We started off with a set of objectives for what we needed to communicate with the company's identity, created several proposals intended to meet those objectives, and picked the one that did the best job.
We have to improve our ability to deliver tangible results, namely sales, not simply awareness or change of attitude among opinion formers.
We all make choices. Believe me, I would like to write the hit of the world. It's not like I have any desire to be in the shadows. My vision isn't marketing. Some people want to sell 6 million albums. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not what I do. I'd rather look at a piece of work and say it's great rather than it's successful.
Any time you can have your logo or your name on a shoe, growing up that's a dream come true.
What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same.
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
Say you're an American novelist, published by the largest publishing house in the world. Their goal is to make as much money from you as possible, to have as many people read your book in as many formats as possible. How can you hope to speak intimately to the numbers of people that represent the book sales required?
Anyone who says they want to make a game that becomes a cult classic is kinda screwy, right? I mean, you want to reach the largest audience you can.
Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created
Before we start anything creatively, we have a firm understanding of our objective and our frame of mind for the campaign. Who's our audience, and what's their day-to-day behavior? How can we complement those behaviors? How is our message more than an interruption? Why would people care about what we're saying?
Brands don't just care about views. Brands care about their brand first.
Why does McDonald's have to count every burger that they sell? What is their ultimate goal? Do they want cows to surrender voluntarily?
It's important to keep up the idea of the brand, even beyond sales.
Often in companies, you'll see tensions between sales and marketing. Sales people will want to give discounts to clients because they often get paid a commission based on how much they sell. So they're always pushing to give discounts because that will increase sales. Marketing, however, is judged by overall profitability.
I've done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they're going to be compared directly against other ads.
Most brands want to see their products used in creative ways.
Go for the edges. Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are, and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing results you seek.
Jabs are the lightweight pieces of content that benefit your customers by making them laugh, snicker, ponder, play a game, feel appreciated, or escape; right hooks are calls to action that benefit your businesses.
