Prove It Before You Promote It

But don’t despair. Click right here and you’ll go right to it. Be sure to bookmark it when you get there.

I’m a big advocate of doing advertising that works and eschewing advertising that doesn’t. But it’s important not to let that orientation beguile you into to all-or-nothing thinking.

Suppose you test an ad and learn that it falls slightly short of your objective. Were you an all-or-nothing thinker, you might kill the ad, period. But suppose you had created a variation of the ad—say, an alternate incentive offer, headline or photo. Suppose both ads fall short of the objective, but one significantly outperforms the other. Now you have learned that subtle variations make a difference. Perhaps if you test additional ones, you will be able to eke your results up until you arrive at something profitable.

If an ad utterly bombs, let it go. But if you’re close, all-or-nothing thinking might just lead you to quit too soon.

Steve Cuno

Person-to-person socializing is an endangered art

Social media bring people together, but not in person. Instead, people meet via the intermediary of an electronic device.

At work, we send emails instead of calling. We send interoffice IMs instead of talking, even to the person the cubicle next door. At home, there is no time for neighbors to chat on front porches, or for kids to run amok in the yard, when a virtual world, ready to endow us with super powers and devastating weapons, needs us to save it from monsters. Even defensive driving goes out the window when a post, tweet, text, or email demands our attention.

Meanwhile, the wind whistles through abandoned yards and playgrounds. Our ultimate connector is also our ultimate disconnector.

What this means for marketers (especially us old farts)

We all know that newspapers and magazines are at risk in a world where people go online and cherry-pick content for free. Broadcast media face challenges from cable, satellite and the likes of Hulu. Direct mail struggles in a world where email and the Internet make personal mail and even bills by mail obsolescent.

Old farts like me, who are less adept at social media than the average 14-year-old, are worried sick. The rising generation with money to spend are hooked on social media. Older people are fast defaulting to the new media and, either way, are destined to die out.

A seeming obvious solution is for agencies to marshall selling via the social media. Expect: social media are easily blocked; there is little consistent, reliable information on how to sell via social media; and, as I have blogged before, there is danger in mistaking hits for marketing.

Low-tech secret weapon

Not to worry. I didn’t show up to write this morning’s blog without a solution.

The very success of the social media provides smart advertisers a powerful secret weapon. And in a classic case of zigging while everyone else zags, it happens to be about as low-tech as you can get.

Drum roll, please. I’m talking about direct mail.

I know, I know. I just said that personal letters and bills by mail are obsolescent. Social media have all but reduced your mailbox to a receptacle for irrelevant junk mail.

But your mailbox is also salted with the occasional Important Thing. You are the junk filter. You dare not chuck your mailbox contents without looking over each item.

Therein lies your opportunity. Because good stuff in the mail has become a rarity, it necessarily commands attention. That is why good direct mail still consistently outsells the electronic media delivering the same content. Good direct mail still generates measurable, trackable profits, and provides the ultimate personal touch.

Note that word “good.” Any fool can crank out inept mail, and most fools do. These are the folks who say, “We tried direct mail, and it didn’t work.” Ignore them. A direct response mail expert puts together a personal, compelling effort, backed by knowledge of what works, and a plan for tracking and improving results.

The key component in smart direct mail is and has always been the well-composed sales letter.

It is now more important than ever. Personal letters are all but extinct—which is exactly what makes a classic direct mail package tremendously powerful. Today, an addressed envelope with a personalized letter inside is unique. Here at the RESPONSE Agency, we find that our direct mail does even better in the social media world than it did in the old days.

I might add that it didn’t do too badly in the old days, either.

If you are a dealer who promises “to meet or beat any competitor’s price,” you’re not promising anything at all. Here’s why:

1. You give no assurance that you offer the lowest price. You merely assure me that if I don’t comparison shop, you will charge as much as you please.

2. “Meet the price” fails to impress. If I scout out a better price elsewhere, why on earth would I return to you for the same deal? I’ll save myself time and gas if I buy where I am.

3. “Beat the price” is no better. I’m going to drive back to your place so you can, what, undercut the competitor by a buck? A penny?

4. “Double the difference” is hardly an improvement. You’re still not assuring me your pricing is better. (See Number 1 above.)

5. Claiming “If we can’t meet or beat the price, it’s free” insults my intelligence. Do you really expect me to believe you might give me the product free rather than lower the price a bit?

If you insist on trying to be the low-price leader—which is seldom much of a strategy—you can do better. You might check key competitors’ pricing on, say, a weekly basis, and lower your own prices accordingly. Then, in your ads, tell me that that’s what you do. Want to go one better? Should you find a competitor has been underselling you, don’t wait for your customers who recently bought to call you. Call them and offer to refund the difference. Then they’ll do your advertising for you.

With a little creativity on your part, you will come up with other, convincing ways to show that you are, and not just claim that you are, the low price leader. (Please click COMMENT and share your ideas.)

Or, you could keep spinning hot air. Caution: You’re not fooling anyone. People are tuning you out with the rest of the brand flatulence out there.

Steve Cuno

Today I stepped out my front door to find a dentist’s flyer wedged in the jamb, a pizza flyer taped to the railing by the front steps, a flower shop flyer hanging from the doorknob and, from a realtor, a letter poking out from under my welcome mat.

Enough. My house is not your advertising medium.

If bedecking my house with flyers generates profits for you, my inner direct marketer wants to say, “More power to you.” But every time it tries to say so, my inner homeowner slaps it into silence.

Double standard? Quite possibly. But the fact remains that if I wanted my house to look as it did this morning, I’d have specified flyers instead of stucco for the exterior finish. Is marriage mail that prohibitive? Is it any less effective?

While you’re at it, quit sticking things on my windshield when I’m at the mall.

Feel free to click COMMENT and speak up. I’m listening.

Steve Cuno

I have discovered two laws of nature, possibly heretofore unknown:

1. No matter how thoroughly you clean out a toaster, crumbs will fall out of it when you so much as touch it.

2. The less people know about a subject, the more readily they will take an extreme position and the more aggressively they will defend it. This is as true in marketing as it is in public policy.

Steve Cuno

American newspapers were the original news medium. They weren’t businesses then. They were the voice of self-appointed watchdogs who published as they felt moved. King George getting out of hand? Run the presses. Nothing going on? Leave ‘em off.

Today the news media are businesses. To survive, they must generate audiences large and suitable enough to attract advertising dollars. They do this by publishing or airing according to a schedule, rather than as needed, and by giving the market what it wants to consume. This last point is crucial. Any sense of mission—be it watchdog or other—is subject to market demands. A mission at odds with ratings will necessitate either compromising the mission in order to survive, or going out of business. (Unless, of course, a news medium happens to have unlimited funds of its own, profitability be damned. Last count, not too many were in this category.)

Which means that, despite what you’d like to think, chances are your (or, in fairness, my) favorite news source isn’t your favorite because it’s unbiased and balanced. And it may not be as committed to your point of view as it would have you think. More likely, enough people see the world your way to make it profitable for that news source to give you the news the way you are most apt to embrace it. If you and the masses who think like you suddenly and permanently change your perspective, you can bet your favorite news source will adapt rather than fight you.

These days, the effects of markets on the news media are hard to miss. The low cost of distributing information via the Internet has taken its toll on costlier media, to wit, broadcast and print. With viewers and subscribers down, ad revenues have dropped. Thus these media have been forced to make cuts. And what do they cut first? Not advice, sports or entertainment. These still draw. No, they cut investigative reporting—because the public doesn’t demand sound information. Illustrations abound. Half of U.S. citizens still believe that Saddam Hussein was a coconspirator in the 9/11 attacks. Most cannot name even three of the five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, but can name all five members of a cartoon family by the name of Simpson.

Thus at a time when information is at its most accessible, we risk being at our most uninformed.

The mission of today’s media is to find out what we want—and give it to us. The media have strayed so far from their original mission that today many in our society actually decry the watchdog function. Consider the acrimony with which many spit out the term, “liberal media.” Whether or not you embrace liberal policy—another matter altogether—you should thank your lucky stars for liberal media, because they dare to challenge the status quo. Without them, the American Revolution might not have happened, or have been significantly delayed. Slavery would have continued longer, possibly to our day. Blacks and women might still be denied the right to vote. And Hitler might be living in cozy retirement.

We need not be helpless. In the immortal and recent words of scientist and author Michael Shermer, “I am a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know.” If you want to know, dig! Don’t cede your mind to one news source that caters to you by feeding you what you already believe. Consult numerous sources. Check their sources. Examine alternate points of view as expressed by those who hold them, not as reported by their opponents. Set aside emotion and bias as you ferret out and weigh facts for yourself. Do so and you will vastly increase your odds of arriving at an informed rather than a manipulated conclusion. It’s not foolproof. But it beats remaining a slave to a market-driven point of view.

Steve Cuno

A MAD Magazine subscription offer arrived in my mail in 1998. I loved it, and I still remember it.

Especially the envelope. It featured an illustration of (who else?) Alfred E. Newman, with the headline, “Get in touch with your inner idiot.”

Only MAD could get away with such an approach. Moreover, it pulled a 6.5% response.

—Steve Cuno