It is a simple concept. People don’t read ads, they read what interests them. So if you are going to generate advertising and design, you are going to have to create an interesting copy. 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? Prudential marketing has sought to overcome this dilemma with marketing information and advocacy advertising as its power of persuasion.
Does it have the power to encourage the right sort of conversations?
Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
-Seth Godin
Before we continue, let me ask you a question.
What works best for advertising design in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.
Related post: 12 Fundamental Laws of Content Marketing
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 marketing content. But more importantly, it’s forcing businesses to think more and more as creative designers.
It has been said that advertising is the price to be paid for being unremarkable. That may be true, but I have noticed, despite the growth in online marketing, that even remarkable businesses also advertise the old fashion way.
It is a key component of your marketing campaign, for awareness or consumer education of your value. 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?
So what is advocacy advertising? It is a specific type of advertising that intends to promote a particular idea related to public discourse, viewpoints, and causes, in contrast to typical ads which intend to promote a product or a service.
Let’s examine 3 Prudential TV advocacy ads that are part of the Prudential marketing campaign:
The first ad
The first ad asks the audience several the questions:
How old is the oldest person you know?
How do you make sure you have enough money to enjoy all these retirement years?
The theme of this ad? Let’s get ready for a longer retirement. Makes you think about some crucial questions, doesn’t it?
The second ad
In the second ad, Prudential asked people:
If you could do something you really love, what would you do?
Your retirement should bring you to the answer. Prudential can help prepare you for retirement. Let’s prepare today to do what we love tomorrow.
In the third ad, Prudential ask customers how much money they would need in retirement. Trying to figure out exactly how much money you’ll need to retire is difficult. Let alone trying to make that amount last for potentially 30 or 40 years. Luckily, there is another way to think about planning for retirement.
That is to approach things differently if we want to be ready for a long retirement. The theme here is: Together we can create a retirement income that lasts.
Advocacy advertising is a specific type of advertising that intends to promote a particular idea related to public discourse, viewpoints, and causes, in contrast to typical ads which intend to promote a product or a service.
Marketing information … Prudential Financial, Inc.
Financial institutions like Prudential are difficult businesses to advertise in the traditional sense. Check out the words on their website:
For more than 135 years, Prudential Financial, Inc., has helped customers grow and protect their wealth. Today, we have been one of the world’s largest financial services institutions with operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. We also have one of the most recognized and trusted brand symbols:
The Rock ®, an icon of strength, stability, expertise, and innovation. We strive to create long-term value for our stakeholders through strong business fundamentals, consistent with our mission guided by our vision and directed by our company’s core values. We are committed to keeping our promises and to doing business the right way.
But that is pretty difficult to discriminate in a way that is easily believed and remembered. So advocacy ads are a good substitute for effective advertising.
So, in summary, let’s examine Prudential’s TV ads in total, as key to the Prudential marketing campaign’s power of persuasion:
Importance of marketing information … customer personalization
Messages and content
Ask questions to get the viewer thinking. So simple that the reader will quickly understand. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words. Use simple messages complemented with powerful visuals.
Employ easy arguments. Easy arguments are the conclusions people reach using inferences without a careful review of available information. These ads clearly and simply get the messages by showing the before and after visuals.
The present appeal that grabs and holds consumer attention.
Interesting information is the foundation and effective visuals hold the attention. Your ad messages must be appealing to your target communities.
Visual elements should be part of the story. The truth is that the processing capacity of our brains is limited and words may get in the way of emotionally powerful visual images.
When powerful visual images dominate – when “a picture or video is worth a thousand words” – be quiet and let them do the talking.
Articles with images get 94% more views than those without. And posts with videos attract 3X more inbound links than plain text posts.
A study by 3M showed that 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text.
A good story does not interpret or explain the action in the story for the audience. Instead, it allows each member of the audience to interpret the story as he or she understands the action.
This is why people find good stories so appealing and why they find advertising that simply conveys information boring.
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the experiences are important to remember.
In these ads, the questions posed to add the emotions of humor, realness, surprise, and even a little fear. disgust.
Prudential marketing … identifiable music
Match what viewers see with what they hear. People expect and prefer coordinated audio and visual messages because those messages are easier to process and understand.
Music can be a rapidly identified cue for the recall of emotional responses remembered from previous advertising.
Making the same music an identifiable aspect of all advertising signals the audience to pay attention to more important content.
A simple call to action is needed on all ads. Say exactly why people should contact your business and what you can do for them. For example “Come home to a life that is SIMPLY MAGNIFICENT.”
Make the desired call to action a part of the story. A good story that is very entertaining but does not make a direct connection between the desired call to action and the story is just a very entertaining story. The whole point of the story in advertising is to effectively deliver the desired call to action.
If the audience does not clearly understand the desired call to action after seeing the ad, then you are missing the real opportunity.
Part of an integrated marketing campaign
Make your ad a component of an integrated marketing campaign. Proper spacing/timing are essential to the campaign. Swiffer has this element nailed in terms of ad frequency and mixing a variety of the ads so as not to annoy customers.
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.
Have any advertising experience that you would like to add to this community? Any comments or questions you like to add below?
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
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.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to 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?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
I am not a fan of ballet. How about you? Not to worry, though, this blog is not about ballet. It is about a ballet star named Misty Copeland, who appears in advocacy advertising for an Under Armour marketing campaign.
Advocacy advertising
You just can’t say it. You have to get people talking about it with each other.
It is a simple concept. People don’t read ads, they read what interests them. So if you are going to generate advertising and design, you are going to have to create an interesting copy.
See our article: A How-To Guidebook for Creating Winning Advertising
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? Under Armour marketing has sought to overcome this dilemma with advocacy advertising as its power of persuasion.
Ten years ago, social media was in its infancy. Nobody even heard of mobile marketing, content marketing or big data. The iPhone hadn’t even been launched yet. If you took a reasonably competent marketer from 2007 and transported her to today, much of what she knew about her job would be irrelevant.
We’re at a similar point now. Many of the most powerful technologies that will shape marketing over the next ten years are just emerging and many marketers will be left behind. Clearly, anybody who thinks that they can get by doing more of what they’re doing today is kidding themselves.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to perfectly predict the future, but we can look at today’s technology and make some basic judgments. Big data and artificial intelligence will become much more powerful and interact more completely with the physical world. That, in turn, will transform how we identify and serve customers to something very different from today.
So what is advocacy advertising? It is a specific type of advertising that intends to promote a particular idea related to public discourse, viewpoints, and causes. This is in contrast to typical ads which intend to promote a product or a service.
And what is the subject of the public issue that Under Armour wants to promote? It is an issue with a simple motivational message. The message? It is to be persistent and never give up.
And when she started to grow into a woman, she developed muscle tone, large breasts, and big feet. This is not exactly the accepted shape for a ballerina.
However, her refusal to give up on her dream is celebrated in this awesome new campaign. This campaign is for the sports brand Under Armour and is called ‘I Will What I Want’.
Have you seen this commercial? If not, take the 60 seconds to review it. It will certainly create a topic of discussion for you and your friends. That is certainly Under Armour’s objective, isn’t it?
As the dancer shows off her breath-taking strength, a voice-over reads outlines from all the rejection letters she received as a teen.
Those academies probably aren’t feeling so clever now. You can’t help but feel inspired and motivated by the spot.
Refusing to give up, Copeland became the second black soloist in the history of the prestigious American Ballet Theatre in N.Y.C. Amazing, isn’t it?
It made her the perfect subject to deliver the “I Will What I Want” campaign’s message of persistence. She was only 24 at the time.
Let’s discuss this very successful advocacy ad and the reasons for its success.
Advocacy advertising … customer personalization
This ad uses a very personal message to engage potential customers. A personal story of the long shot always makes for great attention-getting, doesn’t it?
Hearing real letters of rejection and then showing off Misty’s talent has a way of adding significant meaning.
A good emotional story provides the very good connection between the issue and the company promoting their message. The ad does not interpret or explain the action in the story for the audience.
Instead, it allows each member of the audience to interpret the story as he or she understands the action and the emotion.
This is why people find good stories so appealing. It is why they find advertising that simply conveys information boring.
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory. Why is that?
Because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that they are important to remember. And create a good reason for you to want to back Under Armour, yes?
Cause-related advertising … motivational messages
Making powerful motivational messages to your target audience, as in this ad, is very effective. It gets the viewer to relate to the issue in their own lives and to be inspired.
So simple that the reader will quickly grasp the motivation. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words.
Using simple messages complemented with powerful visuals adds more to the ad. Employ easy arguments.
Easy arguments are the conclusions people reach using inferences without the need of a careful review of available information.
Creating visual appeal of Misty’s awesome ballet talents grabs and hold consumer attention. The ad is interesting as well as entertaining.
Identifiable music
This ad combines the beauty of watching talent with what they hear.People expect and prefer coordinated audio and visual messages. Why may you be wondering?
Because those messages are easier to process and understand. Music can be a rapidly identified cue for the recall of emotional responses remembered from previous advertising.
The music in this ad is an identifiable emotional addition to the persuasive power, isn’t it?
Call to action
A simple call to action is needed on all ads. In the case of an advocacy ad, the call to action is in the subtle messages of inspiration and motivation.
It is not a call to action for Under Armour and it doesn’t have to be. People will remember the brand and associate it with the inspiration they take away. And that is not a bad thing, is it?
Say exactly why people should contact your business and what you can do for them.
For example “Let’s prepare today to do what we love tomorrow”.
All three of these ads make the desired call to action a part of the story.
The bottom line
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 this Under Armour advocacy ad is interesting, entertaining, and stands for things viewers can stand behind. We believe it is persuasive and certainly creates the right kind of conversation.
Have any advertising experience that you would like to add to this community? Any comments or questions you like to add below?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your 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 to improving your advertising design?
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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:
A How-To Guidebook for Creating Winning Advertising
Brilliant Advertisements to rising Above the Noise
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+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
