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We disagree with every statement on the quiz. Here are our thoughts.
- The two greatest success factors in advertising are creativity and originality.
Creativity and originality can be important
tools for winning attention, but it’s naïve to think that attention
alone ensures sales.
From measuring sales-at-the-cash-register, we
can tell you that the greatest success factors are a sound strategy, pinpoint-accurate
targeting, a motivating offer, and believable, compelling product benefits,
and solid call to action.
- Marketing that works on the masses tends not to work on educated people.
Our industry has been tracking this for a long
time. The higher you move up the food chain, the more success you have with
tactics one might normally dismiss as something that would “only work
on the masses.”
- Awards are an excellent indicator of successful advertising.
Nonsense.
Awards are given to advertising people by other
advertising people who admire their work. There is no correlation between
awards and sales.
- People will not read more than a few words of advertising copy.
We’re not sure where this myth comes from. Every
pro who bothers to measure actual sales results will tell you that long
copy outsells short.
Not that this is a license to ramble. Prune
every needless word. An ad should be no shorter than necessary, and also
no longer.
Incidentally, on this web page alone, by the time you finish this sentence,
you will have read 243 words.
- The look of your marketing matters most.
The look of your marketing matters, but not
most.
An attractively designed marketing campaign
absent substance and a compelling, persuasive sales argument is as vacuous
and powerless as a well-dressed, empty-headed dandy.
- If I feel an approach won’t work on me, I know it won’t work on my customers.
There are two reasons this one fails to hold
up.
First, you really don’t know what approach will
work on you. Sorry, but you really don’t. When you say, “This wouldn’t
work on me,” you provide a glimpse of your self concept. Nothing more.
Second, you do not, all by yourself, represent
your market. You are a sample of one. Even if you did know what would work
on you, it’s moot. We’re interested in what works in the market, not on
selected individuals from within the market.
- Marketing tactics that work in other industries won’t work in mine.
Your industry is unique in many ways. It has
its own jargon, traditions, environment, tone, do’s and don’t’s, body of
knowledge, traditions, mores, history, etc., etc. All of these must be learned
and mastered.
But good marketing is adaptable. If not, then
it wasn’t good marketing in the first place.
- My ad campaign is my brand.
Your brand is not what you claim. Your brand
is what you live. Advertising that tries to persuade people you are anything
else will cost you money and fall flat.
If needed, a good agency will challenge you
and help you shape your brand with suggestions for changing how your company
behaves. (For a more complete discussion on branding, read our article,
A Direct Marketer
Looks at Branding.)
- If I had the time, I’d do all of our advertising in-house.
If you chose Agree but didn’t mean to exclude
the expertise that comes with a shop like RESPONSE, we might get along after
all.
But clients who already know exactly what they
want, and exactly how they want it done, may only need someone to bring
to life a predetermined vision. They may be better off working with freelancers
than with a full-service agency. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
RESPONSE is geared toward clients who want our
input as well as our output. We believe there is value in our involvement
and expertise long before headlines and layouts are even conceived.
- If an advertisement stands out and is noticed, it is successful.
That depends. If your objective is to stand
out and draw notice, then any ad that does so is successful. We, however,
would hope you’d hold your advertising’s feet to a hotter fire. Like, set
objectives that have to do with the bottom line.
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