May 22, 2009
It's not creative if it doesn't sell. In 60 Seconds.
There's a really odd contradiction within the world of advertising. On the one hand, the act of developing an advertisement is often called "creative", as in "creative department", and "the creative team".
The word creative is bantered about without, in the end, a whole lot of thought. Yet the word isn't actually meant to be taken literally. We're not "creative" in the art sense - that we're doing something for the sake of personal expression.
The distinction can be illustrated by considering the famous artist Mary Cassatt, whose birthday I know is today thanks to today's artpiece on Google's home search page. Cassatt created prints that expressed something inside her. She wasn't trying to match her capabilities to customer needs, be memorable, credible, trustworthy or relevant.
But good advertising has to be all of those things. And sell. (And if it's radio advertising it has to do all of that in sixty seconds, with auditory stimuli only. And one hand tied behind our back.)
But a huge contingent in the advertising world doesn't get this distinction.
The finalists for the 2009 Radio Mercury Awards were recently announced. Perusing this list of radio commercials underscores my original point: there is a huge contradiction in the world of advertising. These radio commercials are (for the most part) very creative. Most are relevant, too. Even trustworthy. A few of the ads are credible and memorable.
But how many of them sell? (clarification: sell the clients' product or service, not the agency's)
Any? Nope.
The "sell" criterion is the hardest one to get right.
Yet these agencies are being rewarded with awards, attention, accolades and money. They'll use all of this to promote the expertise of their agencies. To sell themselves, not their clients' products. To build their own brand, not their clients' brand.
The word "creative" in the context of advertising is meant to depict the act of creating, as in "making", "developing". Developing what? Developing a piece of persuasive media. We should call it the Persuasive Department, not the Creative Department. Persuasives, not Creatives. "Hello, this is Brett with the Persuasive Team at Strategic Media." Has a nice ring to it.
The biggest blessing of being in direct response radio advertising is this: We know what sells.
It's just that sometimes knowing too much is painful.
April 03, 2009
Should Your Radio Ad Have Music In It?
It seems most people assume that a radio ad should have music in the background. But that's almost always a big mistake.
One reason is that background music can make it more difficult to understand the words that are being spoken in the ad. Beyond the obvious of being drown out by the volume of the music, the snare drums and cymbals can interfere with decoding words that have "s" or "t" sounds in them.
Another reason putting music in your radio ad is often a bad idea is that it is precisely the absence of music that can help set your ad apart and make it stand out.
From a direct response radio advertising standpoint, we've tested ads both with and without background music and the results support our assertion that background music is more often a negative impact than a positive one. Of course there are exceptions, but the main point to remember is not to make the automatic assumption that music "should" be in your radio ad.
March 15, 2009
Gladwell's Outliers Offers Valuable Lesson's For Radio Advertisers
This is my latest favorite book. If you've got an intrinsic curiosity about human nature - you'll have a hard time putting Outliers down.
So here's an exercise you can try at home. Imagine you work at a national radio advertising agency and you're responsible for creating super-response-driving radio ads. How does the following story, excerpted from Chapter 6, help you refine your approach to creating radio ads?
Harlan Kentucky - "Die like a man, like your brother did."
This section is from Chapter 6 and follows a discussion of what is called the "Culture of Honor," a social and behavioral pattern specific to, among other places, the American South.
In the early 1990's, two psychologists at the University of Michigan--Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett--decided to conduct an experiment on the culture of honor. . . . So they decided to gather together a group of young men and insult them. Their methodology was disarmingly simple. "We sat down and tried to figure out what is the insult that would go to the heart of a 18 to 20 year old's brain," Cohen says. "It didn't take too long to come up with 'asshole.'" The experiment went like this. The social science building at the University of Michigan has a long narrow hallway in the basement, lined with filing cabinets. The young men were called into a classroom, one by one, and asked to fill out a questionnaire. Then they were told to drop off the questionnaire at the end of the hallway and return to the classroom--an innocent, seemingly simple academic exercise.
For half the young men, that was it. They were the control group. For the other half, there was a catch. As they walked down the hallway with their questionnaire, another man--a confederate of the experimenters--walked past them and pulled out a drawer in one of the filing cabinets. The already narrow hallway was now even narrower. As the young men tried to squeeze by, the confederate looked up, annoyed. He slammed the filing cabinet drawer shut, jostled the young men with his shoulder and, in a low but audible voice, he said the trigger word--"asshole."
Cohen and Nisbett wanted to know, as precisely as possible, what being called that word meant. So they tried every conceivable way of measuring the emotions of the young men. They looked at the faces of their subjects, and rated how much anger they saw. They shook the young 's hands to see if their grip was firmer than usual. They took saliva samples from the students, both before and after the insult, to see if being called an asshole caused their levels of testosterone and cortisol--the hormones that drive arousal and aggression--to go up. Then they asked the students to read the following story and supply a conclusion: It had only been about twenty minutes since they had arrived at the party when Jill pulled Steve aside, obviously bothered about something.
"What's wrong?" asked Steve.
"It's Larry. I mean, he knows that you and I are engaged, but he's already made two passes at me tonight." Jill walked back into the crowd, and Steve decided to keep his eye on Larry. Sure enough, within five minutes, Larry was reaching over and trying to kiss Jill.
If you've been insulted, are you more likely to imagine Steve doing something violent to Larry? The results were unequivocal. There are clear differences in how young men respond to being called a bad name. For some, the insult dramatically changes behavior. For some it doesn't. But the deciding factor isn't how emotionally secure you are, or whether you are an intellectual or a jock, or whether you are physically imposing or not. What matters--and I think you can guess where this is headed--is where you're from. The young men from the northern part of the United States, for the most part, treated the incident with amusement. They laughed it off. Their handshakes were unchanged. Their levels of cortisol actually went down, as if they were unconsciously trying to defuse their own anger. Only a few of them had Steve get violent with Larry.
But the southerners? Oh my. They were angry. Their cortisol and testosterone jumped. Their handshakes got firm. Steve was all over Larry.
"We even played this game of chicken," Cohen said. "We sent the students back down the hallways, and around the corner comes another confederate. The hallway is blocked, so there's only room for one of them to pass. The guy we used was 6'3", 250 pounds. He used to play college football. He was now working as a bouncer in a college bar. He was walking down the hall in business mode--the way you walk through a bar when you are trying to break up a fight. The question was--how close do they get to the bouncer before they get out of the way. And believe me, they always get out of the way."
For the northerners, there was almost no effect. They got out of the way five or six feet beforehand, whether they had been insulted or not. The southerners, by contrast, were downright deferential in normal circumstances, stepping aside with over nine feet to go. But if they had just been insulted? Less than two feet. Call a southerner an asshole, and he's itching for a fight. What Cohen and Nisbet were seeing in that long hall was the southern culture of honor in action: the Southerners were reacting like Wix Howard did when "Little Bob" Turner accused him of cheating at poker.
February 11, 2009
Do Radio Advertisements Make Radio More Pleasurable for Listeners?
A new study by researchers at the NYU Stern School of Business shows definitively that this is true on TV. So why not for radio?
If you work in advertising you absolutely must read this study. It is a classic demonstration of how people often prefer things that don't make them happier. In other words, you can't always trust what people (including yourself) tell you - you have to look at their actual behavior. In a world of surveys and focus groups, direct response radio advertisers know that a direct on-air test of a trackable ad will always give you the best indication of how the ad will perform.
According to the research paper's abstract:
"Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers' extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their enjoyment diminishes over time. Commercial interruptions can disrupt this adaptation process and restore the intensity of consumers' enjoyment. Six studies demonstrate that, although people preferred to avoid commercial interruptions, these interruptions actually made programs more enjoyable (study 1), regardless of the quality of the commercial (study 2), even when controlling for the mere presence of the ads (study 3), and regardless of the nature of the interruption (study 4). However, this effect was eliminated for people who are less likely to adapt (study 5), and for programs that do not lead to adaptation (study 6), confirming the disruption of adaptation account and identifying crucial boundaries of the effect."
Here's a great commentary on the research by James Hibberd. In part, he says:
"The seemingly counterintuitive findings will be familiar to those who have read the book "Stumbling on Happiness," which explained how the pleasure of any positive experience declines due to repetition and time. Watching TV (or eating a fine meal, listening to a favorite song, etc.) tends to be more enjoyable at the outset. The longer you do something, the less satisfaction it provides."
Hibberd writes:
"So if the findings are accurate, why don't people recognize that ads make TV more fun?
The study authors have a few ideas, but no firm answers. One is that people don't study themselves -- you don't watch one show with ads, then the same show without ads, and compare the experience. Another aspect is that the ads act a point of contrast -- compared to the commercials, the programs can seem more entertaining. And finally, the effect isn't universal -- sometimes ads do not make TV more enjoyable (for instance, if the tone of the ad completely clashes with the tone of the show), and those instances can skew viewers' impressions of ads in general.
Based on the research, the authors had a suggestion for broadcast networks that stream their content online: Stop putting ads at the beginning of the clip.
"Our results indicate that moving the commercial to the middle of the clip -- while not intuitively appealing to viewers -- would actually increase their enjoyment of the experience."
James' post generated so many reader comments - and great questions - that one of the study authors provided a response to many of them here.
Among the exchanges:
Q: Some readers said, "This is simply because viewers appreciate the show compared to the lousy commercials, not because the commercials make the show itself seem better."
Galak: That's something we tested for and ruled out. That's the contrast effect, that in comparison to a terrible commercial, the show looks better. As you described in article, the commercial takes you away from the experience and allows you to reset your level of enjoyment.
Q: "Correlation does not prove causation" is something also chanted in the feedback.
Galak: That's a misinterpretation of how we did the research. We randomly assigned participants to control [the variables]. We showed causation. That's the difference between an experiment and a survey.
And now the big question: How does this apply to radio advertising?
Our view is that some of these findings can certainly be applied to radio advertising to improve results. We're already working on it!
January 21, 2009
Why the Sky Isn't Falling: What Successful Direct Response Advertisers Already Know
In late December, the New York Times published an article by University of California Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, who is the author of "The How of Happiness". Dr. Lyubomirsky's article reveals some fascinating insights about human behavior that any respectable advertising person needs to understand.
But more than that, her article points to some of the reasons why advertising in the current economic climate is proving so profitable for our clients - why people are still buying, rather than hunkering down in their bomb shelters and waiting for the "sun" to shine again.
Because the Times didn't publish her original article, Dr. Lyubomirsky published the original submission on her blog. Below is her post in its entirety:
"The New York Times published an op-ed piece of mine titled "Why We're Still Happy" (Dec 27, 2008). Because it was cut substantially, I thought I'd post the original here:***
These days, bad news about the economy practically wafts from newspapers and LCD screens. It's all you can do not to sink into panic or all-out despair.
So, after perusing the latest analysis of yet another crisis symptomatic of the collapse of our economy, another alarming set of news (usually in large bold type) that portends the coming of the second Great Depression, you look up from your reading expecting that the world has drastically changed since you've last taken it all in.
But, for most of us, it hasn't. Gaze out your window. And around your neighborhood, movie house, or grocery. Listen in on conversations among coworkers, coffee drinkers, and fellow moms and dads at school. Most of you will notice few signs that anything is horribly awry.
Ask your friends to keep track of their moods and thoughts at random times throughout the day. You'll find that, all in all, they are not spending their days dejected about the economy. Instead, they are mostly preoccupied with the quotidian tasks and concerns of life. Traffic, dinner, homework, deadlines, sharp words, and flirtatious glances.
How can people remain relatively normal, or even happy and upbeat, at the same time that they drown in the bad news?
Because the news affects everyone, not just you.
Research in psychology and economics suggests that when only your salary is cut, you make a foolish investment, or you lose your job, you become considerably less satisfied with your life. But when everyone becomes worse off, your life satisfaction remains pretty much the same.
Indeed, human beings are remarkably attuned to relative position and status. As a famous decade-old study had revealed, people prefer to live in a world in which they receive an annual salary of $50K (when others are pulling in $25K) than an annual salary of $100K (when others are making $200K). Along similar lines, researchers in the UK have demonstrated that we will readily give up our own cash to destroy others' earnings. To some, such findings show up the dark side of human nature, but to me, they reveal an all-too-human truth. We care more about social comparison, about status, about rank, and about so-called positional goods than about the absolute value of our bank accounts or reputations.
For example, Andrew Clark has shown that being laid off hurts less if you reside in a community with a high unemployment rate, being overweight stings less if you live in a country full of the super-sized, and even being married to an unhealthy or plump spouse makes it easier to cope with your own health or weight problem. Shockingly, if you are unemployed, you will, on average, be happier if you spouse is also unemployed than if he or she is working.
So, knowing that everyone's 401K plan, home value, and ability to obtain credit has declined surely dulls the pain.
After a spirited race, the Dodo bird in Alice in Wonderland announces, "Everybody has won, and all must have prizes." In today's economy, everyone loses, and all bear (a reduced) price.
Subscribe via RSS Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely
Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
Made to Stick, Heath & Heath
The Power of Persuasion, Robert Levine
Influence: Science & Practice, Cialdini
Words That Work, Frank Lutz
My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising, Claude C. Hopkins
Or Your Money Back, Alvin Eicoff
Being Direct, Lester Wunderman
Should Your Radio Ad Have Music In It?
Gladwell's Outliers Offers Valuable Lesson's For Radio Advertisers
Do Radio Advertisements Make Radio More Pleasurable for Listeners?
Why the Sky Isn't Falling: What Successful Direct Response Advertisers Already Know
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