Mountain Bike Bottle Holder
Creativity in Advertising is Worthless if it Doesn’t Sell
What’s the best way to lubricate a chicken? Say what?
Okay, so I caught your attention with a little zany “creativity.” But what use is that if it doesn’t persuade you to do anything?
In a glutted advertising world, grabbing attention is a marketer’s first priority. The challenge is this: Grabbing attention is relatively easy. The hard part is actually persuading.
The great advertiser Leo Burnett, named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of the 20th century, once said:
“We want consumers to say, ‘That’s a hell of a product’ instead of, ‘That’s a hell of an ad.’”
Unfortunately, this simple lesson has largely been lost in marketing.
For example, consider the following classified ad for a mountain bike that circulated widely online. In fact, people loved it so much they posted it on their social media profiles (which is how I found it).
After you read it, I’ll tell you what happened.
Mountain Man’s Bike for Sale
I am a mountain man. You are probably not a mountain man, but, you wish you were. This bike is your ticket to two things: 1- Mountains and 2- Being a man.
I ride this bike everyday. Not for fun or sport like the spandex boys, but to hunt and kill food. I know for a fact that this bike will jump over canyons, climb trees, kill bears, and forge rivers. The bike has ridden every part of the Wasatch from top to bottom.
This bike won’t break. It’s half carbon fiber and half bad-ass. Some guy told me this bike is a piece of history. I thought it was new this year, but I also thought it was still 1998. Apparently it is 2010 and time flies when you live in a cave.
The bike says K2 pro-flex 4000 on the side of it. I don’t know what that means. It probably means it can kill an elephant. The bike is red, so the blood won’t show on it.
The tires are knobby so you can pedal straight up a cliff. It has shocks on the front and the back for when you jump off the cliff. The stuff on it all says “Shimano XT”. I’m pretty sure that is because it was cursed once by an indian medicine man named Shimano. The guy was a jack-ass. He tried to steal some of my stuff so I bit off his left ear.
The bike has a chain that I use to kill rattle snakes sometimes. It also has a seat. I don’t use it, but you probably will for the first few years until you build up the muscle. I also installed a shotgun holder on the bike that conveniently fits a water bottle.
If you have questions about the bike, don’t bother calling me. If you don’t understand how tough the bike is, I probably won’t be able to help you.
If you want to buy the bike, then I will take american cash. I need to send some money to a very important man who emailed me from nigeria so I need the cash quick.
Great ad, right? Wrong.
Out of curiosity, I called the owner of the bike a couple weeks after he had posted it and asked him how the ad was performing.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve received about 50 emails from people telling me this was the best ad they’d ever read.”
“But have you sold the bike?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he revealed.
Ah.
“What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same.” -David Ogilvy
Never confuse good, fun, creative writing with persuasive writing. In this case, the guy was selling a beat-up, 12-year-old bike for which he was asking too much. He caught people’s attention, but he failed to persuade.
He had two possible audiences he was writing for: experienced and inexperienced mountain bikers. His ad automatically eliminated the possibility of selling to experienced riders because 1) he wrote directly to the inexperienced, and 2) experienced riders would know that he was asking too much for a 12-year-old, hard-ridden bike.
And he turned off inexperienced riders by talking down to them.
He would have been better off to just state the facts and price the bike right. That would have been a lot more “boring,” but is the job of an ad to entertain or to persuade?
Creativity is meaningless until clarity is achieved. Only when clarity is achieved do you invest in creativity.
Consider a few more examples: Did you know the “Yo quiero Taco Bell” chihuahua commercials didn’t increase sales a penny?
A recent Burger King ad featured the King mascot sneaking into McDonald’s headquarters and stealing the Sausage McMuffin recipe.
Seriously? What’s the message? We suck, so we just steal ideas. Oh, and we’re cheap, too.
A billboard in Austin, Texas features Salt Lick Barbecue, a local restaurant that cooks in seasoned barbecue pits. The message? “You can smell our pits from miles away.”
Oh, brilliant. Nice double entendre. That’s so creative. Way to associate smelly armpits with your food and forever brand that image into my mind. Hold me back.
Relevance and credibility trump creativity. Anyone can catch attention with creativity, but few know how to actually sell.
About the Author
Stephen Palmer is a small business marketing consultant with KGaps Consulting. He helps small businesses increase website traffic, leads, sales, referrals, and customer retention through Hub Mentality, a proprietary marketing methodology. Download his book on Hub Mentality for free at www.HubMentality.com.
2008 Specialized Hardrock Comp Disk
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