Advertising isn’t a complicated business.
It’s just made that way, a little too often. The reality should be pretty simple…
// What’s the product for?
// Why will a customer care?
Got those answers, great, then just tell them to people in an interesting and engaging way. You have to, you’ve at best a few seconds to get the attention of people in the street or on their sofas.
So, all the hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of meetings and all those endless decks have to boil down to one clear thing.
If you keep that in mind, it helps to keep your ads focussed and simple. Much more effective than bloated and complicated ones.
Back in the old days you were often making campaigns of just three posters or press ads. Maybe one TV ad with a couple of cut-downs. So there weren’t many places to get different messages out. It was harder to keep ads single-minded.
Nowadays you’ve tons of executions in loads of different channels. You can put different messages in the places they’re going to work best. Each execution can clearly get across its own point.
Brilliant, simple and more effective ads in every channel.
Just remember to not try to say everything in every ad. Or to make the same message try to work everywhere.
In every format and execution ask those same two questions. What’s it for? Why will they care?
The answers will vary by channel specifics, and tell you what will be most effective where.
Hopefully that all sounds very simple.
