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.