Lessons on writing headlines from legendary ad man David Ogilvy are relevant to writers of blogs, websites, articles and social media posts.

Written by Joanne Costin

I think advertising man David Ogilvy would have enjoyed online marketing for the instantaneous feedback it provides.  His rules about advertising weren’t based on opinion, but years of research.

As he famously said:

“Five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. If you haven’t done some selling in your headline, you will have wasted 80 cents out of your client’s dollar.”

Rule No. 1: “The headline is the ticket on the meat.”

Ogilvy promoted the use of keywords in the headline,  before keywords were keywords.
“If you are selling a remedy for bladder weakness, display BLADDER WEAKNESS in the headline. If you want mothers to read your advertisement, display MOTHERS is your headline.”

Rule No. 2: “Every headline should appeal to the reader’s self-interest.”

Ogilvy insisted headlines provide a benefit to the reader. If your headlines aren’t offering a benefit, scrap them.  A reader may not care that your machine has new engine (feature), what he cares about is five percent greater fuel efficiency (benefit).
Via contentforbiz.com

No old-world icon is safe. Just in recent weeks, both Kodak and Sears have percolated back into the news, offering headline writers a dilemma borrowed from the classic Saturday Night Live Weekend Update line, “Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”

 How long have these companies been dying? Yes, it was a surprise sometime a long time ago, that digital media was challenging Kodak and that Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, and later Amazon were making life difficult for one of America’s retailing pioneers.
Ask an American in 1990 if he could imagine a world without Kodak. Or a shopper of a world without Sears. Now, in 2012, it’s a lot easier to imagine…
Via seekingalpha.com

Sure They’re on the Web, But They’re Also Out and About on the Streets of Naples, Florida

Imagine my surprise when I pulled up behind this small van on a Naples street.

I started to get hungry just looking at the back of the van. This is mobile marketing that quite literally whets my appetite.

First Watch is a small chain of daytime cafes with numerous outlets in the Naples/Fort Myers area and in many other parts of the country. They are famous for great breakfasts and friendly servers. It’s a pleasure to tuck into one of their omelets or other creative egg dishes.

I think they get 3 things just right on the back of this van:

1. Their tagline in bright green letters fully captures the spirit of First Watch—it’s all about fresh food and mostly about big bountiful breakfasts.
2. Their web address, HowDoYouWantYourEggs.com is long, but memorable. Even better, it’s eminently sharable.
3. Their license plate, EGGS4, completes the message and reinforces their devotion to eggs.

I’m pretty sure that an awful lot of Naples drivers wound up going online to HowDoYourWantYourEggs.com and then pretty quickly header over to their nearest First Watch for a sumptuous breakfast.

Mobile marketing works even when its mostly on wheels.

B Squared Marketing Shares Its Wisdom While Making It Short and Sweet

I might be getting carried away. But, I loved this very brief bit of marketing advice when it showed up on my iPhone this afternoon.  I think it proves how brevity can be the soul of content marketing brilliance in a social media milieu.

B Squared is an established SW Florida Advertising that does great work and has won a ton of awards. I knew that, but I hadn’t thought of them for ages until I saw their Facebook post this afternoon.  I was so struck that I had to write something right now.

Advertising Tip of the Week: Want to drive more traffic? Consider condensing a 3 to 4 month advertising budget to just 6 weeks and build a promotion around it.

Six Reasons Why This Makes for Fabulous Content Marketing

1. It is short. Just 24 words and less than the 140 characters allowed by Twitter if you exclude ‘advertising tip the week.’ In fact, it would make a terrific tweet.

2. It is authentic. Clearly, B Squared is offering solid advice without a sneaky ulterior motive. It’s a device you could even act on yourself without outside help.
3. It is creative. They are suggesting something outside the box that might generate fast and measurable results.
4. It is repeatable. Because their advice is so short and so easy to understand, business owners and professionals are likely to share the information and to give credit to B Squared. (Well, it sure worked for me.)
5. It is unique. Although other advertising professionals might have thought of this, I have never seen it suggested before. And, it hints to me that this company might have a lot of other unique ideas worth learning about.
6. It is action-oriented. As a small business advertiser, it would certainly inspire me to take action either on my own–or, best of all, to contact B Squared to talk to them about how they might be able to help me market more effectively.

Not only is this a great example of content marketing, but B Squared also makes great use of Facebook where you can easily share this information inside Facebook or beyond.

My only advice: Shorten these distinct words of wisdom down to 140 characters so that you can tweet them after which they will be pulled into Facebook automatically.

Unless You Address This Top of Mind, Unspoken Question, You are Out of the Game

Imagine for a moment, that you are looking out at a hoard of your customers in an actual or virtual audience and that each and every one of them is wearing a hat.

And, on each and every hat, are the words "so what?"

Essentially, that’s what they’re thinking when you are talking, sending them an e-mail, inviting them to your website, sharing an eNewsletter, mailing them a brochure or presenting them with an advertisement.

They want to know what’s in it for them. If you can’t tell them, you are out!  You are out of consideration. You are out of their trusted information resource database. You are out of their purchase plans. You are being tossed right out of the game.

My thanks to the late Dave Hagenbuck, sales trainer extraordinaire for this metaphor. He was teaching us about effective sales presentations in a pre-Internet era. But, his metaphor and his advice applies just as much, if not more today.

If you are ready with customer-centric answers to the unspoken ‘So what?’, you’ll be in good shape whenever and however you connect with your customers.

Geico’s Drill Sergeant Therapist Gets It Just Right. Mayflower Marionette Gets It All Wrong.

Even though they spend plenty of money on television advertising, Geico doesn’t need to spend much money at all for this incredibly effective commercial which is one of a series that are similarly effective.

On the other hand, Mayflower has created an elaborate series of giant marionette television commercials which are certainly expensive but almost as certainly ineffective.

Geico Makes a Simple Point and Ties It to a Compelling Story

The commercial begins with an intro asking whether Geico can really save you 15% on automobile insurance and then segues into a little vignette that tells a story that virtually all of us would believe would be intuitively true. The connection is then simply made between the story and the saving of 15% on automobile insurance.

This commercial series is not about some highfalutin branding or image making. Rather, it’s about telling a simple story that is not only easy to remember but is also easy to retell. Even better, most of these Geico ads are also pretty darned funny. That makes them even more memorable.

The best content marketing should include compelling stories to which your customers and prospects can relate easily. This may be hard to do. But it does not have to be expensive.

The Geico drill sergeant commercial proves that point. Although they probably paid a lot of money to the actor playing the role of the brutal therapist, in principle, this commercial could’ve been made for almost nothing. It consists simply of the introductory announcer, two actors and a small, basic set representing a therapist’s office.

That’s the kind of video that you could re-create on your website to tell a compelling story. Perhaps, it wouldn’t be quite so funny, but it might be just as memorable if you make sure that the story is both relevant and compelling for your customers. And, that’s all about your mindset, not about the amount of money you spend.

If you haven’t seen my favorite drill sergeant therapist, here’s the video:

Mayflower movers get it all wrong with their slightly creepy series of giant marionette commercials.

I’m guessing that these were very expensive to produce.The special effects are pretty impressive.  But, the story that Mayflower tries to tell is not impressive at all.

In the long version of the commercial, there is no explanatory introduction about why we’re watching what we’re watching.  Apparently, the agency figured that we would be fascinated enough to follow the path of a giant female marionette as she travels on the highway and is eventually deposited at what we assume to be her new house.

All along the way, a bunch of guys manipulate the progress of this enormous marionette a bit like handlers of balloons at Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade. At the end of the commercial, when they plunk her into a chair, it’s not clear how she’s going to be able to get out of the chair–let alone fit into a house that is much too small for her gargantuan size.

The commercial concludes without explanation except for the insertion of a final tagline that somebody fell in love with: "Every step of the way." This, of course, is when our giant ah ha moment arrives and we are supposed to think: "Oh I get it–’every step of the way’ just like the giant marionette was stepping across the country."

Thus, Mayflower has spent lots of money and too much of our time metaphorically leading us to that final tagline cliché, "every step of the way," which doesn’t really tell us anything. We are simply left with the weird image of a giant marionette sitting in a lawn chair after a long, strange journey cross-country.

Bottom line: Effective content marketing should include storytelling that creates a clear, concise, and compelling narrative that your customers will both remember and repeat. If you tell a great story, as Geico does, you’ll be happy with the meme that you have created on TV or on the Web. On the other hand, if you tell a terrible story, as Mayflower has done, prospective customers may be talking about you, but you’re not likely to benefit from what they have to say.

Marketing Campaign Trashes Worst Suspected  Big Brokerage Firm Traits

One of the great things about funny advertising campaigns is that they tend to be particularly memorable.

Even better, we’re more likely to talk about them with our friends.  And in the viral age, we can even share commercials via YouTube and other social media. 

Best of all, funny commercials that also embed a simple and compelling message, make it unavoidable for us to remember both the commercial and the message.

In their latest TV advertising campaign, Scottrade invented the character, Chad A. Ridgeway, who represents all of the worst traits we ever experienced or imagined about the folks who tried to get us to invest big bucks with them. 

Chad is slick and just this side of sleazy. He plays racquetball, travels in a limo, and owns his own medium-size yacht. What we know for sure is he managed to get where he is by charging us a lot of money to buy and sell stocks.  But, as we learn from the commercials, all  that easy money and easy living may vanish because of the compelling value offered by Scottrade.

The use of Chad’s over-the-top character and the element of humor enable Scottrade to dismantle the competition without having to name names or offend anyone. What the commercials make obvious is that Chad and his "big brokerage" company represent everything that Scottrade is not. 

But, the TV ads are not just funny, they are affective. As we had written earlier about the Progressive Insurance long-running Flo advertising campaign, the humor integrates a consistent message that conveys a few key customer-centric points that pervade the campaign.

In the case of Progressive it has to do with saving lots of money on your insurance.  In the case of Scottrade, it focuses on seven dollar trades and easy online access. Thus we remember the commercials because they’re funny, but we also remember the key benefit points that Scottrade is so careful to convey consistently.

The bottom line: When you do it right, funny is fabulous.  Getting it right means integrating both what’s amusing and what’s beneficial to your customers. In that way, your customers will remember your company, your commercial, and your message. In their minds, you become both trustworthy and likable so that they will want to do business with you willingly.  I think Scottrade gets it exactly right with the ‘Chadster.’

Catch Chad Ridgeway at his best (or worst) below:

Plenty Has Changed from 1960 to 2010 but What Is Most Important Has Stayed the Same.

If you’re not already a fan of the TV classic in the making, Mad Men, it’s all about the Madison Avenue ad agency world of the early 1960s. There was plenty of drinking, smoking, and carrying on. But, there was plenty of great, and surprisingly timeless, marketing taking place, too.

Most of you probably are not old enough to remember when housewives really did wear shirtwaist dresses to do housework, when color TV was just beginning to take hold, when JFK  had just promised a man on the moon, and when a lot of famous brands were invented or enhanced by the ad agency Mad Men in the title.  That may have been a long time ago, but we can still learn some timeless content marketing truths from one wonderful segment.

In a Mad Men segment about the creation of the Kodak Carousel the roots of content marketing shine through when lead character, Don Draper, makes it clear that building a brand is all about storytelling and engaging the consumer–and not about technology or the company itself.

Way back in the 1960s, Kodak dominated the photography world in ways that seem almost unimaginable today. Their technology was leading edge. How to make it relevant to consumers was the hard part.

The ad agency’s challenge was to launch a new slide projector that enabled customers to load a bunch of slides into a wheel so that they could create a long-running slideshow that ran seamlessly.

Don Draper, the top creative guy, launched his presentation by saying of the still unnamed product, "It’s not a wheel. It’s a carousel." He went on to say, "This device isn’t a space ship. It’s a time machine."

Don then painted a picture of precious family moments captured forever and relived again and again thanks to the wonderful Kodak Carousel "time machine."

What struck me about the Kodak segment was that Don’s approach to marketing a product was essentially timeless. Marketing is still all about telling stories that connect with your customers. Even though we now tell those stories on websites, blogs, and social media, our need to build a bond with the folks who buy our products remains the same.

The best of traditional marketing lives on in today as ‘content marketing.’ To boil it down to basics, here are the timeless marketing commandments that were true for Kodak in 1960 and for all of us today as we focus on delivering content that is relevant and compelling for our customers.

Your job as a content marketer then and now:

• B to B: Make your customers successful
• B to C: Make your customers’ lives better
• 1st understand, then be understood
• Listen, really listen to your customers
• Engage your customers in dialogue
• Encourage word of mouth

Of course, a critically important difference between 1960 and today is the new, affordable, and  powerful tools we can use to pursue all of those content marketing activities. Kodak really understands what content marketing is all about. We might have anticipated that to be true from their eager acceptance of the heartfelt, storytelling approach taken for the launch of the Carousel.

Kodak Has Made the 21st Century Marketing Transition Brilliantly

The Kodak Carousel lives on virtually in an iPhone application that permits all of the capture and sharing of memories that meant so much back in 1960 and still mean so much to us today in 2010.

Kodak understands its customers in 2010 on an emotional level just they did 50 years ago. They now participate enthusiastically in a full range of content marketing activities that revolve around storytelling. And, today, the storytelling comes just as much from customers as it does from Kodak. Here is what they have going online:

• a website that is rich in video and visuals
• multiple blogs
• multiple Facebook pages and games
• a very cool iPhone application
• a presence on Twitter

Content marketing: Important in 1960.  Essential in 2010.   Game changer for small companies.

Today, content is both essential and easy to do. Fortunately, even solopreneurs with micro-resources can be effective content marketers. Content marketing really does level the playing field with with larger–even much larger–competitors.

You may not be able to replicate everything online that Kodak is doing. But you can come pretty darned close. Absolutely every tool they use online is available to you free or inexpensively. In fact, you can’t afford not to implement a content marketing strategy. It’s working for Kodak and it will work for you.

And It’s Not Just Content But Mobile Content for the iPhone

The Geico gecko campaign is an excellent example of effective advertising because it integrates humor with a consistent product benefit message. Nonetheless, it suffers from the same limitations that afflict all advertising:

• It calls out to customers whether or not they want to hear the message. Thus, however amusing, it’s still an example of interruption marketing.
• Because each ad is short, Geico is limited in the amount of information it can convey.
• There is little intrinsic value to the content of the ads. That is, they don’t help Geico customers be more successful or live better lives.
• However amusing, their constant repetition can become annoying even for big fans of Geico like me.
• This is strictly one-way communication that does not enable customer interaction.

Now, however, they have added a powerful content marketing component to their marketing mix.

Geico Jumps on the Mobile Content Marketing Bandwagon with GloveBox™ App

Most of us rarely interact with our own insurance company let alone with other insurance carriers. Now Geico has cleverly added intrinsically valuable content to its GloveBox™ App so that both customers and non-customers will benefit.

Normally, we contact our insurance companies because we have a specific insurance related-problem. Now we are enticed to interact with Geico so that they can help us with the number of car related challenges. 

Here’s the kind of useful mobile content that Geico promises with the content-driven iPhone app:

• Bill Pay & Insurance ID Card(s) – Pay your GEICO auto insurance bill and access your current insurance ID cards from your phone.
• Accident Helper – Take advantage of our Accident Helper which helps put you in contact with emergency services, gives you a place to organize photos and much more.
• Roadside Service – Locator features allow you to find nearby tow services and gas stations…anywhere, anytime. Use your phone’s GPS or enter a location manually, it’s up to you!
• Taxi/Rental Car – Need a taxi to get home from the repair shop or maybe even after a night of fun? Want to rent a car? Our locator will help find what you need in moments.
• Auto How To’s – Our step-by-step instructions can help you jump start a vehicle, change a flat tire or check your tire pressure.

With the GloveBox™ App Geico has gone from an amusing TV commercial that reaches out to us whether we want the interruption or not to a mobile helper that can extricate us from car challenges wherever we happen to be. 

It’s great to know that the Geico gecko has jumped on board the content marketing bandwagon for the benefit of his company and his customers. Crikey! That’s one savvy marketing lizard.

Just because you put a cute dog in a commercial, you won’t automatically communicate effectively with your customers.

Storytelling is a key component of effective marketing and often of the very best advertising. But, you have to be really careful in the use of storytelling for a brief TV commercial that addresses millions of viewers who are not giving you their full attention from the get-go.

That’s why the State Street SPDR commercial featuring a cute Jack Russell Fox Terrier misses the mark.

If you are Garrison Keillor, you can take a long time to tell a story about Lake Wobegon in which none of us know where you’re headed and are willing to give you as much time as you want to get to the point.

TV commercials do not have that luxury. Unless your story is so intrinsically compelling that we will follow along without knowing where you’re headed, you are likely to lose us at least conceptually early on. So it is with the State Street commercial.  Moreover, unless you have an incredibly sophisticated audience, your story must make an obvious customer benefit connection. The State Street commercial does not.

This 60 second spot was shot in vintage black-and-white with an unintelligible French lyric playing in the background. It stars a Jack Russell Fox Terrier who is on a search for the perfect toy for his best four-legged pal. I’m guessing that those of us who are crazy about dogs can spend a pleasant 60 seconds following the ultimately successful search for a buried bone that proves to be preferable to a half-dozen doggie toys delivered earlier.

But, the main reason I paid enough attention to get to the point of the commercial was that I thought it would be great fodder for a blog post. And, not in a good way.

The basic idea is that finding the right dog treat is just as important and just as challenging as finding the right tailored ETF investments for the appropriate customer. But we have to spend virtually the entire commercial following the dog and trying to understand what the heck the French singer is singing in order to get to the pay off–which has nothing to do with a pair of dog buddies.

Here are the three biggest problems I have with this commercial:

1. For the first 45 seconds of the commercial you have absolutely no idea what it’s about. If you are in a relaxed mood and love dogs, that may be okay. But for most viewers, it’s critical to get to the point early in be obvious about the benefit to them.
2. When they do it to the point about 15 seconds left, they make an implicit analogy about a dirty old buried dog bone (that only a dog could love) and their high-tech, sophisticated ETF solution. That’s quite a stretch to make in terms of analogies.
3. Unless you already know what an ETF is and how they can be custom tailored, this commercial won’t tell you anything. And, even if you do know, the wrap up line “precise in a world that isn’t,” doesn’t really provide you a clear benefit or differentiation from other suppliers of targeted ETF’s.

This is a lovely, sweet commercial that those of us who are soft on dogs and on French music can appreciate. But it’s a very inefficient use of 60 precious seconds of commercial time.

A much better example of putting a dog to work is Duke, the golden retriever in the Bush’s baked beans commercials. Click here to see why we believe that is so effective.

if you have an extra 60 seconds to see if you think I’m right or wrong, click on the video below. What do you think? Does it work for you?