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March 28, 2007

Radio Advertising Secrets Revealed?

Maybe.

Mark Ramsey has another great post this week. He interviews an author of the book Made to Stick, which purports to reveal the secrets behind succssful marketing ideas and messages.

I first heard of this book last week while attending the Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psychology. Legendary social psychologist Dr. Stuart Oskamp referenced the book during his talk.

Authors Heath and Heath propose a framework for developing (or evaluating) messages and ideas that "stick". Their book has received wide exposure, including Time Magazine, US News, the Today Show, and the Morning Edition on NPR.

At first glance, their SUCCESS framework seems little more than common sense. While that is true on the surface, perhaps where they add value to the conversation about what "sticks" is in their articulation of the framework using interesting stories.

"Nobody remembers Subway's campaign before Jared - it was called "seven sandwiches under six grams of fat." Now, that's like the information a lot of us put into our PowerPoint presentations or into our appeals to listeners. The numbers behind it are factual, you know, we do have seven sandwiches under six grams of fat, but it's also pretty abstract. It fails almost every aspect of the S-U-C-C-E-S framework. No wonder the Jared campaign worked and caught on like wildfire, and why "seven under six" is something most of us can only vaguely remember, if at all."

And another:

"The State of Texas Department of Transportation wanted to get people to litter less. And lots of research had found their target litter-bug was an 18 to 30 year old truck-driving male. They called that "customer," affectionately, Bubba.

But how do you tap into Bubba and get him to care about roadside litter? As it happened, they coined one of the most famous taglines in Texas advertising history: Don't Mess with Texas. How do you get an 18 to 30 year old truck-driving guy to care about litter? You make it a matter of patriotism. And Texans, above all, are very patriotic: I was born in Texas, and we believe in the United States of America and even more we believe in Texas.
With "Don't mess with Texas" you've told "Bubba" that "litter is unpatriotic."

This book may not reveal the true secrets of radio advertising, but as we review the radio ads that have performed the best, Heath and Heath's framework appears to be on the mark.

Posted by Jeff Small & Brett Astor at 03:52 PM | Permalink