Content Marketing Today

 

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. Read More

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.” Read More

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. Read More