Lessons from the Legends: Figuring Out Your Advertising Needs

Although your advertising may not come close to the greatest ads created by the top ad agencies (after all, that’s not your intent in the first place), you can still gather greatness from the best. The creative legends of the advertising business have a perceptive understanding of consumers (and how to motivate them). Because they understood consumers, they were able to produce advertising that was so effective that it remained memorable decades after the campaign’s end.
In the Figuring Out Your Advertising Needs, I describe some of the gurus of advertising whose work has taught me much of what I know — and can do the same for you.
A spectacularly ineffective advertising vehicle One of the other tenants in our office building — a small insurance company specializing in assigned-risk auto coverage (for customers whose driving records aren’t exactly stellar) — recently unveiled its latest, breakthrough advertising vehicle. And I do mean vehicle.
I came to work one morning and couldn’t miss it, parked out on the curb in all its glory. The company had pounded out the dents on a 1960s Volkswagen bus, spent $50 to have it freshly painted a sparkling bathtub white, and bolted a 4-by-8-foot, double-faced billboard to the roof to advertise its business. Because the old wreck needed brakes, our business neighbors quit driving it around town and parked the thing conspicuously in the parking lot in front of our building, much to the chagrin of the other tenants. The sign that sat atop this moveable beast, purportedly to tell the world about the company’s insurance business, included no less than 32 words (including sure thing and no driver refused) and an 11-digit phone number, all arranged helter-skelter in 6 different fonts and painted in 3 different colors.
The bus was a gigantic waste of advertising dollars. But the business owner probably thought, like so many small to mid-sized retailers and service businesses do, that he couldn’t afford “real” advertising. So he tried the VW bus routine instead. I don’t think I have to tell you to avoid this kind of mistake at all costs.