I perused a recent survey conducted in the U.K. about how young adults, a.k.a. “Digital Natives,” feel about the Web.  Like all surveys of this age group and how they interact with technology, it was fascinating.

The survey involved nearly a thousand participants ages 16 to 24, and the good news for us as online marketers was that 75% of respondents said that they “couldn’t live without the Internet.” Wow, that’s a bold statement indicating that the Web will continue to be a…

...continue to read "How Would Sterling Cooper Deal with Digital Natives?"

Most valuable writing lesson ever. Or so says Steven Pressfield in this blog post on how his first professional job as an advertising copywriter indelibly carved this truth on his psyche:

“Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and…

...continue to read "Nobody wants to read your sh**!"

My friend and brilliant copywriter, Chris Maddock, frequently exhorts his writing students to “Just say the thing.”  This advice is based upon Chris’s extensive experience in what’s working right now for radio ads – and just as importantly,  what’s no longer working for any type of copywriting.

Google and the Internet have trained us to ruthlessly sort for relevance, and we now demand messaging formatted for, and adapted to, rapid sorting.  If visitors can’t get on your website,…

...continue to read "Just Say The Thing – Why Relevance Always Wins"

Bryan and I had the honor of attending and speaking at this year’s Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. The amount of blogging and tweeting going on during the conference was phenomenal, so we won’t attempt to “cover” what went on.

Instead, we’d like to present our brief “Best Of” List so you can get some quick highlights from our (somewhat biased) perspective:

Here we go…

Best Presentation: “How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine.” Bryan Eisenberg, Avinash Kaushik, Jim Sterne, and…

...continue to read "FutureNow’s “Best Of” List from SES 2009 San Jose"

Or at least why the assumptions behind the review are off-base

According to the nifty pie-chart to the right and the related study, because  print newspapers reach people who are actively looking for, or “checking,” ads, they are still a solid advertising medium.  How these people can conclude one thing from the other is utterly beyond me.

While newspapers may be a medium that still draws people  who are actively searching out ads, that hardly means newspapers are…

...continue to read "Radio and the Internet Put the Smackdown on Newspapers"

Did you know that Ogilvy was not the first to use the “electric clock” comparison in a headline?

I came across this bit o’ trivia while writing my post on Ogilvy’s preferred ad layout.  I found it written up by Robert Rosenthal at Freaking Marketing, who had done the detective work to find and scan in this Pierce-Arrow ad that ran about 25 years before Ogilvy’s Rolls Royce campaign.

If you consider yourself a student of advertising, you’ll want to read…

...continue to read "Ogilvy’s Famous Rolls Royce Ad – Another Look"

Here’s the first thing to remember about frame switching as it applies to copywriting:

All copywriting stories are “nested.”

In writing copy you inevitably create – at a minimum – one frame of reference: the one between your authorial voice and the reader.

In fact, copywriting teachers often advise aspiring writers to “talk” onto the page as if they’re talking to a best friend, simply because that mental exercise animates that almost invisible frame of reference in the mind of the writer.* Writers who…

...continue to read "A Copywriter’s Intro to Frame-switching and Nested Storytelling"

Human nature hasn’t changed and neither have the priorities required for successfully conveying your message.

Contrary to common opinion, David Ogilvy didn’t have a preference for long copy.

What he had was an overwhelming bias towards anything that had been proven to work (which included long copy).  Ogilvy’s real, professed preferences were for consumer testing, research-driven techniques, and performance-based advertising in the truest sense of the term.

Based on those things, the conclusion he came to was that messaging and relevance had…

...continue to read "Tests Indicate Ogilvy’s Old-School Layout Still a Winner"

My previous post comparing billboards to online banner and space ads garnered positive comments and reviews – for the ads rather than my analysis!

Still, there was an unmistakable cry for more, and being the reader-pleasing whore that I am, well… here are some more innovative billboard ads

So for the copywriters out there, here are a few examples where great copy/message beats clever design and visual puns:

Ouch!  Starbucks can’t be happy with that one.  Doesn’t get much more powerful that…

...continue to read "Strong Copy vs. Cheeky Design"

If you haven’t heard yet, Pringles has received some rather high praise for a humorous and clickable banner ad.  But if you look past the fun-to-click aspect of the ad, you’ll find that the actual invitation to click the ad is rather subtle.

Nothing in the ad itself looks “clickable” – no colored and underlined text, no 3-d lighting effects or button-ish looking objects, etc.

Just a small word bubble from the Pringles guy saying “click.”  And if you scroll…

...continue to read "Pringles use of Story Appeal"