Whether your advertising budget is a million dollars a month or only a thousand dollars a year, you’ll waste that money if your ads aren’t effective.

Your ads need to give the consumer a good reason to act (the content), and they have to be unique enough in their design and copy to attract the consumer’s attention in the first place (the creativity). Countless forms of media expose consumers to so much advertising on a daily basis — some of it so subtle that consumers don’t even know they’re absorbing it — that generating advertising for your business is a real challenge. However, your task isn’t impossible — it just takes some serious thought. More serious than, say, clear soda or Internet pop-ups.

Consumers constantly see and hear bad advertising that’s unclear in its message, confusing in its content, and just plain aggravating in its production. On the other hand, many forms of media expose them to some truly great advertising that includes memorable graphics, killer copy delivered in a clear, concise manner, and fresh, new creative hooks.

The good news is that you don’t need a huge ad budget in order to create effective ads. Truly superior advertising is created every day, and much of it on a budget. Sadly, in many cases, the people doing the bad advertising are spending the most money.

You don’t have to create the next great advertising slogan — “Just do it” or “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good”— to get people to buy your product, use your service, or come to your store. You just have to display a
bit more creativity than the other guys and devise a compelling message so
people choose you over your competition.

No matter your budget, audience, or vision, you can do good advertising, and in this website, I show you how. I explain how you should hone in on and find out as much as possible about your target audience — that’s marketing-speak for the people you most want to attract as customers. I also advise getting to know your competition — especially their advertising — so you can differentiate yours from theirs.

Finally, I describe what a creative hook is and how to develop that creative hook in all your advertising, whether you’re doing TV commercials, radio spots, Internet banners, outdoor ads, or newspaper or magazine ads.

The Art of Advertising:

Advertising is a mix of science and art. Most companies approach marketing problems in the same way – we all do a certain level of copy testing, using qualitative and/or quantitative research techniques. That is the science side of it. The art is in the ideas. It’s in being able to see something that others don’t see and to develop creative ideas around it. There’s a lot of art to that. It’s not just something you can wake up one morning and do.

There are some fundamental rules which successful advertising must follow. First, you need to understand the brand you’re about to take on. Ask questions such as: What are its core equities? Who are the brand’s consumers? From there, you need to understand the consumers and observe how that brand fits into their lives and their day-to-day routines. Once you’ve got that, you can develop a strong, critical consumer insight. Then marry that insight with the core equities of the brand. That way the insight becomes brand-centric. After that, you provide a strong creative brief that helps the creative understand the brand, the barriers the brand might face, and exactly what it is that the advertising should do.

In reviewing the creative’s ideas, it is important that you keep in mind whether they really deliver on the marketing strategy. You need to set aside your own tastes and put yourself in the consumer’s shoes, because nine times out of 10 you aren’t the target consumer anyway. Ask, “Will this idea connect to the consumer?” Once you’ve completed your review, take the ideas to the client. You have to listen to the client, because its job is to protect the core equities of the brand. The client needs to feel comfortable, but also needs to judge the idea the way you did – will it connect? You need to cut through the clutter, engage the consumers, and persuade them to take an action or purchase the product. At the end of the process, you need to get the results and learn from them. Don’t be disheartened if the results are negative: Understand what went wrong. If the process worked well, understand what made it successful and keep it going.

To succeed in the advertising business, you must be able to see opportunity in the abstract and then, you must make it real. From there, you develop creative ideas that will serve as vehicles to communicate and generate a response.

To be a really good creative, you have to experience a lot of things – read a lot, see a lot of movies, talk to a lot of people. When you start to think out solutions, it’s really a subset of your experiences. You need to be someone with a wide range of experiences and who finds it easy to come up with creative ideas or solutions to problems. This is very hard work, but the people who are really creative make it seem simple. A lot of people burn out; coming up with a fresh idea every day is tough. To do it for years, there has to be a level of passion and love.

You also have to stay on top of the industry. I do this by attending seminars. We review creative work done by our competition, which is available on the Internet. We’re constantly reading up on what’s happening in the industry through trade publications, as well as our clients’ trade publications. We’re forever students. If you don’t remain a student, you’ll go out of business. Learning can’t stop.

Science or Discipline?

Advertising is exclusively neither an art nor a science. It is part art, part science, and perhaps even a greater measure of discipline. If you don’t have a disciplined approach to developing a strategic platform, it will be impossible to produce quality material over a long period of time.

The essential tactics for this type of disciplined approach are many: Hiring, training, firing, strategy development, creative development, media development, account service, research; how you follow up with your clients on a day to day basis; the processes you use within your agency; the financial discipline you have within your company; how you approach developing a real partnership with the client; how you approach developing an understanding of their products or services. So, discipline isn’t something that’s nice if you have time for it; it’s mandatory. You can’t just wing it.

In years past, advertising agencies have had the reputations of being free-thinking, free-wheeling, free-spending bastions of creative largesse where folks think, do and create great things all day long. But anyone who has worked in the business knows that the creative part is the figurative tip of the iceberg: It only represents about 10% of what we do. The rest of the time is spent learning, researching, understanding, and massaging information so that we can actually deliver a message that makes sense and produces results.