86 Keys for Successful Advertising

PR Log (Press Release) – May 12, 2009 – 86 Keys for Successful Ads


1.  Keep it simple smarty!  Sell the dream and benefit!  Satisfy the longings! Quench the need!
2.  The risk of insult is the price of clarity!  Say what needs saying! Come straight to the point!
3.  Learn what people want and buy, then match your product or service to a specific need!
4.  Be creatively and cleverly honest!            
5.  Coax their noble feelings out of your targeted customers! Adventuress, dreaming again, longings, love, compassion, hope, faith, etc. Create the thoughts and feelings in your ad that motivate the desired action.      
6.  Seven seconds of proof!  Well thought out!  First impressions are lightning critical in advertising!
7.  Stir people to see themselves enjoying using your product and to feel good feelings as they imagine themselves using your must-have product!
8.  People buy what they are comfortable and familiar with! This is the power of mood code breaking advertising.
9.  People buy what is exciting to them!
10.  People buy what benefits them and makes them feel good!
11.  Avoid embarrassments!  People buy what they believe other people admire and accept!
12.  Sell the sizzle––not the steak!  Advertise the benefits––not the qualities, traits, features, attributes or characteristics!  A man buys the satisfaction of eating a steak––not the steak.  A man buys a drill because he wants a hole!  BIG PROMISE, IMMEDIATE APPEAL, GREAT CAUSE & EXCITING & BELIEVABLE BENEFIT!
13.  Frightened people are powerless to write good advertisements.  Confront and rid your fears, immediately!
14. Create a favorable, positive image!  Win confidence!
15.  A good advertisement is one that sales the product without drawing attention to the ad!  It rivets the attention on the product and benefit––not the ad!  The customer says to himself, I never knew that, I must try it!  
16.  What you say is more important than how you say it!
17.  LARGE PROMISE IS THE SOUL OF THE ADVERTISEMENT!
18.  Give the facts. The more you tell, the more you sell!
19.  You cannot bore people into buying. The average person is exposed to thousands of ads every day!
20.  Be well-mannered, but don’t clown.
21.  Be contemporary! Keep up with the times. Perhaps a bit futuristic!
22.  Ads must be written by a single person.  Write at least 20 drafts!
23.  Don’t lie in an ad!
24.  Use brilliant analogies!  Especially when using pictures and word depictions!  They both must send the same selling promise!
25.  Present total personality of the product or service!
26.  Don’t be a copycat!  Be original!
27.  Headline and name is 80% of your success!  It’s the Ticket on the meat!  Catch the eye of your target market customer.  
28.  Believability! Being believed is the challenge and problem every ad faces!  
29.  Your ad must be immediately comprehensible and directly moving!
30.  No literacy style works in advertising!
31.  Inform, don’t give in to simply entertain or impress!      
32.  Substance is more important than form!
33.  Arouse curiosity!  This is the trap to set.
34.  Exciting duel contrast, but true to life!  Examples: Crispy Creamy Doughnuts!   Einstein Bagels!
35.  Address the target people’s deepest needs!
36.  Immediatly make an important point!
37.  Good advertising is getting under people’s radar and dropping a little bomb!  
38.  Show sensitive insight into the psychological makeup of the perspective client!
39.  Get your prospective customer talking to himself.  The more he does this the more wise he thinks you are!
40.  Passionately, dramatically and romantically make a mentally-visual, memorable image!  Example: Moon face vs. round face! [romantic appeal]
41.  It’s the story that sells the product!  Sell them their dream in a customized story!
42.  Write a minimum of eighteen different ads and choose the one that jumps out and grabs you the most!  
43.  Continually clarify and become more focused on the specific goal of your advertisement!  Example: Is it strictly financial or of other intent?
44.  Clearly describe how the product provides the benefit or honors the promise!
Examples!  Deep Cleanser––Cleans deep into pores!  Dove toilet soap––Creams while it cleans!
45.  Create dramatic mental pictures in the person’s imagination and longings!  Example: How would you like your dream home this week?
46.  Humility and genuine love for products sells!
47.  What do people want and need NOW?
48.  Coax them to feel the urgency of buying your product!
49.  Connect to the nobility of their spirits!
50.  Pray for inspiration from God and express sincere thanks when it comes!
51.  Include behavioral descriptors, example: Confessions, strategics, win, lazy man’s way, etc.
52.  Human drama and conflict are irresistible in titles! Example War and Peace!
53. The more provocative benefits you tell the more you sell!
54. Display an immediate intellectual/emotional contrast, contest, dilemma, mystery, struggle, encounter, etc.  This creates an audience.
55. The best emotional responsive contrast is to combine self-awareness with outside-awareness. Example: “It is springtime and I am blind!”, vs. “I am blind!”
55.  Ads must appeal to people’s self-interests without being selfish oriented. Getting one’s thinking off one’s self is what appeals to the spirit.  Example “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
56.  Headlines and sub-headlines need to include action and main benefit.
57. Break the advertising code words for your specific product or service.  Code words clearly define and emotionally expose your benefits.
58. Include passionate promise and curiosity in headlines.
59. Outrageous promise holds people still and attentive!   “I will show you something you’ve never seen before!” -P.T. Barnum  
60. Your advertising slogan must get the person outside of himself, immediately!  You can only achieve this by first getting outside yourself in your ad.
61. The first law of advertising is to avoid the concrete promise . . . and cultivate the delightfully vague.  John Crosby New York Herald Tribune August 18, 1947
62. Once you get the right image the details aren’t that important.  You don’t have to explain why! - Abbie Hoffman 1980
63. Show them the conflict or controversy!
64. Be spontaneous in both photos (artwork) and wording.  Don’t be Englishly correct.
65. Flattery will get you everywhere!
66. People like to be around people that they feel good about themselves in their presence.  It’s the same with products.  Develop products and advertise so people feel good being around them.
67.  Contextual excitement. Stay focused!
68.  Crack of break the Advertising Word Code for Your Product or Service as soon as possible!
69.  You must care about people and their needs to advertise well!
70.  Know the company, products and/or service well!
71. You must believe in the product or service your are developing irresistible advertising for!
72. Distance yourself for awhile or sleep on it before making final decisions!
73.  The magic combination in advertising is sex appeal combined with obvious big promise of feeling better fast!
74.  Great ads must be cool and unselfish!            
75.  Great purposes and ideas inspire excited supportiveness!
76. People must feel also that they deserve your product or service before they’ll buy it!
77. The customer must immediately sense you genuinely like him or her!
78. Provide immediate benefit identification (IBI).  This is ‘benefit’ or ‘want’ branding.
79. Everything’s in a name!
81. Immediate identity recognition!
82. Easy to remember!
83. Create and sell the thrill and excitement of the product or service!
84. You have to feel the excitement of it to sell it!
85. Implement perfect cliche (ad code) to product!
86. In today’s world you have to come out swinging in introducing a new product!