If you do not know these great man in advertising then you should question how much you really know about advertising. In my opinion these are some of the greats and way before my time. Their ideas however have been the foundation for many great ad people.
Here is what I learned from them:
- How to create advertising that sells
- An understanding for why ads need to be more than just beautiful
- The importance of headlines
- The importance of testing (A/B Testing)
- Advertising when done right is just as much science as it is art
- Tracking and measurements are important
So sometime around 2000 I really started digging into what makes great advertising. I have been in the industry for 6 or 7 years at this point and I wanted to know what set the great apart from the mediocre. Being highly focused on design in the first part of my career, I was looking for more. I also was running the early stages of Brandwise for a few years (formally know as the ART department).
You see I was looking for a way to not only create beautiful ads, but I also wanted to get the best results for my clients. I wanted to know the science behind why people buy and how advertising played a part in the buying process. So I studied these guys for years. In this time I started applying these scientific methods to my creative talents. I have had much success the more I practiced and studied and applied to both Brandwise and our client's projects.
Thinking like David Ogilvy, John Caples and Claude Hopkins helped us produce some amazing work over the years. It also kept us grounded in the '40's, '50's, and '60's. Although this may have been the heyday for advertising, the world has changed.
So, how am I applying these ideas today? Well it goes back to the #1 thing I learned How to create advertising that sells. Today ads are everywhere. It is hard to do anything without getting some kind of branded message coming at us. Not even the bathroom is safe (charmin, lysol, crest, dove and so many others fighting for your attention). The typical person gets some 3000 ads a day pushed on them. So as consumers what do we do? Learn to shut down and block it all out.
So how do you deliver a message and close a sale today? NOT THROUGH ADVERTISING!
Marketing is still alive, but it has taken a new form. It is not pushing your message on people, it is attracting them to take action, to raise their hand and say… Hey I'm interested in what you are doing. The internet has changed the way we shop. When was the last time you bought something from a magazine ad, from a tv commercial? Now, let me ask you this… When was the last time you heard of something interesting you would like to try and went to google? Heck, today google is something in your pocket and on your phone. Want a restaurant, google it! Need directions to that place click directions through google maps. Need to know hours of operations, click their phone number and your phone dials the number. Obviously things have changed in a big way.
So we need to understand the buyer even more today then we did 10, 20, or 30 yers ago. We can no longer live in the past, we need to bring these scientific methods into the 21st Century. This is why we started creating a program focused on the alignment of sales and marketing. These industries can no longer work in a silo on their own. They need to fit hand in glove to make one strong and effective tool. This is where "Smarketing" comes in. Creating a marketing machine that attracts buyers instead of pushing unwanted stuff at them and then creating a new sales system that understand how to work the new inbound (attraction based) leads in the way buyers want… this is Smarketing!
Get started turning your marketing team into a sales experts and your sales team into marketing experts, then sit back and reap the rewards of the 21st Century! If you want to become part of the new direction sales and marketing is taking or you really just want more business and better growth, then you may want to look into our new Smarketing 12 Week Business Development Training Course.
