Do’s and Don’ts for Effective Print Advertising.

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honeyMooners-250You’d think we’d know a lot about print advertising at this point. It’s not exactly a new medium after all. But there seems to be a strong tendency to make the same mistakes over and over, and then wonder why the campaign didn’t work. Here’s a list of do’s and don’ts to help make your print ads more successful.

Do

  • Clarify your audience—knowing whom you’re trying to reach is the ultra-crucial first step.
  • Hire a professional to develop a media plan—wrong publications, wrong timing, wrong frequency, wrong mix can easily doom the best ad campaign.
  • Decide what you’re selling before creating an ad.
  • Sell benefits, not features in a product or service ad—focus on the top two or three.
  • Show your product or service in action—incorporate people.
  • Consider premium positions to increase readership and recall.
  • Learn from other advertising campaigns—including your competitors.
  • Write killer headlines that speak to benefits—five times more people read a headline than body copy.
  • Communicate the brand and a positive message.
  • Incorporate high-impact visuals and easy-to-read typefaces.
  • Remember that you are not the buyer—what matters is whether your campaign works, not whether you like it.
  • Include URLs to drive website traffic—a study shows the biggest lifts in women’s service (198%), home (203%), and travel (286%) categories vs. ads with no URL.
  • Track and test, track and test—improve tracking with coupons, new VOIP services, special pricing, landing pages, subscriber surveys, tip-ins, etc.

Don’t

  • Underestimate the power of frequency—it’s a critical campaign success factor.
  • Forget to include a strong direct response component to generate leads.
  • Fail to hook readers quickly—the average reader glances at a print ad for two seconds with 1.5 devoted to the visual.
  • Sacrifice brand visibility for “creativity”—ideally integrate the brand with the visual.
  • Choose visuals that generate negative, unintended associations.
  • Make people work hard to connect your visuals with your product and brand.
  • Wander from your key points.
  • Load your ad with meaningless platitudes—“we provide quality service,” etc.
  • Forget that a direct response ad needs more copy to explain a product or service.
  • Choose an inappropriate format for your message—consider spreads, inserts and advertorials if you need more space.
  • Neglect to advance the reader to the next step.
  • Limit your advertising to just print or any other single medium—it’s very much a multi-channel world.

By Larry Bauer

Creating a Print Ad That Works.

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workinJoe-200Regardless of whose ad dogma you subscribe to, your goal is singular: cause a positive action. That’s it. Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? Well, in practice, causing a positive action in a print ad is trickier than you’d think.

There are three key tools for creating a great ad or campaign that causes a positive action. These are all of equal weight. Without all three, your ad’s success is in jeopardy.

  • Great concept.
  • On-target message.
  • Flawless execution.

Assuming you’re working with a great team to create a great concept and on-target message, the only thing you have left to worry about is flawless execution.

Great Concept

Your task is to be the exception. Buck the trends. Surprise and delight. Shock and awe—you get the drill. This is where you DON’T want to just keep up with the Joneses.

Anyone can put their product logo, photo and description in a box and call it an ad. But creating an ad that has true stopping power, snagging the reader in the 1.5 seconds they glance at the visual, is incredibly more difficult. Remember, a concept is an instance. Not too heavy, it’s quick and reels in the reader.

comparison

(click image to enlarge) I like the contrast of the above two examples for different reasons: Harley uses an insanely long headline whereas Valspar uses only a demure tagline near the chip. They are both perfectly suited to their vastly different markets.

On-target Message

Understanding your target audience and their specific desires is critical to determining the best message for your ad. A great visual will certainly stop them, but you’ve got to follow through with a compelling message. The message is the half-second remaining in the scan time readers will devote to your ad.

In order of importance, your message should be stated by the headline and supported by body text. Today’s consumers will never get to the body text much less your call-to-action unless your main message is a real grabber.

And remember, if your best effort results in hollow platitudes like great customer satisfaction, full ranges of solutions or some other drivel used by the masses, don’t bother. Consumers are more savy than you think and are much more critical than ever before. Most ads sound the same to them and they view you as an interruption to the article they’re reading.

Here are a few examples of what NOT to do from real-life ads (yawn yawn, blah blah blah):

Message Product Why it doesn’t work
Technology with an edge. kitchen knives Technology doesn’t cut my tomatoes, a good knife does. Keep the message focused on the benefit.
Why is this considered the most advanced wiper system ever? You’ll see. windshield wiper blades They lost me after the ninth syllable. Remember, 1.5 seconds of scanning time is devoted to the visual. That leaves only a mere half-second for the message. Make it efficient.
Solatube Solution. tubular skylights If I see ‘solution’ used one more time, I think I may hurl. If I want a groovy round skylight, I don’t want a solution.
Batteries not included…or needed electromagnetic flashlight There’s a germ of an idea with real stopping power here but it seems to have gotten killed by committee.

Now for a refreshing break, here are a few examples of intriguing messages, again from real-life ads:

Message Product Why it works
If it doesn’t get dirt, grease or blood under your nails, it’s not a hobby. Gerber Legend ® Multi-Plier tool Great extreme close up of cracked fingertips and dirty nails with message squarely targeting the male demographic of The Family Handyman magazine. Finished off with a flawless tagline for the DIYer: Fend for yourself.
What’s your carfun footprint? Mini-Cooper Twist of words requiring a double take is a good way to stop readers.
Looks like someone used too much Miracle-Gro®. Dodge Ram pick ups Dead-on to the target market of home and handyman magazines. Coulda had a more powerful visual but this chart is about the message.
Regrets cost a lot more.

I coulda got a smart, sensible turdmobile.

Six bucks a day. Cheaper than your smokes, a six pack, a lap dance, a bar tab, another tattoo, a parking ticket, a gas station burrito, a lip ring, bail, cheap sunglasses, more black t-shirts.

 Harley-Davidson Dead-on target. Harley completely gets their target market’s need to consider themselves bad asses.

The third message is the exception to the rule of keeping the message efficient. Remember, there are always exceptions.

Flawless Execution

The execution component is fraught with a seemingly infinite set of ad rules and guidelines touted by “experts” and based on studies. These rules exist because marketing experts are always in search of absolutes. Unfortunately, there are none. Advertising to humans is by nature not a science. Examples of things that are truly scientific would include our brain’s reaction to specific colors (which is also cultural), our eye’s ability to read tiny type and a myriad of other gray matter-related abilities.

  • Rule makers attempt to define the often indefinable to make it available to everyone.
  • Rule breakers understand the rules and also how to bend or break them to exceed the ad’s goals.

Let’s look at a couple of typical rules that rule makers like to espouse:

Reversed type in ads doesn’t produce great response. While studies certainly suggest that this is true, we don’t know what ads were used in the studies, we don’t know if their message was on target, we don’t know if their visual had stopping power or even if the designer selected an appropriate typeface at an appropriate size for reversing.

For example, expecting 7 point Bodoni Light Condensed reversed from a 4-color process background on a trade journal’s web press to be successful in an ad is just plain silly. It ain’t gonna happen. But using a typeface with a larger x-height, regular weight like Myriad Pro Regular is safer and much more readable.

Suffice it to say, if you don’t know what you’re doing typographically, this is likely a good rule to follow.

All ads should contain a photo of the product. History has shown that there is likely something to be said for this rule. Remember the Nissan Infiniti launch campaign back in the late 80’s? Designers loved it because it eliminated the car from the ads and was considered edgy/risky. However, keep in mind, this car was developed to compete with Lexus, and Infiniti sales continue to lag. Would the Infiniti have competed better with Lexus if the launch campaign included car photos? We’ll never know for sure.

Lessons Learned

Balancing the need to stop the reader, support the brand and be readable is tricky. If all ads followed all the rules, none would stand out from the pack. Remember, great advertising is about getting attention, stopping the reader, enticing and snaring.

If you’ve got a great ad with stopping power, it’s readable and the message is on target, then likely it will work regardless of what the rules say. But if you’re short on one of the three keys, nothing will save your ad and your budget could be wasted.

But, like any good student, learn the rules before you break them. Know and understand what you’re doing and why.

By Julia Moran Martz

Yes, Virginia, spam does affect the environment.

By in Blog Posts, Branding, eMarketing No Comments Tags: , , ,

Well, now we finally know for certain, spam does have a carbon footprint and it’s incredibly large. Size 33B (B for billion kilowatt hours) to be precise. To view it differently:

  • That’s enough energy to power 2.4 million homes.
  • Each spam has a footprint of .3 grams of CO2.
  • The 62 trillion spams sent annually roughly equal driving around the planet 1.6 million times.

What’s more, spam filtering can reduce that figure by 75% which is the equivalent of eliminating 2.3 million cars.

The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report was commissioned by McAffee and you can download the paper here.

What does this mean for emarketers?

One more reason not to spam.

While seemingly easy, eliminating outgoing spam can actually be a challenge to implement. How do you know if your company is guilty of spamming? What is the definition of spam? And if you follow the letter of the law (US CAN-SPAM Act), why isn’t that enough? And even if you’re doing everything right, you’ve still got folks on your back wondering why you don’t just buy email lists from anyone on the Internet.

Let’s take these one at a time:

  • How do you know if your company is spamming? There are several clues you can look for:
    1. Do your email reports show large numbers of spam reporting?
    2. Are your email campaigns getting increasingly blocked by more and more servers?
    3. Did you buy an email list of people your company doesn’t know or have a relationship with?
    4. Do you just have a bad feeling in your gut?
  • What is the correct definition of spam? This is easy and yet somehow complex too:
    1. Spam is defined by the recipient, NOT the sender or the sender’s government. If the recipient thinks your email is spam, guess what? It is.
    2. Even so, many governments are attempting to define spam as well. And each government has their own variation on laws governing ‘unsolicited email’. The US law is one of the most lenient, allowing anyone to send email to anyone else so long as certain rules are followed. Those rules include showing a postal address and allowing a valid opt out option, among others. Read the US CAN-SPAM Act for more details, but realize that if your email list includes folks in, say, Australia, your rules are going to be much more strict.
    3. The third party to define spam are the corporations that make spam blocking software for ISPs. These folks have a tough job, creating spam-blocking parameters for use in any country. That’s one reason why they tend to be the most strict when it comes to determining what emails are spam. Their software looks for key features of emails that serve as triggers and get that email blocked at the ISP level. AND they’re always updating their parameters. For instance, it’s common knowledge now that including a lot of all caps or the word ‘FREE’ in your subject line will likely get you blocked. There are also more persnickety triggers like copious amounts of specific colors or images that are ‘too’ large. And of course, a plethora of coding triggers that we won’t go into here.
  • Why isn’t it enough to just follow the US CAN-SPAM Act?
    1. Easy, the United States government doesn’t make the spam blocking software that is used by ISPs around the world and the government is not reading your email to determine if it is spam. SO, the government really doesn’t have a roll to play in whether or not your email gets through and gets read. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t follow the laws of the country where your email recipients reside, US or not. Definitely follow the laws or you could be sued. Just realize that following the laws does not guarantee that your email will be successful.
    2. AND remember, the US CAN-SPAM Act is not transferable to other countries. Many countries now have their own laws and if you’re emailing to other countries, it’s your company’s responsibility to abide by these laws.
  • What to do about those folks breathing down your neck to get you to buy the biggest email list you can, hoping for that traditional 1% direct marketing return? This is tougher because these folks may be your boss, or your boss’s boss. They may not give a hoot about getting email permission from people on your list or following the laws of the country in which your recipients reside. This is your opportunity to shine by educating them before they force the company to make a big mistake. Get your ducks in a row and discuss the following:
    1. Review everything we’ve discussed above, and in as much depth as the bosses can handle. Most bosses just want the bottom line, so be prepared to state what that is and support it with facts when they protest.
    2. Remind them that despite what THEY think, if the recipient thinks their email is spam, it not only IS spam but that perception directly affects the value of their brand, which is likely reflected on the books.
    3. Remind them that building brand trust and loyalty are hard and being perceived as a spammer will undermine these activities.
    4. And one more thing, let’s go back to what started this discussion: the environment. If your company has a green plan, spamming negatively affects any efforts you make to lessen the carbon footprint and communicate any green initiatives in place. Creating a corporate Anti-Spam Policy can and should also be a segment of your Green Policy. This is also good for your brand.

The obvious lesson here is simple: be a good company and treat your customers with respect. Don’t abuse them, give them what they want, and IF they want you to email coupons to them monthly, do it. If they want you to update them on product upgrades via email, do it. If they don’t, respect their wishes.

Of course, if you’re the authentic manufacturer of a certain little blue pill, I wish you luck. You may never be able to use email marketing due to the spammers that came first.

—Julia

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