Highway to Advertising Hell

So many of us always ask questions we already know the answers to. How can we feel better?

Your physician would say, “Eat right and exercise.”

Yet for every dollar spent in fitness centres, Americans spend nineteen dollars on cocaine. The reason? Two seconds after snorting cocaine, you feel like superman. Two weeks of diet and exercising and all you feel is sore and hungry.

Instant gratification is something we all know too well. It’s harmless enough if the only thing it leads you to do is pay higher prices at a convenience store. But heaven help you if you demand instant gratification from your advertising!

The business person looking for a financial quick fix will soon discover the cocaine of advertising, a four letter magic chant:

SALE! SALE! SALE! SALE!

Good advertising is painful at first because you don’t see immediate results. The impatient business owner will start with a small dose of advertising cocaine and then get defensive about it: “How can this be bad for me? I’ve never done better.”

But just as a junkie never stops to consider the damage he is doing, a business owner never stops to realize the damage “SALE! SALE! SALE!” does to his business health.

The first dose of cocaine makes him feel great. So does the next one and the one after that. But it takes more and more to get the same effect.

Therefore, it’s almost impossible to convince the addict he’s got a problem, even though he started with only “Twenty Percent Off” and has now progressed to “Half Price.”

Successful companies don’t spend their ad dollars training their customers to wait for a sale.

Do You?

-          Martin

 

Roles & Goals

 I have always wanted more.

Because of this I spent the first twenty years of my life searching for ways to add to my ever increasing material pile.

In my mind, I was on track. In reality, my only alternative was to be honest with myself and what I really want, and it was too early for that.

The day I actually paused and thought about what I want was rather momentous. I’ve worked on myself for quite some time. And now out of the blue as if I’ve been teaching it for years, it dawned on me.

To be aware is to be content. And vica versa.

As a kid, I was always impressed when a friend would open his kitchen cupboard to get a drinking glass and reveal two dozen matching glasses inside. If his family also had the matching bath towels they were well on their way up Mt. Affluent.

I remember attending a Multi Level Marketing meeting with my parents when I was fifteen. The multilevel evangelist was amazing. He made everyone in the room feel like wealth, health and happiness was at their fingertips. He was a great speaker, but I felt betrayed by his phony offer – “I want to come over so we can get to know each other” – when all he really wanted was for my parents to sell bottled health products for him. We didn’t join.

I do remember agreeing with one thing he said. He asked, “Aren’t you tired of reading restaurant menus from right to left?” I had to answer in the affirmative.

This is how far back the need to “have more” goes. We are continuously sold on a better life, better environment, and more time with the kids.

Yes, someday I want a villa on every continent of the world. Someday I want to write a book you can find on in any bookstore. Someday I want to sell out music concerts and own private planes.

 But if none of these things ever happens, I’ll continue to live a contented man, because I’m the guy who still gets on stage every night rocking to ten people as I would to ten thousand. I order what I want when I want. I go where I want whenever I want.

At home my drinking glasses are all alike and my bath towels are a matched set. From here on out, anything else is gravy.

Too much has been written about financial goal setting in business, and too little about how we can measure success in more meaningful ways.

Let me ask YOU: What are you Roles & Goals?

 “You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not? – George Bernard Shaw

- Martin

If at first you don’t succeed, try a few more times.

 In the early 1800’s nine Irishmen were arrested and charged with treason against Her Majesty, the Queen. They were sentenced to death.

As the judge is about to pronounce their sentence, he asked if there is anything the accused would like to say. One of the men, Thomas Meager, steps forward and speaks out. “My Lord, this is our first offence. If you will go easy on us this once, we promise to try harder next time. And next time – WE WON’T GET CAUGHT!”

The insulted and infuriated judge sentences them to be hanged by the neck.

When the world cries out in protest, Queen Victoria commutes their sentences to banishment for life into the wilderness of Australia.

In 1874, Queen Victoria is astounded to learn that one of the men, Charles Duffy, is the newly elected Prime Minister of Australia. The same man she banished there twenty-five years ago.

 After locating the other eight men she found that every single one of them has taken on a high position of authority and leadership, such as politicians, brigadier generals, governors and attorney generals.

Is it merely a coincidence that all nine of these men have risen to positions of prominence?

Or is it what happens to people who have the courage of their convictions?

I believe the latter.

Is there anything in your life that causes you to feel the passion of these men?

Is there anything that will make you speak to the judge the way Thomas Meager did?

Now I don’t endorse any form of disrespect towards the government; I am speaking of the value of passion.

If there is nothing you are willing to die for, you have little for which to live. He who would lose his life will find it.

As Aesop said, “It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.”

 -Martin

Is Overchoice Killing You?

The great in this world all have one thing in common, passion.

Whether it is in business, marriage, relationships or sport, people with passion have a motivation that can hardly be overlooked.

When watching someone with passion we say, “He’s got a lot of heart.” This is because passion is the highest form of motivation.

More so than motivation, passion allows a person to focus on one thing and one thing only. Passionate people are tenacious and undistracted.

They have chosen one thing wholeheartedly instead of a lot of things vaguely.

Let me repeat: “They have CHOSEN.”                                              

Those who decide to commit to only one thing and deny the distraction of all others, get to enjoy the true experience. The price of passion is the willingness to say no.

The average person cannot say no. This is why he is average.

Every day he is tempted with all the different choices, all the while having a little voice whisper, “You can have it all.” These are the slippery slopes of overchoice.

Saying “no” allows us to focus on one thing, much like a skilled photographer who chooses to zoom in on his subject instead of allowing it to become lost in a sea of pointless angles.

A good photographer gets as close as possible to his subject, excluding everything that does not matter.

As my teacher would say, “The principle of focus is to exclude by choice that which matters less, so that we may give our undivided attention to that which matters most.”

What do you want most in YOUR picture?                                     

What will you eliminate to capture it?

Are you willing to ignore the less important?

Will you say no to overchoice?

To focus on one things is to forget all others.

Overchoice is a temptation that is constantly present, but passion is a way of life.

You can do two things averagely or one thing wholeheartedly.                             

Which will you choose?

“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunityis where you are.” – John Burroughs                                  

 - Martin

The most IRRESISTIBLE 3 letter word…

You’re marketing and you need to produce results.

All your previous teachers with their years of experience tell you to do things like say the company name at least seven times in every ad.  Your experience tells you forcing the company name in places it doesn’t belong, makes an ad sound too much like an ad.

You’ve been down this road before haven’t you?

The same teacher who told you to use your company name seven times in your copy probably also advised you on the incredible power of words like “sale” and “discount”. The two most crippling words as far as building a long lasting brand goes.

This teacher is like all the ones before him. Numb to evolution and growth.

The most irresistible word in the English language has only three letters. The most powerful word is “YOU.”

“YOU” captures the reader’s attention. It puts him right in the middle of the action allowing him to experience it firsthand. (Or should I say second?)

When the reader lives in your ad he feels more compelled to take action. Besides, he’s been where you want him to go. He’s worn your watch, slid into your comfortable shoes. He’s smelled the smells and lived the adventure.

In your ads, the customer needs to already own what you are trying to sell him.  As a listener, you are inextricably engaged by the power of the imagery. By the end of the ad, ownership of the product you are selling has already been transferred.

It all begins with “YOU.”

-Martin

The POWER of Better Words

Do not pin your hopes on the magic of the next big idea, but rather place your confidence in the power of better words. The wheel needs not to be reinvented.

Sources confirm that Ralph Waldo Emerson is the author of the following words, “ If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

No one seems to know what year this was written, nor the publication in which it appeared. This is because the quote was actually penned 28 years after Emerson died – by an ad writer named Elbert Hubbard.

Hubbard admitted to writing the mousetrap epigram, after large numbers of visitors flocked to the tiny village of East Aurora where his manufacturing company was.

“I gave it specific gravity by attributing it to one Ralph Waldo Emerson,” Hubbard said. Was Hubbard deceitful? I don’t think so. He merely told the story a little more powerfully than Emerson.

On page 528 in volume 8 of Emerson’s Journal, February 1855, you’ll find:

Common Fame; I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

Hubbard said what Emerson said. Only he said it better. We are more likely to remember Hubbard’s words because he used verbs that are visually stimulating: “write,” “preach,” “make,” he gave us clear images: “book,” “sermon,””mousetrap,”; and his promise of benefit was memorable: “…the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

Emerson’s original statement is unknown because of its lack in delivery. He uses soft words like corn, wood, boards, chairs, church organs; and ends of with a weak qualifier: “…you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”

Hubbard, an ad writer, leads us through his story a little different, so that he might close with a grand gesture – the unforgettable image of the whole world beating a path to our door!

Emerson might have had the idea, but it took the keen eye of an ad writer to cause it to live forever in the imaginations of men.

How good are your ads?

“The Advertising man is liaison between the products of business and the mind of the nation. He must know both before he can serve either.” – Glenn Frank

- Martin