Your Commercials stink

Well, there's over a 90% chance that they do. These aren't my stats -- they're the advertising industry's.

If you're saying "Whaddya mean 'my ads stink,'" I mean they don't get people to take the action you want. They aren't working.

I know -- "People tell me they hear my ads, so they must be working." I'll just say this: if you make any decisions re advertising based on that, tell me when you're ready to spend your money, because it's going in the street and I want to be there to catch it. This is a subject for a whole post, and it's coming soon :)

Your ads tell everyone all about you. Why people should do business with you. They list what you have to sell them.

Those are the things an ad should have, isn't that so.

Well ...

People don't care about your business or mine. You could go out of business tomorrow and they would cluck their tongues and move on. Nothing personal, you understand. It's just that we're all wired to be concerned about Number One. If your commercial doesn't bolt from the gate with a reason why it's to the listener's clear, obvious advantage to pay attention and keep on paying attention [you have two to three seconds in which to do this], she is gone. Her mind is now concerned with something else.

It doesn't have to begin with a literal spoken reason. It could, but it can begin in the middle of a conversation, or with an interesting sound -- just about anything, really, as long as it and every single element advances the message and is not present simply to gain attention.

Most commercials are announcements, or lists of facts. No one listens to them.

They are not interested, and if they were, it would be a moot point because they cannot remember those lists of facts.

You must meet your customer inside his own life

Your customer must see her/himself coming to your business because it is in his interest to do it. The commercial's job is to take him there in his mind. We go nowhere physically until we've been there in our imagination. And here's where radio is so misused.

Your commercial shouldn't blah about how wonderful you are, how much you care about your customers, how long you've been in business, nor provide a list of what you sell. People hear that in 90 out of 100 ads. They don't listen to those ads.

No, what you must do is to associate something your potential customer already knows about because it's part of his everyday life -- something he wants, or has and wants more of, or has a problem you can solve. These don't have to be tangible things. You can dramatize love, frustration, danger, bliss, qualities your product or service addresses. Like this:

We don't buy lawnmowers. We buy goodlooking lawns. We don't buy cough medicine. We buy relief. See? You don't sell cars, you sell a statement an owner makes about him/herself by driving a certain brand / model / color.

Your customer is saying, "don't talk to me about your laundry detergent, tell me about my clean, fresh-smelling clothes."

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Don't let radio stations write your ads unless you live in a huge urban area where the stations can afford to hire people who understand this stuff. Small-market stations cannot afford writers. They have the sales staff write them. Yikes. Just turn on the radio and listen. Get me, or someone who writes as I do or better: http://www.MichaelHolmesAdvertising.com

Aren't you as tired of the increasing coarseness of this society as I am?

My friends, much of what makes life worth living is escaping us.

A number of years ago it was suggested by the television industry that TV show themes should be eliminated to make room for more commercial time. The idea was shot down. Now it's happening, and it's a shame.

I tuned in to House on Monday and watched the opening teaser. The show's logo popped up for no seeming reason for about three seconds, disappeared, and bingo, we were into the show. The theme music, with its fascinating graphics, had vanished.

I'm sure that theme wasn't even a minute long. What the producers don't realize, or do but don't care, is that a show's theme transports us from the here and now into the story. Without the theme, we're jerked abruptly into the program unprepared, and have to do the work of putting ourselves into it rather than be guided into an hour of pleasant escape from our daily grind.

It's got me thinking about other parts of our lives that have disappeared.

I've been watching us lose a great many of the small, civilized appearances and behaviors that have given our existence much of its joie de vivre -- its keen enjoyment of living. If the reader isn't old enough to remember, I hope he or she will try to imagine what these things were like.

We dressed up to go out to restaurants, movies, live theater, church, to fly, even to visit friends depending on the occasion. We used polite language in public, especially around older people, who today are shocked and dismayed by what they hear from people standing three feet away from them. We had what we called manners. We look at them as being rather staid and silly today, because we don't realize they were the glue that held us together.

We were far freer from coarseness on television. Am I wrong, or isn't TV at its best when it reminds us of how things could be if we weren't so self-centered? Most shows last a season or less. The Hallmark Hall of Fame began December 24, 1951 and is still among the very best and well-received entertainment there is.

You may be thinking "What is this Neanderthal going on about? It's not the '50s anymore!" Well, when I was in college, voices from cars yelled "Hey! Why don't you get a hair cut!" I played in a rock and roll band and I still play in a rock and roll band. I am teetering on the edge of depression as I face the fact I won't be seeing Jack Bauer after this coming Monday.

But I have relearned the pleasures small things: of mailing notes written in blue ballpoint, of dressing up to go out to dinner. I've taught my kids the importance of writing thank-you notes. I thank every serviceman or -woman I see for protecting us. Want to light up a soldier's day? Thank him or her. They'll feel like you've given them a hundred dollars and you'll know the sublime feeling of doing what's right. I occasionally call companies to tell them how much I enjoy their products. Want to light up a company receptionist's day? Call and tell her or him how much you've enjoyed their ice cream, or car, or the new colors on your walls.

Those who study who we are and how we live sound the warning bells about the danger of not knowing our next-door neighbors. Nowhere is this more evident than in the halls of lawmakers. Legislators used to live in Washington while Congress was in session. They thundered on the Senate floor, but when they went home, they got together with one another regardless of party. Labels disappeared. Knowing a man personally makes it possible to understand him. Now they jet home at the end of the week. Those on the other side of the aisle are held in suspicion and mistrust, for they no longer know one another.

This is destroying their effectiveness as representatives: party is now all that is important. If a legislator's conscience tells him to vote other than the party line, he is actually viewed as a traitor by his fellows. This is crazy, but it's understandable. Beating the other side, which is composed of strangers, is all that's important.

I've read recently that people today want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. It's all personal, isn't it. Our forebears knew this, and developed ways to form those relationships. They were designed to overcome our natural mistrust of what we don't know. They were mechanisms to allow us to get to know one another so we could trade, help one another, and simply enjoy one another's company, to make each others' days brighter, to continuously remind us of who we are.

We're abandoning them at our real peril.

How to write copy you and your client will love - without taking all day about it

So you write advertising copy for your company?

Let's say you have an idea. It's trying to get the Clever First Line - or headline - that puts your train on a siding, with a full head of steam, but nowhere to go.

Here's the answer: Get a pencil and a legal pad and just start writing. Write in stream of conscious, even if your first line is "I don't know what to write." Pay no attention to style. Write without stopping until you fill at least two pages. Most importantly, don't care in the least about what you're writing. If you start caring or editing, it will restrict the flow, slow you down, trip you up. Make no judgments whatever. Just write.

I'm going to demonstrate this technique right as I'm writing this post. First, a topic. Let's see - PetsMart is having a sale on all its dog and cat toys. After this sentence, I'll be in Streaming Mode - ready, go:

PetsMart loves your dog or cat the same way you do. They can't stand the idea of your pet getting bored for even a second, so they're putting every last one of their toys on sale through this Saturday for one-third off. Yep, a third off whatever's marked on the sticker. Don't tell me you can possibly resist. If you can, you have a heart of stone and you don't love your mother. So give your pet a hug, get in the car, and get down there right now, because everyone else listening to this is walking out their door this minute, and you're going to feel really dumb getting to the store late and finding that the wonderful toy Fido could have been enjoying within maybe two minutes of your return home has been snapped up by some intrepid buyer who had the good sense to roll on down to PetsMart before you did.

I wrote that in the amount of time it took to type it. I didn't give a rip about what was usable. I just had fun. Now, do you think you could take the above and write a thirty-second commercial from it? I think you could.

I write and produce commercials. Visit me at MichaelHolmesAdvertising.com