Things I Wish I Knew about Advertising Killer Mistakes When Starting

It is a simple concept. People don’t read ads; they read what interests them. So if you are going to create a compelling and persuasive advertisement design, you are going to have to create something interesting that will help consumers want to read. And you must avoid these advertisement killer mistakes.
And, oh, by the way, it must be more interesting than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it?
advertisement killer mistakes
Advertisement design killer mistakes.
The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.
– Leo Burnett
Related: 12 Best Examples of Successful Advertisement Design Elements
Does it have the power to encourage the right sort of conversations? We’ll discuss this point in a bit.
It has been said that advertising is the price to be paid for being unremarkable. That may be true, but I have noticed that even remarkable businesses also advertise the old fashion way. It is an essential component of your marketing campaign, for awareness or consumer education of your value.
According to Nielsen, there are 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day.  And Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds – one second less than a goldfish!
We check our phones 150 times per day. We check our email up to 30 times an hour. And the amount of information in the world continues to double every 18 months.
  
All this available information and data is creating a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and every one of us who creates content. But more importantly, it’s forcing businesses to think and act like publishers and creative designers.
Ever written an advertisement, or thought about it? I’ve done marketing for my clients in small businesses for the past 9+ years, and I’ve learned a few things about making advertising look professional even on a tight budget.
Many small businesses don’t have a lot of time or resources to have ads professionally made. So what’s a small business to do?
If everyone is creating content, how does a business break through the noise? How do we reach our customers in a way that engages them?
Here are six creative steps, ala killer techniques, we recommend you follow to create or critique your advertisements:

 

Advertisement design killer mistakes … lacking a theme

There is no excuse for lacking a theme. Many items to choose from … visual design, attention-grabbing, music, and emotion, just to name a few. There is no better theme as a means of influence or the power of persuasion than emotion. Hands down the best, in our opinion.
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the skills are important to remember.

 

No message focus

Do you start your ad design with a simple message? If not, you should. Focus on customer needs end state and not the means. The end state is the only priority. Make the message as clean and straightforward as possible. You cannot overachieve on the simplicity of the message. A message that the reader will quickly understand. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words.
A good example of this is this Prudential’s billboard ad. This commercial considers the end state needs of its customers … the retirement needs of target customers are the ad’s objective.

https://digitalsparkmarketing.com/enhancing-graphical-content/

Not asking a thoughtful question

Can you think of a thoughtful question? You can always depend on asking thoughtful questions to grab the attention of your customers and getting them to think. Like ‘what is in your wallet’? They don’t get much better than that.
A good example is the recent Prudential commercial. Have you seen this ad design? You know … the one with the visualization design central to their story. Quite clever isn’t it, and likely one you will remember and maybe even talk about, right?
The ad starts out with the commentator asking people a simple, yet thoughtful question:
How much money do you have in your pocket right now?
After he collects everyone’s answer, he asks a second, more probing question:
Could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement goal?

 

You must connect the dots

Your ads should connect the dots with other elements of your integrated marketing campaign. Remember; stop interrupting what people interested in, and be what people are interested in.
It was in early 2009 when IBM began its Smarter Planet marketing campaign strategy. At the time, the plan seemed very ambitious … maybe even a bit risky, even for IBM. But their success was based on a plan to build out a long-term campaign.
To do this, they defined a theme around their vision (Smarter Planet). They used the theme to craft a marketing strategy connecting and integrating many smaller marketing objectives and tactics as they could. They also linked their core competencies to this theme, vision, and challenge. Apparently, they made sure they were all apparent to their customers.
This very successful campaign continues today, five years later.

 

Don’t have a simple story?

A good story has a beginning where a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation, a middle where the character confronts and attempts to resolve the situation, and an end where the outcome is revealed. It does not interpret or explain the action in the story for the audience.
Instead, a good story allows each member of the public to understand the story as he or she understands the work. This is why people find good stories so appealing and why they find advertising that merely conveys facts and information boring.

 

lacking a visual analogy
Lacking a visual analogy.

Lacking a visual analogy

 Look for ways to illustrate your messages with visualization. Visual similarities are even better. An excellent example of this technique is the recent Prudential commercial we discussed previously. You know … the one with the visualization design central to their story.
To make this point with a visual analogy, the commentator points to a series of dominoes, smallest to largest. When he makes his point on putting away investments consistently over time, he knocks over the smallest domino, which causes the chain reaction to topple all the dominoes. A great analogy to the retirement goal being achieved … as the dominoes fall the emotion rises.
Logo design mistakes to avoid
Logo design mistakes to avoid.

 Key takeaways

 

I’m not as much surprised as saddened that such nutty beliefs and misconceptions about advertising (and marketing overall) can lead otherwise smart, creative people to squander their effort, money and the patience of would-be consumers.
I’m sure there are binders full of the rationale for why it’s stunningly brilliant stuff, and there’ll be metrics that declare the spot a wild success. But believing those arguments, or valuing those outcomes, requires that you swallow the message hook line and sinker. Not me.
So if you remember one thing from this article, remember this:
Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. And stand for things that potential customers value.
 We believe an effective ad is interesting, entertaining, and stands for things viewers can stand behind. We think it is persuasive and certainly, creates the right kind of conversation.
What do you think?
Heard enough? I rest my case.
Customer engagement
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
  
More reading on advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Ogilvy on Advertising … Best Lessons Learned from his Secrets
Volkswagen Ad … The Secrets to Its Effectiveness?
Effective Advertising … 14 Best Examples of Ad Design
Use 8 Breathtaking Commercials That Employ Emotional Appeal
Successful Advertisement Design … 12 Best Examples to Study
Insurance Advertising War … 8 Examples to Learn From
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+FacebookTwitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
 

Disney Trend Spotting Best Practices: Obtain Trend Results Like an Expert

Many successful businesses were started by entrepreneurs with an ability to see a trend before everyone else. They were able to take their insight and capitalize on it in a new and creative way. They did this by employing the extraordinary Disney trend spotting best practices.
Disney trend spotting best practices
Trend spotting best practices.
Notice businesses from Uber and Lyft to Airbnb and HomeAway are just some of the most recent examples of entrepreneurs benefiting from emerging trends.
But just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean it is easy to see trends first and find ways to capitalize on them.

 

Trend spotting results

Before telling you more about some of these trend-spotting best practices, let me tell you a story about Walt Disney and his trend-spotting results.
Walt Disney and his abilities in trend spotting and rifts. Rift … what is a rift you may ask? A rift is a big tear in the rules we live by. Not a small tear, a fundamental change in the game type of tear. One that creates a small number of BIG, new winners, and bunches of losers who were sticking steadfastly to the old rules.
Walt was a three-time rifter. Can’t think of any others in that category. He was one of the few people who has successfully managed to find a rift in the continuum of business life, to bet everything he had on it, and to then make a great profit in doing it.
And, amazingly, he did it three times.
Let’s examine these rifts as a way to learn about spotting trends and acting on them.

 

Rift 1 … Motion Pictures

The first rift, or trend that Walt discovered was the motion picture. He noticed early on that movies would drastically change the world of entertainment.
Anticipating that there would be a huge demand for family-oriented entertainment, he pioneered the development of the animated movie.
His first film perfecting the form was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. And the fantastic growth of the rift was launched.
But he was not one to rest on his success … not at all. He kept looking for another change in the rules that would create further opportunity for his business enterprises.
Disney
Disney knew the value of a story.

Rift 2 … The automobile

The second rift was in the form of the automobile. Walt speculated that the car was going to change the way that families would get to entertainment.
His vision was a strategically located, extravagantly designed theme park could add a new leg to family entertainment and vacations.
And take advantage of the new way of family travel rift.
So, beginning with California’s Disneyland in 1955, he added a new business around this rift and it has dominated the theme park industry to this day.

 

Rift 3 … Television

He was now a giant in the entertainment business, but he was able to spot a third rift and opportunity: television. Many people regarded television simply as in-home movies.
Walt, however, saw it as an entirely different medium. So with properties like the Mickey Mouse Club, he established the third business to produce a never-ending stream of content for this new market.
Smart business people like Walt Disney, are always looking for an edge. They want to know how they can identify trends and how they can use that skill to build and grow a business.
Fortunately, there are best practices you can take develop this skill yourself.
Here are six best practices to spotting trends and capitalizing on them before your competition does.

Know objectives

Firstly, you shouldn’t dive into spotting trends before you know why you’re spotting them and what you want to achieve.
For example, are you looking to find an idea that will make you money, or that will encourage your existing target audience to spend more with you? Who are you targeting?
Establish your goals and chosen industry before you move forward.
connect the dots
Connect the dots.

Connect the dots

Once you’ve collated information and the latest news from your chosen area, you can start to group articles together, assess and find connections between the elements.
Tools for collating and bookmarking your findings:

Can Persuasive Advertising Assist in Your Ad Designs

  • Evernote – A great tool that lets you assign photos, docs, scans, notes, for future reference.
  • Pinterest – A great content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard for future reference.
  • Delicious – An online social bookmarks manager that lets you save, organize and discover interesting links on the web.
  • Freemind – great free tool for creating mind maps
  • Old fashioned pen & paper, sticky notes & whiteboards!

Disney trend spotting best practices … test assumptions

Once you have connected the dots between your findings and found re-occurring themes and connections, you can then assess the potential trends to see how they are doing in the current landscape, and make potential predictions for the trends future using the following:
Google Keywords: By using Google keywords you can see the average number of searches that your potential trend is typed into Google each month, and compare them to other trends and keywords.
Google Trends: Google Trends is really good for seeing the fluctuation of trends, how well they’ve done in the past, how well they’re doing now and make predictions of how well they’ll do in the future.
Then ask yourself the following:
  • What are the needs that the trend satisfies (is it a trend or fad)?
  • How many people won’t be able to or be interested in taking advantage of the trend?
  • What will affect the speed of the trend?
  • Where is the trend now – who are currently using it on the innovation curve?
Once you have a solid idea that’s on trend and that will survive within the current landscape, find out the following:
  • What demographics are you targeting (get to know them and ask them questions)
  • What is the investment required and how profitable is the idea?
  • What’s the longevity of the concept?
The basic tools of the trend tracker are seeing, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. In other words, every sense that can be used to get information about the world should be employed in looking for upcoming changes.
Start by reading and watching everything you can. That should include general interest news outlets, trade publications, blogs, government reports and casual conversations overheard in elevators.
Be especially alert for problems people are talking about.

Listen and observe

Today, there’s too much broadcasting and not enough receiving. Everyone is focused on pumping out information, but turning off our signal and receiving and digesting, that’s a skill that has disappeared.
How do I do it? I like to immerse myself in a topic by reading about it. I schedule an hour in the morning, and again before bed to this to reading. I schedule it. I also carefully observe things going on around me.
It is amazing how much you can learn. Pay close attention and take notes.

 

Disney trend spotting best practices … look beyond your boundaries

You have to look around and ask: ‘What are the general trends going on, even though they haven’t affected me or my business yet?’ For example, many noted that people weren’t yet ready to buy music by download.
Few also noted that the way they found new music was shifting. They could see how companies could become major players launching new music, such as Apple through its commercials, or Starbucks with its stores.
What was the trend? It was where people weren’t necessarily interested in discovering music by walking into a record shop or watching MTV anymore.

 

Anticipate change

anticipate change
Anticipate change.
I frequently remind clients that the only constant is change. Believe it. Assume that change is coming and look for it.
Change can be either social — as in the rise of socially responsible business — or technological, as exemplified by the growth of mobile commerce. Sometimes change can be both.
Social media is a great example of that.
Don’t forget the cyclical, up-and-down, back-and-forth nature of business while you are looking.
Change doesn’t have to be permanent to provide a viable opportunity for business creation and growth. When the real estate crisis hit in 2008, construction activity shrank, and many people were forced to make do with what they had.
But trend-spotting entrepreneurs were able to adjust their plans depending on the market.
For example, savvy interior designers marketed their services to those who wanted something new but couldn’t find or afford a new home.

 

INTEGRATED_MARKETING_STRATEGY
Do you have an Integrated Marketing Strategy?

 

Need some help in building better customer insights from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer base?
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job of growing customer insights and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new insights that you have learned.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
 
Check out these additional articles on customer insights from our library:
Lessons from the Yale Customer Insights Conference
Small Business Customer Insights 101
Remarkable Marketing Using These 17 Customer Insight Techniques
A How-to Guide for Small Business Social Media Marketing
 
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+FacebookTwitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

 

3M Innovation Business … 11 Principles That Are Daring and Unbeatable

What do you think: are innovators born or made?  Surely, those who spawn ideas that change the world are special – different than the rest of us. Take one look at an Einstein, a Steve Jobs or a Da Vinci and it seems that they were bequeathed with something unique. Or at least solid knowledge of the 3M innovation business and these 11 innovation principles, don’t you think?
3M Innovation Business
A different approach.
Innovation principles.
Check out our thoughts on building innovation.
But are we looking in the right direction? I believe the biggest secret of innovation is that anyone can do it. The reason is simple: It’s just not that hard.

It often seems easy to know when the next big thing is upon us. Someone like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk stands on stage and tells us what is being launched next. The business press gets excited, pundits swoon and a thousand imitators are created. Before long an ecosystem develops and the world is forever changed.

In reality, though, things are much murkier than that. Innovation is a process of discovery, engineering, and transformation and it is only the last part that is visible to most of us. The seeds of a revolution started long before, in obscure labs and at conferences with high priests presenting papers written in arcane vernacular.

Since the 1950s, the engine that’s driven new knowledge to, as Vannevar Bush put it, “turn the wheels of private and public enterprise,” has been the US government. Unfortunately, moving new discoveries out of federal labs has often been a slow and cumbersome process, but a new model holds promise for greatly accelerating breakthrough innovation.

Look up the word “innovate” in any dictionary and see what it means, instead of what you think it means. You’ll find something like this:
To innovate is to introduce something new.
That’s it. It doesn’t say you need to be a 3M creative genius or a workaholic. It’s just three little words: introduce something new.
The keyword in the definition is “new.” The common trap about newness is the assumption that new means something the universe has never seen before. This turns out to be a very bad assumption.
Here’s why I conclude this: name any great innovator and I guarantee they borrowed and reused ideas from the past to make whatever it is they are famous for.
See this related article: Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
Companies often ask themselves why their innovation principles seem to produce so few truly game-changing ideas. Why are they mostly getting only lukewarm suggestions for incremental improvements rather than radical new concepts for revolutionizing their industries?
How can an organization get dramatically better at generating big, breakthrough ideas?
To answer these questions, we first have to understand the principles of innovation. So the essential first step is to clarify how the innovative process works.
What is missing in most large companies are innovation principles that translate ideas into winning ideas.
Given a deeper look, innovation seems more learned than innate and there is surprising consistency about what drives it.  Here are 11 3M principles to guide you in your business innovation thinking:
 

3M innovation business … change where you’re headed

Learn to have a vision of the end state. To push innovation, set goals that are a stretch. Let me share an example: the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company, worked with Canadian nonprofit
The Natural Step to create their vision of a sustainable restaurant. That vision included deriving 100 percent of their energy from renewable sources, having zero waste and zero carbon impact, and encouraging people to live more sustainably.
Today, Rocky Mountain’s three restaurants are carbon neutral, use local produce for their zero-waste menu and purchase green electricity — efforts that earned the company a big helping of green business awards.
 Try using “back-casting,” not forecasting.  For radical improvements, start with a vision of the future and work backward to today. This type of goal-setting is called “back-casting” and is the opposite of forecasting.
Forecasting examines what happened in the past to plan for the future, and it delivers only minor incremental improvements.
try lots of stuff
Try lots of stuff.
 

3M innovation business … 

try lots of stuff

3M sees what works. Emphasize the up on stuff that works quickly. Quickly kill stuff that doesn’t work.
Learn, revel, and repeat.
 

 Start small

 Peter Drucker once wrote, “Effective innovations start small.  They are not grandiose.”  He was spot on.
Take a look at any big thing and, inevitably, its modest origins.  Microsoft became one of the world’s most valuable companies by focusing on software, an area so inconsequential at the time that IBM was willing to write it off.
 Apple made a splash with the Macintosh in large part by capitalizing on innovations that Xerox tossed aside.
The great thing about thinking small is that you can risk failure because failure is sustainable.  You can falter, pick yourself up and try again.
Eventually, you’ll get it right, and when you do, there are no limits.  If you can survive, you can thrive.

 

3M innovation business … challenge conventional wisdom

Ask employees for ideas and remember no idea is unworthy of consideration. Your employees see opportunities every day for saving money or doing things better. Ask for their ideas.
At the U.S. Postal Service, 850 employee-led “Green Teams” helped save $52 million related to water, energy, fuel, and waste and generated $24 million in new revenue through recycling.
Examples of innovation
Examples of innovation.

 

3M innovation business … ideas and inspiration

Read books and magazines, and watch videos and presentations on topics you wouldn’t normally.
Attend conferences in seemingly unrelated fields. Pay attention to products or company ideas coming from other countries and other fields.

 

Place priority on getting outdated knowledge out of your mind

 Challenge the way you’ve always done things. Maybe you could get materials from sustainable sources or buy wind- or solar-powered electricity.
If it used to be too expensive to use hybrid vehicles in your delivery fleet, maybe that’s no longer the case.

8 Ways to Adapt and Create a Sustainable Environment

3M innovation business … push passion and perseverance

The 3M problem with finding good innovative ideas is that finding the right ones takes time.  There are many other examples to consider: Larry Page and Sergei Brin combined the system of academic sites with computer technology to develop the world’s greatest search engine.
However, it was years before they stumbled upon Overture’s business model and found the combination that made money.
Spending years in the wilderness before becoming a runaway success is not at all uncommon.  As Jim Collins noted in Built to Last, Sony started out as a failed rice cooker manufacturer.  Hewlett Packard began by making quirky gadgets like automatic toilet flushers and a machine shocked people to help them lose weight.
3M
3M ideas
Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame emphasized the importance of perseverance in Amazon’s success in a recent interview.  He said that “We are stubborn on vision.We are flexible on details. … We don’t give up on things easily.”
A lot of times, what looks like brilliance is just someone who has the balls to stick it out through years of failures.

Do things differently

Put on your thinking cap and rethink your business model. Could your company — or part of it — serve a social purpose? Have you noticed businesses that recondition and refurbish old products? Look closely and you will notice them.
Companies donate the used products of all kinds, which these companies refurbish and sell at reasonable prices. And guess what? Perhaps you could also hire and train young workers struggling to enter the job market and qualify for government assistance.
Here is another example: a niche retail shop in our Finger area decided to sell only products made by independent vendors in the area.
Targeting a customer group that values unique clothes, jewelry, arts and crafts products, and stationery, the company promises customers a shopping experience they can’t find anywhere else.
Can your business replace products with services? Challenge your assumptions about what your business does. You may be able to increase business by focusing less on selling products and more on providing services.

 

3M innovation business … connect the dots

While we like to think of innovators being lonely men on the mountain, only coming down, like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, to proclaim great revelations, the truth is that important breakthroughs usually come from synthesizing ideas from different domains.
One famous historical example is that of the discovery of genetics.  In 1865, when Gregor Mendel published his groundbreaking study of inheritance of characteristics in pea plants, it went nowhere.  It had taken nearly a half century before the concept was combined with Darwin’s natural selection to unleash a torrent of innovations in medicine and science.
A more recent example is the Apple ecosystem.  There were plenty of digital music players around when Steve Jobs launched the i-Pod, but he combined his player with i-Tunes, which made content both more accessible and palatable to music companies.  He then threw new products into the mix – the i-Phone, i-Pad, and Siri – creating more combinations and greater value.
 

Build collaborative teams

Broaden your thinking on who could join your networks.
Build contacts beyond the usual suspects. In addition to employees, suppliers, investors and customers, broaden your network to include community action groups, lobbyists, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, industry associations and economic development groups.
Work with, rather than against, your most vocal critics to diffuse situations before they hurt your reputation.
Building bridges into unrelated fields and industries spark fresh ideas and opens up new markets.

3M innovation business … build a 70/20/10 portfolio

 Of course, beyond all the happy talk, businesses must do more than just innovate.  They need to serve customers, pay employees (and sometimes congressmen) and earn money. So prattling on about embracing creativity and failure often gets thrown to the wayside when it’s time to make a budget.
Nevertheless, Professor Kastelle brought a workable scheme to the table with his three horizons model.
Put 70% of your innovation efforts toward taking your competitor’s money
Put 20% of your innovation efforts toward taking somebody else’s money (often a customer or supplier)
Put 10% of you innovation efforts toward creating something very new and out of the box.

The bottom line

So if you want to find a truly great innovator, don’t look for the ones that make the biggest headlines are that are most inspiring on stage. Look for those who spend their time a bit off to the side, sharing ideas, supporting others, and quietly pursuing a path that few others are even aware of.

So there you have it, 11 principles of innovation from 3M.  I’m sure I’ve left something important out, so feel free to add to these principles in the comments below.
Customer engagement
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.
Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?
 
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
 
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
  
More reading on creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks
Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision
The Secrets to Building an Innovative Culture
 
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+FacebookTwitterDigital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.