phone when I'm stuck in line at the supermarket or the post office or in the waiting room at my bail bondsman's office.) SIDEBAR: I love getting free classics from Project Gutenberg and sending them to my Kindle. I have dozens of books like Candide and Brothers Karamazov that I’m pretending to read. Anyway, that: anyone can read Kindle books without paying for a Kindle. And that matters because... Here’s the big deal: 85% off the Kindle edition of Careful-ish. The e-book edition is normally 6.99. But TODAY ONLY, it’s 99 cents. This deal was supposed to end yesterday. But Honey said I could extend it an extra day for readers of Hot Shots. If you’d like this deal, just click here. Or, go to Amazon and search Careful-ish. It’ll come right up. As of Monday at lunchtime, the book was on the Satire Fiction chart at #90. That position put it right behind the instant crime satire classic from Random House, My Sister, The Serial Killer. WARNING: This book does contain strong language and vague sexual situations. (It’s about young people in New York during lockdown. What do you expect?) Next week, we're going to talk more about what anyone can learn from the marketing of books, unless we decide to talk about all you crazies who email me when I write a crazy screed like last week's. Have a fabulous Thanksgiving, and please be careful-ish with your holiday! Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. 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!) Just had a shocking realization...
I have no idea how to write advertising. Yes, that seems odd for a guy who’s been doing it for over 20 years. But it’s the truth. I don’t know how. I’ve sold stuff. Lots of it. Won huge awards. Have my own business. And you can do it, too. But where does it all begin and end? There is no system. Everybody wants a system. But if you’re starting from the boundaries and structure of a system, how can the outside creative idea penetrate your work? Yes, purpose and intent are critical and compulsory. But so is chaos. Creating from chaos? How does this happen? Example... This morning, I’ve been sitting in front of the computer, pounding out taglines wild and reckless. None of them are good. Until… One is. Not great. But OK. What does that idea look like? I go to Google, type in a related search term, and hit “images.” Chaos with captions! But there amid the chaos, a new creative thought emerges. Could work. What about our big-brand competitors? What are they doing? I search a big brand by name. There’s some good stuff with good feeling. What can we do that’s different, that feels as good or better? And how will it be informed by our own brand veracity? Quick, Google search on reviews from our customers. Lots and lots of same same in there. But looking for the things that aren’t the same, that’s where to find the diamonds that feel right and good and true and tasty. No, they can’t be quoted in the ad copy. But they can inform the ad copy. And maybe that’s the challenge right there: what feeling informs the copy? How are you being informed? Ideas are everywhere except inside your head. Gotta beat the bushes so they fly out like a covey of lovey doveys. Does that even make sense? It doesn’t matter. Write it down. We have more tools at our disposal than ever. Try to create in a vacuum, and it sucks the life out of you. Use Google as your guide and other tools to find the chaos that brings ideas and informs the feelings and the order you’re trying to bring to bear on customer-winning copy. Ask questions. See what happens. Think up craziness. See what comes. Collect the gems. Slogging through a lot of stuff seems chaotic--but it can bring brilliance. I don’t know how I create ads. But I do know that what I don’t do is sit and stare at a blank and empty. It doesn’t help. (Unless it does.) It’s a systemless system and a methodless method for hoovering ideas into your vacuum. See? I really don’t know. You can, too. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City We’ll get to that particular joy in a moment.
First, you should know where this pizza came from. It came out of my home oven. It was made by a total amateur. And it is not a pizza for everyone. This pizza is what we call a Danger Pie. The reason we call it that is because it has too many toppings. Those toppings include the following:
That's why a pizza like this is against the rules. Sometimes, a pizza like this becomes unwieldy. Sometimes, a pizza like this turns into a pile of crap inside calzone. Therein lies the danger. And therein also lies the joy. Not ending up with a calzone requires practice, patience, skill and understanding. It also requires a knowledge of the person you’re serving it to. My wife really enjoys this pizza. My brother would hate it. He hates shrimp. He hates mushrooms. He probably hates cilantro. (We’ve never discussed cilantro. But it’s a safe bet that cilantro falls outside his narrow spectrum for desirable foods.) Who made this pizza? Your relentless scribe, of course. I made it for you. Why would I do that? Because, after years of dabbling in pizza, and refining my pizza during lockdown, I’ve come to a realization… Pizza is a good metaphor for advertising. A good advertisement creates desire. A good advertisement makes someone happy. A good advertisement cannot appeal to everyone. A good advertisement is a synergy of mundane components that come together to create an effect greater than the sum of its parts. And, without practice, you end up serving a pile of crap inside a half-baked calzone. A good pizza is poetry. And so is a good advertisement. Either one can bring joy. And on occasion, it will make someone weep. Here’s the other thing: anyone can do it. It takes practice. It takes patience. It takes skill. It takes understanding. That’s all. Simple ingredients assembled properly. It can be a foundation of flour, salt, yeast and water. Or a foundation of focus, purpose, intent and words. Each of us has the power to make a pizza. Each of us has the power to create an ad. It just starts with the desire, a little practice and paying attention to the rules. (And knowing how to break them, of course.) SIDEBAR: Do you want pizza power? The most common question about my pizza is, “Do you make your own dough?” Like it’s some kind of magic trick. It’s not. It’s just flour, salt, yeast and water. Would you like the recipe for an Ad Guy’s Pizza Dough? Reply to this missive with the two-word phrase, “Dough recipe.” I’ll send it to you. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City The snick of the penpoint across the page is proverbial. Familiar, like a casual friend. It’s been awhile. But he’s back. And it feels good to hear him. See him. Sense him. Be wary of him. (The pen can get a guy into trouble. And that may be happening right now…)
This morning in The Extra Hour that comes with the first dawn of Daylight Time’s death, I’ve been making coffee. Preparing to make coffee. Readying the little pot for when my little wife shuffles up the stairs of our little home and into the little hours of the new morning. This Extra Hour brings bonus time for focus. But…on what? The diminutive details. Like the spoon in the espresso-grind bag of dark-roast Hispanic-heritage coffee that folks routinely mistake for Cuban but was founded by an entrepreneur Spaniard and is as American as the Brooklyn Bridge and born in the Bronx. In this silvery spoon, the dark, powder-fine grains of deep-brown black heap to a precarious peak and hold before dropping into the filter. Why is it I never noticed that except here in The Extra Hour? And speaking of The Extra Hour, the kitchen clock has been losing time. Like, maybe it’s trying to get that hour back. I go and grab a double-A battery from the place where I keep the recording gear. I take that battery to the clock and replace the old one that’s there. The old one has an unusual, unidentifiable label. It’s some imported battery brand not available to the general public and is sold only to the manufacturers of a giant-faced clock that is operated by a tiny electric motor fueled by the second littlest of the standard-size single-cell cylindrical dry batteries known to man. It is also double-A trash. “Thunk” into the can. It sounds as if it struck soft into yesterday’s damp coffee grounds. And the snick of the penpoint across the paper in The Extra Hour brings a question: What now? And what does this have to do with advertising anything? Simple. Do you find yourself challenged by trying to create copy that’s surprising, engaging or is candy to the ear? Try paying big attention to little details. For a moment, forget the sell and focus. Drill down into the sounds and the sensations. Just take a breath and… Hold. Listen. This is not a meditation. This is a moment. A moment is a brief period of time. It is also a force in physics. For example, the force it takes for an object to resist inclination and return to position is called a righting moment. But here, let's call this our writing moment. Take that moment to hear what happens. Feel the space. It is rich with the subtle force of soft sensations and quiet things going on--even in a crowded room. (Why do so many writers like working in cafés and bars? It’s not because they’re quiet…) There is a copy culprit to whom we all fall victim. We don’t take the time. We’re losing minutes. We rush into the creation of busy words that fill the space instead of filling the ear and on into the heart. It happens in so many ways. A lack of care. A lack of question. A lack of sight and sound. We ask ourselves, How hard can we push this motivational boulder over the top so it comes crashing down on our customer, smashing into the crazy conviction that there has never been a better time to rush in and buy now. That is, after all, the common question. But it yields an answer that nobody needs. That’s because… It’s not the question the customer is asking. Right now, our culture is awash in noise. Everyone is shouting. Nobody is listening. So shut down your computer. Take a pen. Grab some paper. And… Scribble the words--the ones that come when you start to feel the room and see the shapes and feel in your gut the whims being whispered at you. Grasp the gold that’s just lying there for the taking and see how it suddenly informs your mission--which may not even be yet defined. That is, after all, how we ended up here in The Extra Hour... LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. 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 When customers can see themselves in the advertising, they have reason to pay attention...
And sometimes, they do the advertising for you. This missive is born of surprise. When confronted with a spontaneous marketing juggernaut, it’s best to roll with it. The Fabulous Honey Parker and I have a new and untested product. And customers are lining up on social media to share photos and talk about it. They’ve also never been asked to promote the product, nor have they been incentivized to do so. These customers have nothing obvious to gain. And they’re helping compensate for marketing that’s been handled upside down and backwards. As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Honey has released her debut novel. When marketing a book, you’re supposed to start six months before you release it. But six months ago, this book wasn’t even an idea. It was a spontaneous conception resulting from current circumstances. A book publishing veteran we know said, “Great idea. But it has to be on the market by October. No traditional publisher can do that. You have to self-publish.” So it was written at lightspeed and put onto the market. And, go figure, the fans are promoting it. Why are people around the country sharing photos of themselves with this book? I have a theory. But then, you already knew that. The Honey Parker brand is very strong. The woman likes to make friends and is happy to be social. Moreover, she has created a fiction brand that the customer wants to be a part of. People want to be in this club. The club is rallying around a book called, Carefulish: A Ridiculous Romp Through COVID-Living As Seen Through The Eyes Of Ridiculous People. The customer needs a laugh--and gets much more. The book is a comedy, but goes deeper than just cheap laughs. The book is also topical, touching the zeitgeist without ever getting political. And the book’s cover is very graphic, designed to pop from the page when it’s seen on Amazon. The cover image is a black COVID mask with a martini glass on it. The brand is Careful-ish and people want to play. Would this have happened if the book had been called, Laugh, It’s A Pandemic? Would it have worked if the cover image were a bland photo of a discarded disposable mask? Would people be flocking to it and sharing it if it was unremarkable? We can’t say for sure. But a safe guess is: No. What my wife has done is brought clarity of thought to the ONE way she wants her CORE CUSTOMER to FEEL about this brand. Her core customer is Smart, Sassy Woman. What's the one way she wants Smart, Sassy Woman to feel? That it's OK to laugh about living through a pandemic. And it’s working. Smart Sassy Woman is jumping onboard the Careful-ish train and going for the ride. She’s enjoying it. And she’s telling her friends. Honey Parker has entered into a conversation her customer is already having. And she’s done it using masks and martinis. This is where we turn back to the broken ads I solicited a couple of weeks ago. (No, I haven’t forgotten about y’all.) What’s happening in the broken ads is a lot of writing that’s caught up in selling. Not much of it is caught up in joining the customer. (Some of it is trying, of course. It's all born of honest effort.) And yes, it IS harder to create a club around something that seems mundane, like floor covering. But that’s our job as marketers. We must take the mundane fruit we’ve been handed and squeeze out the sweetest possible juice. Does your advertising make the customer feel like joining the club is a good thing? As proposed last week, if you can’t see the customer in your advertising, it isn’t advertising yet. When the customer sees themselves in the advertising, they have reason to pay attention. When the customer feels the right way about the brand, they can care about the sell, and care about joining the club. Are you feeling the customer’s pain? Are you feeling good about the relief you’re providing? Not every advertiser seems remarkable. But inside, when you dig deep enough, something remarkable will be there--even if it’s just an obsession with something mundane and very necessary. Find the remarkable, and you’re on your way to finding gold. To find out more about Careful-ish, you can click here to be taken to Amazon. LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. 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 Where's Waldo, and can you feel him? He's gotta be in there somewhere...
Have you written an advertisement? Can you see your customer in there? Can you see the customer’s problem? Can you see the solution? Can you see your customer feeling good about calling you? No? Then you haven’t written an ad yet. And, hint: making the customer feel good is not about offering a low price. That’s not an ad. It’s an announcement about an available transaction. "Come! Spend!" is not a message that wins hearts. Even Walmart knows that. At least in offering you lower prices, they promise you'll live better. But I digress. The faithful reader to the weekly screed has beard me bang the drum for Howard Gossage. A rebel ad man who died too young, Gossage was an iconoclast who knew how to engage and entertain. Gossage is also the man who gave us a famous quote… “People do not read advertising—they read what interests them, and sometimes that’s advertising.” One way to know you’ve created a good ad is that you enjoy reading it, watching it or listening to it. You don’t tire of being subjected to it. It always seems fresh. You'd be happy to show it to someone else. (Even if it's radio. A good radio commercial paints an enormous picture.) Gossage suggested that if advertising was to gain professional respect, it required that we “look at ourselves and our audiences differently. And then the audience will look at advertising differently: as a public service.” That doesn’t mean to try and be Subaru and go bragging about saving the planet. It means speaking to your customer as if you were speaking to someone you care about. Or, to be more blunt, we can quote Ogilvy… “The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife.” Ouch. Blunt, indeed. So... Are you writing an advertisement? Are you trying to see your customer in there? Are you feeling the customer’s pain? Are you feeling good about the relief you’re providing? Are you feeling good about the chances of your customer calling you? Yes, it can be difficult. But the customer matters. And too many ads don’t have any room for the customer. A spouse. A sibling. A friend. A lover. Pretend the customer is someone you know well. Write that person a letter about what is really so great that thing is that you’re trying to sell. It might not make a great ad. But it will feel better than anything else you’ve written. And it will inform what you really want your ad to say. And creating a better ad feels really good. LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. 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 So many broken ad messages lack humanity...
Not all, mind you. Some make a sincere effort at humanity, but miss the mark a little. However, so many broken ads follow a pattern: “Jam in all these facts! Talk about them! Buy now!” There’s no recognition of the human being at the other end of the pipe, only a recognition that “I want to sell this!” “Fact! Fact! Fact! Fact! Fact! Buy now!” How am I supposed to feel about these facts? How am I supposed to feel about you, the seller? How does any of this solve my problem? And what IS my problem, anyway? Do you, Mr. Seller, even recognize that I’m here? As you know, an advertising message is like asking for a date. What if you start asking for a date by saying, “I have a good job, I make a lot of money, I’m fit and healthy, and I’m available. I would make an excellent mate. We could have lots of strong, healthy children of both genders. They will be well above average and go to the finest private learning institutions. We would live well, and retire to an upper-middle-class enclave on the west coast of Florida. Want to have dinner?” Before the end of the first sentence, the answer was "I have to stay home and wash my hair." There’s no recognition of the prospect, the prospect’s feelings, and the conversation the prospect is already having inside his or her head. A much better, self-centered way of doing it would be this: “Look at my fabulous shoes. Want to have dinner?” At least it’s an amusing non-sequitur. The date might be entertaining. Here now, a brief tale… The Fabulous Honey Parker has just written a novel. Neither of us saw this coming, but it happened. It’s a topical novel that has to get to the public yesterday. Even a friend of ours in publishing said, “This is a great idea. But it has to get out in October, and a traditional publisher can’t make that happen. You have to self-publish.” One joy of self-publishing is self-marketing. And marketing a novel is so much different than marketing anything else--yet so much the same. In the marketing, humanity matters. Nobody cares about the facts of the book. They care about the feeling of the book. The feeling they will get from it. The feeling the story will give them. This extends to the author’s story as well. What’s the feeling behind the book? How did the author feel about writing it? How does she feel about the experience? How does that feeling influence the feeling of joy, laughter, sadness, and/or pathos I’m going to get from buying that book and reading it? “Well, yeah! It’s a novel, not a home improvement product! “It’s entertainment! My rugs and window blinds are not about feeling good. They’re about getting the best deal on rugs and window blinds!” And you, my friend, have missed the boat that’s sailing into the psychology of home improvement. People who buy rugs and blinds are not buying function. They’re buying form. Form leads to a feeling. Aesthetic form makes the customer feel good about being at home. And in a time when people are locked inside more than ever, feeling good about one’s home is huge. Just like feeling good about one’s entertainment is huge. How does the customer feel now, and how will they feel after they buy? This is where the metaphorical rubber meets the road of emotions. Everyone right now is living in A Place They’ve Never Been. All stories have to understand that. Whether they’re stories about home improvement or stories about novels, the stories that sell require knowing how the customer feels. That doesn’t mean talking about the feeling. It means talking to the feeling. Identify the customer’s feeling and know how to speak to it. Master that, and you win the first date. We will be speaking more about this in coming screeds… LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. 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 |
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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