Plain Jane Mundane Space-Age Marketing

I recently had a chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral. When we got there, the tour bus had already left, so all we could do was check out The Rocket Garden and the Shuttle prototype turned into an exposition.

I didn’t need a tour: There was something that blew me away without that tour. The old rockets.

They turned out to be so unexpectedly plain jane and low-tech. So… what’s the word… mundane. The gloss of a picture in the book comes off, and what’s left is a sheet of metal clumsily wrapped into a tube. I found it difficult to imagine them fly… Even more so to imagine someone crawl into that tin bucket called the cabin and fly these things.

Nonetheless, there they were, artifacts of the glorious past, a testament to the courageous epoch.

Now think about your marketing. Are you spending money on the looks? The only person that’s going to be impressed is you. Your customers won’t care. Are you trying to make it fancy or to make it work?

If you’re going to study ads, start with those plane jane all-text ones that trick you and make you think they are editorials. People who run these ads treat them as their sales force: if these ads don’t produce sales they get immediately pulled just like a sales person that doesn’t sell gets fired.

The gawky machines that helped the man conquer the space didn’t need to be slick. The ad that will help you conquer the market won’t be a slick one either.

The 7 Key Profit Drivers Workshop

Come to Living Well on March 1st to enjoy a fabulous dinner, network with other small business owners, and participate in an interactive workshop I will be doing afterwards. Click this link for details and registration: The 7 Key Profit Drivers. The venue is small, only fits 20 people or so. Register early if you want to get in.

The World’s Best Copywriters...

...are chefs. Here’s what Geoffrey Johnson of www.enville.com writes in his Wine Loop (we’re friends enough for him to keep me on the circulation list, for which I’m eternally grateful):

"My thoughts on this are purely O Mourvédre, how I love thee. Liquid sunshine, extreme fruit, full in the mouth on a broad platform, supported by just enough tannins. The varietal Mourvédre does so well in Vin de pays d’Oc, a gem in their crown. I bought several cases of the previous vintage and wished I bought more, very short term cellaring potential. My advice, buy more than you think you will need, believe me, you will need it all, a gift from Baccus at only $11.95 per bottle."

(Now I'm afraid he’s really going to kick me off the list!)

Wonderful, powerful copy. A carnival of metaphors. A parade of the imagery. (Last time I checked, the only fruit that goes into wine is grapes. And how the heck do you bottle "sunshine"?)

Hey, there is even a testimonial and a "call to action", and Geoffrey isn’t even selling this stuff himself!

Such writing creates magic. People love magic. Good chefs are magicians when they craft those glorious edibles with their hands. Great chefs know how to weave some of this magic into their writing too.

Now, how do you write magic about your business?

Why Lousy Advertising May Still Work

I did a talk on measurable and quantifiable marketing for a Rotary Club in Durham this morning. In order to illustrate my points, I decided to prepare by going through my "swipe file". My goal was to pick a couple of industries (I chose real estate and insurance) and find some good ads and some not so good ones and use them as my props.

Easier said then done.

For real estate, I had a couple of newspaper clippings of Craig Proctor’s “edumercials” or “advertorials” that look like an article but are specially crafted ads with an 800 number in the end to request a special report. I also had Craig’s little ad from the Yellow Pages.

As usual, bad ads weren’t a problem: There were plenty of them everywhere. No wonder Craig is such real estate dynamo! (By the way, if you’re in real estate, you’re just stupid if you don’t study what people like Craig do. Actually, you can be in any business and still get a truckload of million-dollar ideas just by dissecting this stuff!)

Onwards to insurance. My, oh my! I went through my local Yellow Pages, all other Yellow Pages books I had, the Richmond Hill directory, and a whole bunch of newspapers. Not a single ad worth the paper it’s printed on!

Here’s a template for a bad ad that they all follow invariably:
1. {Company name} Insurance Brokers [Inc. / Ltd]
2. [Established / Since] {Year}
3. Home, Auto, Life, Commercial, Industrial, Small Business
4. Quality [Personal] Service
5. Call [Us First] For A Free [No Obligation] Quote
6. {Telephone Number}
7. {Address}

I’m not kidding you: There were 6 of them on one page, all following the same wrong formula! After awhile, I was like "Guys, have some mercy!"

I couldn’t get even a single good one for my presentation! I had to mock it up myself.

In a situation like this even a lousy ad could work ok, as long as it is about as bad as every other one out there. Every ad is generating it’s share of leads because all ads are equally bad.

But if just one of these people decides to smarten up and creates an ad that is even half as good as it could ultimately be – he will simply wipe you out!

Don’t let that happen to you: It’s not a question of “if”, it’s a question of “when”. Smarten up yourself.