What makes a successful

ad campaign?

Week 2Source: How to Create Advertising that Sells - By David Ogilvy

There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and

the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will

get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.

- David Ogilvy

1. How should you position your product?• The effect of your advertising on your sales

depends more on this decision than on any other

• Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created.

• Research can help.  Look before you leap.

2. Large promise• what should you promise the customer?

• A promise is not a claim, or a theme, or a slogan.  It is a benefit for the consumer.

•  It pays to promise a benefit which is unique and competitive, and the product must deliver the benefit your promise.

3. Brand image• 95% of all advertising is created ad hoc.  Most

products lack any consistent image from one year to another.

• Every advertisement should contribute to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

4. Big ideas• It takes a big idea to jolt the consumer out of his

indifference – to make him notice your advertising, remember it and take action.

• Big ideas are usually simple ideas. 

• Big, simple ideas are not easy to come by. They require genius – and midnight oil.

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or

your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook

your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or

taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from

your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.

- David Ogilvy

5. A first-class ticket• It pays to give most products an image of quality

– a first-class ticket.

• If your advertising looks ugly, consumers will conclude that  your product is shoddy and they will be less likely to buy it.

6. Don’t be a bore• Nobody was ever bored into buying a product. 

• Yet most advertising is impersonal, detached, cold – and dull. 

• It pays to involve the customer. Talk to her like a human being. Charm her. Make her hungry. Get her to participate.

7. Innovate• Start trends – instead of following them. 

• Advertising which follows a fashionable fad or is imitative, is seldom successful.

• Innovation is risky… look before you leap

8. Be suspicious of awards

• The pursuit of creative awards seduces creative people from the pursuit of sales.

• Successful advertising sells the product without drawing attention to itself, it rivets the consumer’s attention on the product.  

• Make the product the hero of your advertising.

9. Psychological Segmentation

• Any good agency knows how to position products for demographic segments of the market – for men, for young children, for farmers in the south, etc. 

• But Ogilvy and Mather has learned that it often pays to position for psychological segments of the market.  

10. Don’t bury news• It is easier to interest the consumer in a product

when it is new than at any other point in its life. 

• Most advertising for new products fails to exploit the opportunity that genuine news provides.

•  It pays to launch your new product with a loud boom-boom.

11. Go the whole hog• Most advertising campaigns are too complicated.

 

• By attempting too many things, they achieve nothing.

• Boil down your strategy to one simple promise – and go the whole hog in delivering that promise.

True Blood: Revelation

• Brand: HBO• Creative Partners: Campfire• By creating a complex backstory about a

synthetic beverage that enabled vampires to “live among humans,” HBO and its creative partner, Campfire, were able to tap into an existing community of horror aficionados and organically build an audience that made True Blood one of HBO’s most anticipated and successful show debuts.

• http://bloodcopy.com/

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

• Brand: Old Spice• Creative Partner: Weiden + Kennedy• The Old Spice Man debuted in a 2010 Super Bowl

ad, bringing humor, sex appeal, and intrigue to a brand that was all but forgotten. Five months later, he made marketing history by appearing in a series of 180 near real-time videos helped Procter & Gamble amass over 40 million views on YouTube and enjoy a 107% increase in body wash sales within 30 days of the campaign launch.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

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

Replacing old ideas with new ones

Source: http://www.95percent.com.my/blog/2012/how-to-replace-old-ideas-with-new-ones.html

Step 1: Walk away• Don’t immediately do a google search of what

your audience is like, or for insight from another research agency. 

• Get away from your desk, your laptop, and your office. Bring only one thing with you: a blank piece of paper/notebook. On this piece of paper, write down two questions:

1. What is the problem we are trying to fix?

2. What is the Brand’s best self?

The Brand’s Best Self is not a list of attributes and benefits. It is bigger than that. It is about what the brand is like when it is at its best –

what contexts and situations does it seek out and revel in.

– Ogilvy & Mather

• Remove any preconceived notions you have of your target consumer.

• Start with the belief that you know nothing about your consumers.

Step 2. Experience the Product

• Pretend like it’s the first time you’ve ever seen the product/service etc.

• Go out there and check it out in its element (if it’s a chocolate drink, go to the store and experience buying it. What other brands would you buy instead, and why?). 

• Taste it as if you’re tasting it for the first time. If it’s a service – go to them and test it out as a consumer. 

• KEY: Immerse yourself in the product

Step 3. Try Method Acting

• You know the target audience you’ve been trying to avoid thinking about this whole time? Become them.

• Go and actually speak to them. Understand them. Become one of them. 

• Revisit your product in its element and this time, put use the insight you’ve gained from talking to your audience and imagine this journey through their eyes. Better yet, bring them with you and ask as many questions as you can.

If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language

they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

- David Ogilvy

Step 4: Try working somewhere other than your

desk• Sometimes a new environment can be just the

thing to get ideas flowing.

• A new change of scenery can subconsciously affect the way you work, inspiring you with different sounds, smells, sights and emotions. 

• Revisit your piece of paper and look at it with your new eyes. You should be able to answer those questions by now, or at least have an idea of how you could go about it.

Step 5: Keep on learning new things

• We tend to naturally fall into a routine of sorts and stay away from anything that may cost us too much effort.

• By doing this we limit our social interactions to familiar circumstances – we don’t open ourselves up to new ideas, people, beliefs or insights.

“There may be no such thing as creative people, just sharp

observers with sensitive hearts.”

-Yasmin Ahmad