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advertising

Reference points

by Bill on January 25, 2010

When you encounter something for the first time you have no reference point. The thing you encounter establishes itself as the reference point. Anything similar encountered afterward, although “new,” is seen in relation to that first thing, the reference point.

Molly Bloom vigilant.For example, the first dog you see becomes a reference point for “dog.” If it’s a boxer, that’s your idea of dog. If you later encounter a springer spaniel or a wolf or coyote – anything canine – you have that first dog as a reference point.

I thought about this as I read an interview with CBC’s Terry O’Reilly. (It’s an interview done by Mark Dykeman at Broadcasting Brain.) There is a passing reference in it about when he began in advertising: “Edited radio by razor blade …”

I worked in radio too and did a lot of work editing that way. The reason it resonated with me is that it triggered the idea of analog vs. digital. I worked with sound back when everything was analog. That established my reference point. When digital came along, I found it awkward (and still do). However, had I started from the beginning with digital – had that been my reference point – I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t feel awkward to me but just the way to work with sound. What happens when you encounter something where you have a reference point is that you go back to it trying to understand the new thing in terms of the original.

I’m not sure this would be true of anyone else but for me the difference between analog and digital is the difference between thinking of sound as something aural (analog) as opposed to visual (digital). Editing in analog, I was always tuned into the rhythms and the beat and edited based on that. Similar to a DJ in a club using vinyl discs and cuing them to beats, often I would edit that way: cuing the vinyl, hitting “Record” on a beat as I let the disc spin. (It may have been called a slip cue).

With digital, while listening to the music for beats and off beats, it is more about seeing the visual representation – the graph of the audio – and identifying visually where those beats and off beats are. I work with digital audio rarely so it is quite likely I simply don’t know enough about working with it. My point is really this: the analog experience affects my digital experience of audio.

I think this notion of an established reference point as opposed to no reference point is an important one since it can affect a great many things, including products and services. As an example, when word processing programs first started coming out, as a growing number of people started using them, you could do almost anything creating those programs because there were no similar word processing programs that had established themselves as reference points. Now, however, when Microsoft makes changes to a program like Word, they often encounter a hue and cry and it’s because most people aren’t starting from square one. They have experienced word processing and have reference points – expectations of how they work, where functions are and so on.

I think when you are bringing out something new, you have to consider just how “new” it is. Speaking very broadly, you can say everything has some reference point. But some things are more new than others. You have to know what that “new” thing resonates with, whether expectations exist of what it should do and either address those in the development or through  how you communicate with your target audience (or both).

And that is the tangent my mind took after reading the interview. It’s a worthwhile interview to read though my post here is unrelated except to the extent it sparked my rambling.

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Another industry kaput?

by Bill on March 23, 2009

There’s an article by Eric Clemons over on TechCrunch about advertising and its approaching online demise. Titled, Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet, it outlines a number of problems with online advertising, referring to an anticipated fall in online ad revenues. Clemons says, “Pushing a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the consumer is in the midst of something else on the net, will fail as a major revenue source for most internet sites.”

I’ve seen the article’s comments as well as tweets online that assume he is saying advertising is dead, but I don’t think he ever actually says that. Obviously I can’t speak for him but I believe what he is saying is that online advertising won’t work as a revenue model for sites etc., at least not in the long term. As the first section of the article says with its title, “There Must Be Something Other Than Advertising.”

I think that’s probably true but I think it’s also true to say that advertising must be something other than what it has been. Clemons’ entire article is based on a traditional advertising approach, which is interruptive. But he doesn’t really consider advertising with another approach.

Maybe the problem for me is in how he defines advertising:

Advertising is using sponsored commercial messages to build a brand and paying to locate these messages where they will be observed by potential customers performing other activities; these messages describe a product or service, its price or fundamental attributes, where it can be found, its explicit advantages, or the implicit benefits from its use.

If this is the definition I would say yes, the odds of it working aren’t good. But is that what it is? Maybe I’m muddling the terms advertising and marketing in my mind but I think there are other ways to communicate with customers that are less intrusive and more welcome. Also: although people usually say they don’t like advertising and the interruptive approach, is that actually so? Maybe the like/dislike aspect is conditioned by the kind of ad, the brand it represents and the frequency of interruptions? (I’m thinking of Apple ads – I rarely, if ever, hear people complain about those.)

My take on it all? It’s a good start but the article ends in wishful thinking. Advertising (marketing) needs a huge rethink/sensibility shift. The majority continue to use the interruptive approach and smarmy smile approach. If people distrust advertising it is because the reality (of a product/service) did not match the claims for it and there was a failure to engage customers as people, as opposed to numbers in a spreadsheet.

Despite the title, this is yet another article speculating about revenue models on the Internet. In the end, the conclusion of the article is, “I don’t know where all this is going but I sure to wish and hope it’s the scenario I’ve imagined.”

With the breadth and depth of information available to people, with our ability to connect and converse between ourselves as well as with companies (assuming they engage), perhaps we’re in an era when the best way for advertising to work is by changing how it sees itself. Maybe advertising needs to see itself as support rather than pitch, informative and helpful rather than a message to persuade.

Maybe it’s time for advertising to “rebrand” itself and become something people might actually want.

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And the purpose? – Dubious marketing

by Bill on February 6, 2009

I watched the Superbowl, an unexpectedly exciting game for me, and managed to get the NBC high-def feed. So I was able to see all those ads that get talked about every year, the ones buckets of money are spent on. (In Canada, the Superbowl feed has different commercials – for the market.)

I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed by them. Some were clever in a frothy sort of way. And heaven knows, there were loads of quick cuts and peppy music. From a marketing perspective though, I have to wonder about the sense those ads make. It’s a lot of money, but where’s the return?

Other than some questionable bragging rights (”Our ad ran in the Superbowel”), do they have any impact on the numbers? On brand awareness? Is there any data to measure whether its money well spent?

I suspect not. I also suspect they are, like many ad awards, not about effective advertising or marketing but about, frankly, showing off. About clever ads, witty ads, colourful ads, ads with oodles of style … but not about effectiveness.

I don’t follow these things so I wonder if there are some ad/marketing awards that are strictly about measureable results? I know it sounds boring and appears to take the fun out of ads and marketing, but when you look at the cost of something like a Superbowl ad, and the current economy, can anyone afford to pour money into a jazzing up a portfolio (as opposed to getting results)?

I was reminded that I had meant to write this post a few days ago when I came across a post on Seth’s blog that more or less says the same thing. He quite smartly puts it in terms of putting on a show versus telling a story.

And the game? Good as it was, with all those 3rd quarter penalties, not to mention the interception runback to end the first half, I wondered if it was the best bad Superbowl game I’d seen or the worst good game.

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How I write radio ads – Part 1 – Structure

by Bill on December 13, 2008

I worked in commercial radio for a long time, writing and producing radio ads. Today, for some inexplicable reason, I was thinking about those ads and about how I would write them, which is really about how I thought about them. I decided to write it down.

Structure

While there were some 60 second ads (which I approached the same way), even a few 10 or 15 second ads and promos, the vast majority were 30 seconds. In my mind, I thought of them as three segments, roughly 10 seconds each: intro, middle and close. These three segments were related to the words but also to the background – music and sound effects. (Some ads, of course, were cold voice – no background, just the voice.)

There were a number of benefits to approaching it this way. The first, for me, was parameters. Granted, there was already one over-riding parameter: time. It had to be 30 seconds. (To be specific, I aimed at 29 seconds.)

I work best with rules. As arbitrary as they may be, they keep me focused. I believe in breaking rules but I also believe that in order to break a rule successfully you have to know what it is and why it’s there.

With this three part structure I imposed on myself, it helped to keep me aware of the listener. (“If I don’t do something in the script to keep their attention soon, I’ll lose them.”) My reasoning was that after roughly ten seconds of an ad, assuming people are listening, if something new doesn’t happen you will have lost their attention.

Three segments

Intro: The first part, or intro, was basically the hook. A lot depended on the kind of ad you were writing, so it could be a different kind of hook. It might be a key benefit of a product or service (“For just $9.99 you can get your own 2008 Porsche! Can such things be? You bet – but only at Bob’s Outrageously Underpriced Auto Showroom!”).

It might be a skit type of ad:

MARY: Sam! Put your pants back on!

Okay … so maybe those weren’t the best examples. But hopefully you will have gotten the idea.

There are any number of ads, so there could be any number of openings. But the point was to have something that would stand out and get someone’s attention. Once you have it, you can get down to business. The intro is like a headline. If it’s a good headline, people might read the story.

Middle: The middle is the hardest part and also the riskiest. It’s essentially the meat of the ad and is usually where a listener’s attention is lost because, to be blunt, it’s boring. If you’re fortunate and have a good client, you can focus on one thing. But more often than not you have a grocery list you have to shove into the ad. Some writers find creative solutions for this, but it ain’t easy. Using two voices going back and forth can help (depending on the kind of ad it is), as well as sound effects and music – they can help punctuate key items.

Whatever you do, however, try not to linger overly long in the middle. You want out of there fast because, as mentioned, it kills with tedium.

(This doesn’t necessarily apply to an ad that is meant to build brand awareness. With those you often have time to let the ad breathe and be more creative, primarily because the ad is intended to communicate one thing – an image.)

End: The end is exactly that: the end. Here, it’s important to reiterate the key points of the ad: what product or service it is, the key benefit, and the client name and location (or phone number – twice, if you can, for the phone number).

The story

I can’t think of any kind of writing that isn’t built around this simple structure – novels, short stories, screenplays – though for many the structure is more complex. Even the complex ones, however, are only complex because the middle is portioned off into subsections.

Keeping this in mind – all writing has a structure – helps to also remind us that everything is a story. News, novels, ads: they all tell stories. And any good story has a beginning, middle and end.

But wait! There’s more!

The above is long-winded, or so it seems to me, and I haven’t yet touched on some of the things I had intended to. So it looks like I’ll be writing a second post on this topic. Here, I’ve been focused on structure. Although a good deal of what I’ve said is nothing new to anyone who has looked into the job of writing, it all needed saying before moving on to what really fascinated me about doing radio ads: the sound.

That will be part 2.

Notes:

  1. When I say I think of it as three 10 second sections, this isn’t carved in stone. Often the intro may be 5 seconds, and the end will be 5 seconds, leaving more time for the tedious middle. When I had that situation, a 20 second middle, I would sometimes think of it as being two parts, or 2 subsections. However I handled it, I would focus on trying to keep it interesting, usually by breaking it up somehow.
  2. The tense of my headline (present) and of my post (past) are in conflict. I should fix that, but I won’t because it is all based on what I did in the past when I worked in radio but, were I to write radio ads today, I would still approach it this way. (Yes, I know. That still doesn’t excuse confused writing.)
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‘Under the feet of clashing giants’

by Bill on May 4, 2008

I like this post by Doc Searls. I particularly like, “… Advertising itself is a bubble in the long run, because it’s guesswork even at its best, and making it better and better only improves a system that has been flawed fundamentally from the start, because it proceeds only from the sell side, and still involves enormous waste …”

Yes, I tend to have a bee up my bum on the subject of advertising and marketing in general. But I think it’s because so much of it is crud and waste (not that there’s a difference between crud and waste). I love it when they work. But as Searls says, so much of it is guesswork. And a lot of it is done because there’s an absence of ideas and, “We gotta do something.”

(Oh, and on the subject of Microsoft and Yahoo … I don’t care much either. From a user perspective, both are examples of making the user secondary.)

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