Adverpanicking. There is a cure.
By: William Childs
I’m amazed at what passes for advertising these days. The job of advertising goes far beyond just circulating information. When done well, it’s an ongoing dialog with your customers as well as an invitation to attract new ones. Cramming ads with your hours, address, years in business, directions to your location, photos of your kids, an inventory of every item in the store, and a bunch of vendor logos along with other irrelevant information, is a term I call Adverpanicking.
Yet day after day, week after week, there it is, on full display. The ads are screaming at me from every direction to try this new service, buy this car, come to our show, eat here because we’re open late, buy here because we’re family owned, blah, blah, blah.
They all suffer from the same problem. All these ads answer questions that no one is asking. The answers don’t become important until after a customer is convinced you have a product or service that they want.
Oh, that’s right, we’re in a recession now. I forgot. My bad. Let’s all just bury our head in the sand and wait for the big bad recession to blow over. Truthfully, the best time for a business to steal market share is now! But everybody just wants a quick ROI. The silver bullet, the Holy Grail. “I can’t afford to get creative with my brand right now, I just need customers.”
I really have to struggle to not laugh when I hear that one. The irony is, had you been creative with your brand before the recession, even a down market wouldn’t knock you too far off center. You’d feel it, but stealing market share would already be happening. There is no silver bullet. Unless, you’re drinking a Coors, but I digress. The only way to attract customers in any economy is to have a compelling message. You must have the kind of message that allows consumer participation in your story; where they identify with your company’s ethos. Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with your store hours or number of years in business.
Apple computer doesn’t sell electronics, they sell passion. Harley-Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles, they sell freedom. Corona does not sell beer, they sell relaxation.
These brands spend a lot of money to own these emotions. The key to creating a meaningful dialog is knowing who you are and what you’re really selling.
Here’s another thing to consider, the choice of media is irrelevant. If you’re connecting to you audience emotionally and the product or service you offer is of high quality, you won’t have trouble keeping or attracting customers. 5000 messages attack the average consumer on a daily basis, so don’t be surprised if the world isn’t beating a path to your door. David Ogilvy said, “You can’t bore people into buying your product.”
So what’s it going to be? Make the burst in your ads a different color and hope that works? How about taking a good hard look at your message and ask yourself if you’re saying anything worthwhile or just adding to the noise?
You don’t need to spend the kind money that Apple spends in order to cut through the clutter; but you have to be willing to sing in your own voice. Tell the market a story that’s uniquely yours and do it in a consistent and compelling way and you’ll have all the customers you’ll ever need.
Do you suffer from Adverpanic? You just read the cure.
Ideas can come from anywhere. They can hit you when you least expect it. Sometimes, they are nowhere to be found. What do you do when you have a good one? Sometimes good ideas can be found on the way back from a bad idea. The point is, all new ideas are fragile. They can be killed with a sneer or a laugh, or a disapproving glance.
It's my opinion that far too often an idea will get tossed aside before it can be properly worked and developed because somebody either gets frustrated too quickly or they don't respect the creative process. Either way, my experience has been that if you want to develop breakthrough ideas, you must be willing to invest time and energy.
We all want the ideas to show up on the stage in the Armani suit and “wow” the audience. Unfortunately, most ideas show up in a pair of worn out overalls with a shovel in hand ready to start digging in the dirt. It’s not nearly as impressive, sexy, good-looking or “ready for the show” as we had hoped. That tricky step between overalls and the 3-piece suit is the difficult part...the hard work...and where most give up. This should help to explain why mediocrity is so pervasive in our society today.
Michelangelo was once quoted as saying "If people knew how hard I worked to attain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all."
If you're someone who's job it is to cultivate ideas on a daily basis, and you care deeply about the end result, then you know how true the above quote is.
Enthusiasm, determination, passion and inspiration. These are the ingredients that go into creating breakthrough ideas. So, I challenge you. Next time you need to come up with an idea, don't jump at the first thing that comes to mind. Let the creative process do it's work. Be willing to push the idea further. See where it leads. Then when you have it to a place where you're ready to say 'eureka'! push it a little further. You just might be surprised by the results.
Just do me a favor, be anything but mediocre.