I read between 30 and 60 different industries’ trade journals every month—some because I have clients in those fields, others just because they interest me or often contain information and ideas that might be useful to GKIC Members or because, as a stock market investor, I might gain investing insight. I read Nation’s Restaurant News even though I don’t own a restaurant. I read the Farm Bureau newspaper even though I’m not a farmer. I read Variety, the weekly trade journal of the entertainment industry, even though I’m not an actor, singer, or movie producer, although I am a long-term stockholder in Disney and at the time of this writing in the movie company Lionsgate. Anyway, the ad shown in Figure 15.1 (above) runs frequently in Variety. It is an ad for a car saleswoman. I do not know her and I have no idea how well the ad performs, or if she knows, and since it is a branding ad and not a direct-response ad, it’s likely she doesn’t. I plucked the ad to critique here, as I sometimes do ads for my five newsletters. It has no copyright, and heck, maybe you’ll like it, you live in Hollywood, and you’ll buy a car. She looks like a nice lady, and I can help her here, free of charge.
FIGURE 15.1
Variety is read by lots of affluent, image-conscious actors, producers, and agents who need to make a good impression with everything they do, including the car they drive. Advertising here could be very good Place Strategy, and she is the only advertiser in her category, so she’s practicing my favorite Place Strategy: Show Up Alone. Kudos for all that. She’s reaching the kind of customers who want to deal with super-successful people, so her noting at the top of the ad that she is the number-one BMW salesperson since 1999 is a smart proclamation. Visually, the ad is eye-catching and artful. You won’t be able to see it as well in this copy on uncoated book paper, as the original is on the slick magazine paper, but there the blue sky looks real, the words “Pleasure In The Job Puts Perfection In The Work” from Aristotle are transparent, so the sky is seen behind them yet they are perfectly legible. The car is sleek and shiny. Neda looks good. She’s dressed in a navy blue or black business suit that fits her perfectly, there’s just a hint of sexiness, nice smile. The ID in the lower left corner is in white against the steel blue-grey of the road surface. The whole thing looks terrific. It speaks of class and luxury.
This is the kind of personal brand ads you see a lot of real estate agents, financial advisors, cosmetic surgeons, and other professionals often pour money into—which I strongly discourage. They are fine as far as they go, and this one is an excellent example of such a brand ad. But they do not specifically invite you to do anything. This is like meeting her at a cocktail party, being introduced, having her tell you she is the number-one BMW salesperson, then abruptly spinning on her heel and walking away or, if you ask her a question, standing there mute. Or, a better analogy, since we are in sales, is having her knock on your door, introduce herself as the number-one BMW salesperson, spin, and walk away.
The other problem is that this lovely lady is paying this ad to show up in Variety for her, but not requiring it to prove it is earning its cost. To her credit, she hasn’t loaded it up with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter doorways to make accountability impossible. She’s offered only two ways to respond, both direct, and she can obviously ask prospects where they heard of her. Still, there’s a lot of room for leakage. And if she’s running the same ad in multiple places, it gets murkier.
But the big, big, big flaw is that this ad only gets immediate response from buy-now customers. It does nothing and offers nothing for the many more who she has intrigued, who are just beginning to think about a new car, who plan to start shopping for a new car when their next residual check comes in. They are left loose, in the hope that imbedding her brand in their minds will be enough 4, 8, 10, 20 weeks later when they are ready to get new wheels. She has paid for those eyeballs to look at this ad, but she has no idea how many or who they are, and can do nothing to build trust and interest with them between now and the time they will actually buy a car.
Don’t waste eyeballs you pay for.
The least aggressive option does absolutely zero damage to the branding or to the luxury image this ad conveys. We are not going to plunk a big red-and-white cardboard bucket of chicken down on the silver platter on the pure silk tablecloth in the mansion dining room. I’m not going to replace her elegant suit with a red, yellow, and white circus clown outfit and stick a red bulb nose on her. She does not need to commit image suicide. The ad can be shrunk vertically just a tiny bit, just enough to fit a line or two of direct-response copy, black or even grey on white at its bottom. It can be in a discreet and elegant typeface like this:
To see a BMW test drive with Neda and a fascinating movie stunt man, visit DrivingWithNeda.com. For a Free Report, How To Own The Perfect Luxury Automobile, and a DVD including a visit to the BMW factory to see the artisanship and have its incomparable technology demonstrated, complete the quick request form at www.DrivingWithNeda.com.
By adding these two offers, we create what’s called Secondary Reason For Response. We give the person not ready right now to buy a car a reason to respond now anyway. To understand what to do with them when they arrive and how to place them in a good sales funnel, consult Chapter 30 of my No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent book, including the funnel diagram. Here, these points: One, Neda still gets the buy-now customers who call her or email her, but she also gets names, at least email addresses, and for the second offer, full addresses of not-ready-now potential buyers that she can continue communicating with directly.
Again, I haven’t harmed the beauty of her main presentation in the slightest. Her personal brand is unscathed.
A more aggressive option would be to add a promise/benefit headline to the top or/and place a small testimonial from a famous Hollywood figure in the dead lower right corner AND add the same lead-generation offers I added above.
The most aggressive option would be to replace the entire ad with a black on white, article-look mini advertorial, matching the content typeface of the magazine, actually saying something. That headline might be “The #1 BMW Salesperson In The USA Since 1999 Announces Openings For Seven Hollywood/Beverly Hills Area Clients In Her Exclusive Private Client Group.” The article would end with a direct call to action, to call or email her for Private Client details, a test drive, and a gift of fine wine with the test drive, and it would still have the Secondary Reason For Response Offers as well.
I doubt I’d ever convince Neda to buy this third option. I’d be seen as an uncouth beast. But maybe I can persuade you?
How to Accelerate Brand-Building Speed and Buy More Brand-Building Power
Let’s assume that one of the above three methods results in the sale of, on average, one more car per month than she presently sells via this ad. Let’s assume that equates to a few thousand dollars of commission income. What might Neda do with the money? She could go shopping on Rodeo Drive, but I’ll bet her closet’s already full. So, she could use it to buy a bigger ad. And if that upped sales yet again, she could go all the way up to a full page, cut in half vertically or horizontally, with a big image ad like hers in half its space and a constantly changing advertorial like I suggested in the other half of the space. With this much bigger presence, she’d be impossible not to notice and remember, and her brand would dominate faster, with more people.
That’s how direct-response can build a brand, bigger, stronger, faster.
He or she who spends the most, the most wisely, does win. But few can spend the most out-of-pocket. By ramping up the proceeds of direct response, someone can spend more and more and more in more places or more often and achieve ultimate brand domination with a market.
Another way to think about this is to envision the paid-for but wasted eyeballs in the eye sockets of not-ready-now prospects who get away and later buy a car from someone else as dead weight your advertising budget has to haul around on its back. The dead weight grows heavier every time the ad runs. Soon it brings the ad budget to its knees. Our ad budget moves slower and more laboriously, bent over and crippled. If we liberate it and lift off the dead weight and convert the dead weight to energy drinks the ad budget consumes as it goes along, it can grow bigger and stronger, stand taller, and move faster. You decide whether or not to load it down with dead weight or to liberate it and power it up with your decisions about brand/image-only versus brand/image-with-direct response or direct response with brand/image, Secondary Reason For Response, and a good follow-up sales funnel.