To begin the creative process of finding your one-of-a-kind message, ask yourself
a few simple questions:

- What are you selling, and what makes it so unique?

For example, if you need to sell kids toys, what makes your merchandise different from what people can buy from other big retail chains? Are the toys handmade, imported from other countries, or vintage?

- To whom do you want to sell it?

In other words, who exactly are you targeting as your ideal consumer? Parents, of course, but what type of parent? Do you want to target wealthy, upscale parents, who are most interested in educational games that will help their kids learn, for example? You may also think about marketing to aunts, uncles, and grandparents, who often want to spend more on their nieces, nephews, and grandchildren than the parents do.

- Why should people buy the product or service from you?

Are you open very late at night so that parents who work long hours can drop by your store? Do you offer free delivery of large items so that walk-in customers don’t have to lug your product home? Are you (and your staff) especially knowledgeable and approachable about suggesting great toys for different age groups?

These questions prove useful whether you’re selling toys or computer repair.
When you have the answers to these questions, you should do two things: Focus on your primary market and do your research.

Because you want your advertising to stand head and shoulders above your
competition, you need to work hard at finding — or, if you prefer, inventing —
something that will grab the potential customers in your primary market (not
necessarily by the neck) and drag them into your store or motivate them to call your business.

A creative hook is an emotional trigger that attracts buyers; it appeals to their self-image and affirms that you provide what they’re looking for. A creative hook is what every good ad needs in order to cut through the advertising clutter. The hook may be a slogan, a phrase, a jingle, a single line of copy, or a unique look that appears in all your ads. But whatever you choose, it must be yours and yours alone, because you’ll use it across all media to differentiate your business from all the others The bottom line: You need to put a new spin on the same old message by coming up with a memorable creative hook.

For example, the Energizer Bunny is a creative hook — it just keeps going and
going and going — and it appears in television, print, and in-store ads promoting
how long-lasting the Energizer batteries are. McDonald’s creative hook, at one time, was its jingle, “You deserve a break today,” which was permanently burned into the consumer memory. The minute you heard this jingle, you instantly knew what the product was. And AAMCO Transmission used a horn in its radio and TV spots as a creative hook; the horn even taught you how to spell the company’s unusual name (“Double A, honk-honk, M-C-O”).