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.