How do I know if my ad is working?

This is a loaded question! What do you want from your advertising? Advertising can produce different benefits, from direct response to awareness to education.

Be forewarned: there is no one right answer or formula, as advertising is not an exact science. However, I can at least share with you a brief synopsis of what the experts say, based on countless studies both scientific and otherwise.

Don’t expect results from day one. We are besieged by over 3,000 messages every day, and it takes 6-10 times for people to start recognizing your ad. This is only the imprinting stage. Now you have to wait for the need to arise. That’s the advantage of Coffee News – it gives you the opportunity to keep your presence in the marketplace weekly – for the long term at an affordable price. So when the need arises and the person remembers your ad, they can still find you – you haven’t disappeared.

Keep at it! The Law of Advertising #2 from Wizard of Ads Roy Williams, states “Few people will be convinced quickly, and few of those who will be convinced will have any immediate need for what you are selling. By the time their need arises, your “testing of the waters” will be over and the prospect will have forgotten you.”

Williams also preaches that “It’s what you say” that will determine your success in advertising. So if your ad is not bringing the results you anticipate, let’s review it! Perhaps your message or offer or ad design needs adjusting. Remember, there’s no charge for ad changes and/or consultation.

Michael Corbett reminds us that, “If your doors are open, you should be advertising!” In Corbett’s book, The 33 Ruthless Rules of Local Advertising, the need for continued advertising is further explained. People shop all the time, so you’re advertising to a passing parade. People move. People forget! People often take their time before buying, and when they do need your product or service, you want them to think of you.

“In Advertising, Consistency Pays Off” is the title of an article by Steve McKee at BusinessWeek.com. “In the world of advertising, consistency is a scorecard on the wisdom of crowds. People know that advertising is expensive, so the more a company advertises, the more successful it must be. And the more successful it is, the more it means that other people are choosing it. Which means that it may be a good idea for you and I to choose it as well.

Your brand can benefit from this power of positive momentum. Through your initial advertising efforts, people will learn that you exist. With repeated exposure, they’ll learn that you’re stable. With even more repeated exposure, they’ll assume you’re successful – after all, based on your ability to sustain a long-term advertising program, you’d have to be.”

Have you ever had the same reaction to an ad, whether in print, radio or television, that Dagwood had? If you watched television during the Super Bowl in recent years, I’ll bet you have. One of my favorites of all time were the series of ads for an Internet company called Outpost.com. Remember them? Probably not. Ever been to their Web site? Nah. But what great commercials!

You remember…the well-dressed older gentleman speaking to the camera in a soft voice while seated in a large chair next to a cozy fireplace. He was talking to us about a new kind of company that helped you do something on the Internet….what exactly I have no recollection. But then….then the camera panned over to the other side of the room where gerbils were being loaded into a cannon and fired at a small hole in the middle of a brick wall. The first several missed, and each time the sound of a splat was followed by a camera shot of the older man saying, “Just missed,” and “That was close.” I believe the second series of commercials involved the same old man setting a pack of hungry wolves loose on a collegiate marching band. We talked about it at the office water cooler the next day, but had no idea what the heck it was all about.

The above is a great illustration of what is wrong with the bulk of advertising today. Too many ad agencies creating slick-looking, over-produced ads that are nothing more than eye candy. Sure, they look great, and they win the ad agency awards, but are they effective?

What Roy Williams (www.wizardofads.com) writes about this problem is the following:

Advertisers assume that people comprehend their ads. Most often, they do not. The volume of advertising which gushes toward the customer’s mind is like a fire hose aimed at a teacup. There is simply too much rushing in to contain. Most advertising in America is deflected, spilled and lost. At the end of the day, precious little information is retained.Will your advertising be part of that precious little, or is it being deflected, spilled and lost?

The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience is read by doctors and medical students who desire to understand how human beings recognize and identify objects, use visual mental images, read, produce and comprehend language, move and store new information in memory, etc. (I think it makes sense for ad writers to understand these things, too.)

Stephen Kosslyn, an editor for the journal and a professor of psychology at Harvard, tells us how auditory pattern activation is an essential element in language skills. Kosslyn says, “A word is like a key. When a word unlocks the correct stored memories, it is meaningful.”

I believe the carefully guided recall of a sequence of these stored memories is the magic behind every powerful ad. Do the words of your ads unlock stored memories in the mind of the listener? The memories can be real or imagined. The important thing is that they be recalled from the mind in such a manner as to actively engage the imagination. To put it plainly, you must cause the listener to see himself taking precisely the action you so artfully describe. When the listener does not mentally participate, the advertising is deflected, spilled and lost.

“Engage the imagination and take it where you will. Where the mind has journeyed repeatedly, the body will surely follow. People go only to places they have already been in their minds.”

What Is “Branding,” Really?

“Branding” is the hot, new buzzword favored by smooth talking ad people who always seem to speak as though it were something new and mysterious. So far, I have yet to find even one of these empty suits who has the slightest idea of how branding is accomplished in the mind.

Branding is far from new. Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel prize for his research into branding in 1904. Remember the story? Day after day, Pavlov would ring a bell as he rubbed meat paste onto the tongue of a dog. The dog soon began to associate the taste of the meat with the sound of the bell until salivation became the dog’s conditioned response. In psychological terms, this is known as, “the implantation of an associative memory.” In other words, “branding” in all its glory.

There are three keys to implanting an associative memory into the mind of your customer. The first key is consistency. Pavlov never offered food without ringing the bell and he never rang the bell without offering food. The second key is frequency, meaning that Pavlov did it day after day after day.

The third key, anchoring, is the tricky one. When implanting an associative memory, the new and unknown element (the bell,) has to be associated with a memory which is already anchored in the mind, (the taste of meat.) Frequency and consistency create “branding” only when your message is tied to an established emotional anchor. Pavlov’s branding campaign was anchored to the dog’s love for the taste of meat. If the dog did not love meat, the frequent and consistent ringing of the bell would have produced no response other than to irritate the dog.

If I say, “It’s a Norman Rockwell kind of restaurant,” you immediately think of the place as being, “cozy, happy, warm, innocent and kid-friendly,” right? Your assumptions about the restaurant would be anchored to your feelings about the art of Norman Rockwell. To frequently and consistently associate the restaurant with Norman Rockwell would be to implant an associative memory into the mind. Branding.

The buying public is your dog. If you desire a specific response from it, you must tie your identity to an emotional anchor which is already known to elicit the desired response. If you make such an association with consistency and frequency, branding will occur…but don’t expect too much too soon. It takes a lot of repetition to train a dog to salivate at the sound of your name.

Do you have the patience, Pavlov?

There are approximately 120,000 sales people responsible for selling advertising on the television and radio stations of America. Each of these sales people will make “prospecting calls” on an average of 3 business owners each day. One business owner out of twelve will say “Perhaps your station is the right one for my business. I’ll buy a small schedule to test the waters, and if it works, I’ll start using your station on a regular basis.” Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? In reality, it’s no different than standing at a roulette wheel saying “Perhaps black is the color for me. I’ll place a small bet on black and if I win, I’ll start betting on black on a regular basis.”

Each day, approximately thirty thousand business owners decide to “test the waters,” and while most of them are very disappointed with the results, they are typically not surprised, because most of them have been “testing the waters” for years with very limited success, and the few successes they did have were rarely repeatable.

The reason business owners keep doing what they’ve done before and expecting a different result is because every one of those hundred and twenty thousand sales people will sing a beautiful song whose chorous line is “The secret of successful advertising is to reach the right people, and our people are the right people for you!” Once again, the logic of “reaching the right people” is extremely appealing, mostly because it’s common sense. The problem with advertising is that it so often defies common sense.

Want to hear the really sad part? Virtually every one of the disappointed business owners would have been delighted with the station they chose had they only understood two simple laws of advertising.

Law of Advertising #1: It’s what you say, not who you say it to, that will determine your success in advertising. Most people are “the right people” when you say the right thing! Be Convincing!

Law of Advertising #2: Short schedules are always a gamble. Few people will be convinced quickly, and few of those who will be convinced will have any immediate need for what you are selling. By the time their need arises, your “testing of the waters” will be over and the prospect will have forgotten you.

Coffee News is working great for me. Getting lots of calls from it. Thanks Brian.
–Kerri Mahan

You must decide what to say and then say it to as many people as you can afford to reach relentlessly. The longer you keep saying the same thing to the same listener, the greater your chance of success. You’ve got to stick with your plan.