Advertising

Sixty five years ago this summer, I went on the payroll of a radio station. Since then, every paycheck I have earned was derived from advertising revenue.

The advertising industry has changed. One of the old-time advertising experts was once asked to define advertising. He said advertising is salesmanship in print! Excellent. Since his day, the print part has evolved, and I recently read a prediction that internet advertising would, this year, surpass TV in total revenue. I don't know, or even care, if that is true. But it is interesting.

Early in my career, newspapers were the advertising gorilla in the room. Then came radio, but radio never reached the volume of revenue of newspapers. I remember one year, in the early 1960s, when a small town (Rolla, MO, I think) radio station's revenue exceeded the revenue of that town's newspaper. All of us in radio wondered how that happened, and invited the station manager to speak at a radio convention to enlighten us.

The conclusion of his speech was that his station never forgot the salesmanship ingredient of their advertising. What are we selling, how you will benefit if you buy it, and, of course, where and when it is for sale. Facts.

When the introduction of the UHF band brought TV coverage to all of America, television replaced newspapers as the advertising giant . Now they say it is the internet.

Much has been written or said to demonize advertising, but still the public likes advertising. Advertising keeps the consumer informed as to what is available... what are the newest innovations, who is offering the best price, etc.

A problem for advertisers has always been clutter. When there are so many ads, how do you draw the consumer's attention to your ad. Everything has been tried. Color, music, and, more than anything,  pictures of pretty women. Here, in my opinion, some advertisers have done much better than others. Consider these two internet ads:

First is an ad for an outfit that sells T-Shirts with wacky imprints. This one reads, "I used to care. Now I take a pill for that"

Sounds pretty funny until you think about it. Does this mean she takes drugs to obliterate her cares?

In any event, the advertiser could have used a picture of a T-Shirt carefully laid out so you could read the imprint.

Instead, they chose to show one of their shirts on a model. Their choice of a photo is superb. Because the model looks very casual, very friendly, you can't help but look. She is wearing no jewelry, no adornments of any kind. Just that wacky T-Shirt and a pair of frayed shorts. And, she looks like she could no longer care. It all nicely ties together.

It is difficult to read the imprint on her T-shirt, but that hardly matters. With the magic of the internet, you can just mouse-click her picture and be transported to a web site that is a catalog of their many T-Shirt choices. It looks like fun and this ad makes you want to take a look, even though you are not necessarily in the market for silly T-Shirts



Next, I came across this ad, for some sort of sleep aid. It is obvious that this photo of a busty model was chosen to look sexy.

To this old man's eye, she looks neither sexy or sleep-inducing. Rather, she looks a bit like she is ready to fight.

Then, there is the copy... "One weird trick..." Perhaps, in this era of interest in zombies, "weird" is appealing. But I fail to see any connection between this model, weird tricks, and my wanting to fall asleep.

I would love to re-do this ad. But, it is said that every ad man always wants to re-write the other guy's copy.

And, of course, there is the overriding rule of all advertising: No matter how much you may know about advertising, or about your product or your market, the public will often surprise you. An ad should produce results, and the only sure test of an ad is to run it in some advertising medium to see how the public will react.

Advertisers with large budgets spend a lot of money on research, so maybe they do know what they are doing. Still I often watch a TV commercial and wonder what they are selling and why I should buy it.