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Tell Your Advertising Agency the Good News – and four other ideas for superior results

January 11th, 2012

At a Christmas party a few weeks ago, I was asked by a friend what he should be doing to make sure his advertising agency delivers superior results in selling his consumer product. I was impressed at the question, at the recognition that his actions directly affect the results, that he felt a responsibility for the success as a partner rather than feeling he had simply hired a vendor. The more we talked, the more I realized others might find this useful so I condensed our conversation into these key concepts:

Tell Your Advertising Agency the Good News - and four other ideas

Tell your advertising, marketing and public relations partners about the good news as it happens. It may verify the strategy is working as planned and trigger new ideas plus it keeps people inspired to perform at a high level.

  1. Your agency is your ally, working on your behalf to help you succeed and to make you look heroic to your customers, to your boss and to your board of directors. Tell the whole story and try not to hold information back about competitors, new products in the pipeline, internal politics or failed strategies. Your agency values every bit of information and sometimes having knowledge about failed projects or internal strife can mean the difference between presenting the killer idea or presenting the idea that gets us all killed.
  1. State your opinions firmly. You are undoubtedly an expert in your industry and only you can offer your unique perspective. Don’t worry about hurting your agency’s feelings. Not only is your agency professional – they can handle it – but they should also welcome your candor and use it to get more on target.
  1. Provide the real budget number. A financial planner will most certainly recommend a different asset allocation strategy for a $1 million investment than he or she would for a $10,000.00 investment. Your agency would do the same – recommending very different courses of action if given very different budget figures. If you value the agency’s recommendation then just say the real number. Don’t feel embarrassed that it’s not as high as you’d like it to be and don’t inflate it beyond what you’re truly willing and able to invest. It’s ok to start small and grow. An ad agency that requires you to start big probably isn’t your best choice as a marketing partner.
  1. Don’t let the agency do any work without your approval. You should be signing off every step of the way from a written estimate to a comp layout, proof and so forth. This ensures everyone agrees with the direction and execution of the project as it moves forward. It may seem bothersome to sign off on minor text revisions or on low-cost purchases but these are the day to day cases where written approvals are most important. If your agency is not asking for approval to spend your money on the little items then they may not be asking for approval on the big items either. Pay attention to where the dollars are going. Set a formal budget, demand accountability and focus measurement efforts on the line that matters most: the bottom line.
  1. Give your agency the good news, too. When your new customer says he or she was impressed by your brochure and Web site and they were important reasons they selected your company, tell your agency. Or if you’ve logged a record month or were nominated for a local award, don’t hide the good news. They’ll feel good and inspired to work even harder for you.

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Lowe’s Boycott a Lesson in Media Planning

December 19th, 2011

This controversy would've been quite predictable for an experienced media planner. Did Lowe's failure at media planning cause this fracas?

Media planning – not crisis communications? Sure, some PR person will soon write up a case study declaring what the Lowe’s PR team did wrong amid the uproar over the company’s decision to pull its advertising from the TV show All-American Muslim. To summarize, Muslim groups have organized a boycott of Lowe’s as punishment for responding to the demand from a Christian group that the company pull its advertising from the show. I drove by a Lowe’s in Pennsylvania yesterday, btw, and saw no protesters (and few customers).

Yet the fatal failure in this fiasco falls not upon the crisis PR response but upon the media planning. If the case for advertising on the show was sound and advanced the interests of the shareholders then at least have the courage to stand by the decision when asked to pull the advertising. Instead, it appears Lowe’s caved pretty quickly, likely for fear of a boycott.

If it wasn’t a sound decision then the media planning failed and invited the costly controversy. Oh, what little care and consideration seems to be spent in deciding where to advertise!  It’s unfortunate that in many ad agencies and in-house marketing departments, media recommendations are entrusted to novices who lack the wisdom and experience to understand the ramifications of where their advertising dollars are placed. In fact, it’s scary to think how many people at Lowe’s with marketing and advertising job titles either never anticipated this situation, or worse, decided not to speak up for fear of appearing less than politically correct.

There is more to smart media planning than just numerical ratings, circulation and impressions. The mere act of supporting a show or publication suggests support for the content regardless of the organization’s actual positions, if any. Media planners bear a great responsibility to everyone in an organization that goes beyond delivering the ad message to the right people at the right time at the right place at the lowest cost. If this boycott grows legs and actually hurts Lowe’s then stores may be closed and good people put out of work. That’s the extended impact of media planning that needs to be carefully considered before media plans are approved and ad space is placed.

For anyone experienced in media planning, the backlash should’ve been completely predictable.

 

 

 

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Superior Design Gets Prospects Ready

November 16th, 2011

Superior architecture like Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water achieves a desired result, such as a house that makes guests feel comfortably right at home or a doctor’s office that makes patients feel…patient – without the guests or patients truly knowing exactly why they feel comfortable and patient. Superior graphic design affects prospects in a similar way and influences their decision to buy.

After a few months of reading about architecture and a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, I happened upon a manufacturer’s spec sheet and it occurred to me that the art of building design is very much like the art of graphic design. Architects consider how to create a mood from outside the building, then guide people inside and direct the traffic flow to suit the purpose of the building. At Falling Water, for example, many of the ceilings become progressively lower moving from each room’s doorway towards the windows, always guiding the eye outside to striking views of the waterfall.

Superior architecture achieves a desired result, such as a building that appears as a natural part of its environment, or a house that makes guests feel comfortably right at home or a doctor’s office that makes patients feel…patient – without the guests or patients truly knowing exactly why they feel comfortable and patient.

Likewise, superior graphic design creates a mood upon first glance then guides the eye from one place to another, directing the flow to suit the purpose of the literature, ad, sign, Web page, direct mailer or other material. Superior graphic design invites people to read the copy and gives them permission to absorb and be influenced by the message. It helps achieve a desired result, such as converting a reader into a lead or a lead into a customer.

We see scores of examples of architecture and design every day but don’t often realize the full extent of their influence. How we feel inside an office, for example or how much we spend in a retail store are influenced by the strength of their designs. Whether we read a spec sheet or direct mailer and take action or discard them to the trash is also influenced by the strength of their designs. We don’t always recognize superior graphic design until we see examples that don’t measure up, which is what sparked this post.

In looking for examples worth emulating, I gathered 12 of my favorite examples of superior graphic design in one place. Click here to see all twelve:

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Word Up! Get Command Of English To Boost Your News Coverage

September 22nd, 2011

One of the more uncomfortable questions I’m often asked is, “What do you think of this press release?” Sometimes the most valuable selling point is buried towards the end. In other cases there’s so much fluffy nonsense it’s hard to figure out why the press release was even written. But in nearly every case, they read as if very little importance had been placed on the words selected. You’d think words might be vitally important for a press release yet words seem

Just because you put 250 words on letterhead and call it a press release doesn’t mean it’s going to help your business. If you want your news to get published then you need to pay attention to what the editors pay attention to when reviewing written materials.

to earn as little attention as grammar, usage and punctuation. “Who cares about commas and sentence structure? Who cares about replacing ‘is’ with an action verb, you ask?” Well, consider these actual bios of just a few of the trade magazine editors who get to read these press releases – they also decide whether to use them or hit delete (the names and their magazines have been removed):

  • …editor-in-chief…earned a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. in English Literature from Harvard College.
  • … joined as editor from the University of Akron, where she had taught English composition for three years after earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. She also has a 1985 master of fine arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
  • … editor graduated from Ohio’s Bowling Green State University with an English degree
  • … joins as editor after two-and-a-half years as a News Editor and has also been a high school English teacher and graduated from Northern Illinois University with a B.A. in English.

Editors care about words and notice when other writers do not care as much. Even one of the more respected chemical industry magazines has only a single chemical engineering degree on its entire editorial staff. The others studied English and journalism. Now see this introduction in an editorial by Anna Wells, Executive Editor, IMPO:

“As someone who spent the better part of college studying modern literary theory — a vocation so rich with complexity yet sparse in practical application — I can sympathize with the other liberal arts devotees out there: the ones with the music performance or art history degrees. Perhaps when I have a child in college and I am footing the bill, my understanding will lessen… but I hope not. For the sake of erudition (and the ability to use words like erudition in a sentence), I don’t regret the essays on Death in Venice, or the day I read The Sound & The Fury in UW-Madison’s Memorial Library stacks.”

Now, you can better see how a background in English affects how press releases are read. You can better see why it’s important to know when to use ensure or insure, and to know how to use the active voice and the passive voice (and which one to avoid in a press release). Just because you put 250 words on letterhead and call it a press release doesn’t mean it’s going to help your business. If you want your news to get published then you need to pay attention to what the editors pay attention to when reviewing written materials. I’d put words at the top of the list.

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