2:32pm
Saint Paul
“Speaking of watered-down advertising, which is one of my phobias, I am reminded of the words of a wise old Scott: ‘If it were the proper thing to water whiskey, they’d have done it that way at the distillery.’”
——Communications of an Advertising Man, by Leo Burnett
Ads that don’t stand out don’t get attention.
And an ad that doesn’t get attention doesn’t sell.
And an ad that doesn’t sell?
What’s the point?
We’re surrounded by noise. The world gets noisier by the minute. Which means your ads have to stand out if you want them to be effective.
Yesterday I ran two ads that went to a partner’s landing page.
One was a typical ad. It has human faces (always a draw) and a bright orangish color. And it pulled roughly 0.23%.
The second?
The second ad had zero faces, but instead looked like a message box from Microsoft Windows 95. Which, by the way, matched the creatives on the landing page.
(A page which was all about generating pipeline with creative ads such as this.)
And it pulled 6x the first ad.
And then I was asked to turn it off.
Watered down whiskey, indeed.
Jeffrey
PS. I just recorded the last podcast of the year, with David Newman, author of Do It! Marketing.
David has a new book out, Market Eminence.
The pod will drop in a few weeks and the print book in a few months, but you can grab the Kindle version now:
https://www.amazon.com/Market-Eminence-Strategies-Celebrity-Unstoppable-ebook/dp/B0G15LPPP8
With Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Story Selling yesterday, and Market Eminence today, that’s two killer 99c offers for you, just this week alone.