When you grow up on the creative side of the advertising industry you learn the hard way, how to judge your own advertising.
Because your direct boss, the Creative Director, is screaming “IT’S SHIT! DO IT OVER. TRY AGAIN!”
That person is usually a much harder sell than the client.
Creative Directors know what constitutes a good ad versus a worthless one. They make sure that only the best ideas see the light of day. They value the craft of advertising, and the magic of creative collaboration.
They have much higher standards than any client I’ve encountered over the last 30 years.
Business owners and marketing directors have a very difficult time judging their own advertising.
They don’t understand how exaggeration, humor and metaphor can be effective in advertising. They are not aware of the important psychological hooks being deployed. They forget that audiences don’t know what they know about the product or category.
All they have to go on is purely subjective judging criteria. Nothing but gut reaction.
So they often have a visceral, negative reaction to great ideas, and then approve absolutely worthless ads. Like this one for example:
1. Is there a compelling, original idea behind it?
Great advertising begins with a big idea that can extend beyond one execution or one media channel.
When it’s done right you don’t get just one ad, you get a whole family of ads that can be executed in a variety of ways. It’s a creative gift that keeps on giving!
So when you’re judging your advertising, think bigger.
Look beyond one commercial or one digital ad, and ask yourself, does this idea have legs? Can we build a campaign around it, or is it just a one-off proposition?
The idea behind the “Got Milk” campaign spurred dozens of different ads in all shapes, sizes and styles. It ran for 21 years in various forms, and for several different milk marketing organizations.
Go ahead a grade your latest ad on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 means there’s no idea at all, and 10 means it’s a truly compelling idea that you could build your brand around.
2. Are your ads Visually Distinctive?
If you study all the ads in any given product or service category you’ll see a ridiculous amount of similarity. None look distinctively different.
Every golf club ad looks high tech and racy.
Every pizza commercial shows the “pull” shot, with the cheese dripping from a slice of pizza.
In many cases you could swap out logos and the ads would work just as well for any of the companies.
That’s a problem.
So when you’re trying to judge your own advertising, ask yourself, could your biggest competitor run this ad with a simple logo swap? Or do your ads include distinctive brand assets that makes the ads obviously yours.
Distinctive brand assets are incredibly important. They provide a recognizable connection to your brand, even if people aren’t paying attention to the ad.
Once you have some distinctive brand assets you have to stick with them for the long haul. Repetition is your friend! If you keep changing the look and feel and visual signature of your advertising, you’re going to lose a lot of leverage.
What you’re looking for are ads that make your competitors insanely jealous. You want them saying, “damn, I wish we had done that ad.”
Also, don’t overlook sound as a distinctive brand asset. In this age of podcasting, audio signatures have come back into vogue. (Like back in the glory days of radio advertising)
Grade your ads on a scale of 1 to 10… 1 is utterly generic, and 10 is dramatically distinctive and original.
3. Are your ads attention-getting in a relevant way?
Special effects, dumb stunts, Ai animation and random, crazy camera work can be attention getting. But that type of attention seldom translates into brand awareness, much less increased sales.
So the big idea should be directly in line with your value proposition and with your brand personality.
Sometimes it’s a real challenge to accomplish that, and still get attention.
Some brands are just boring. Some categories are boring. And if that’s the case, you’ll have to work especially hard to produce great advertising. But there’s always a way. Just gotta go back to the well!
Grade your ads on relevance, alignment and attention-getting.
Chances are, if they’re built on a compelling idea and include distinctive brand assets, they’ll make the grade on the other things.
And, of course, after the fact there’s always the click-through data, traffic reports, and conversion ratios to consider.
If you’d like a second opinion about an upcoming campaign, or if you’re just baffled why your recent advertising is not pulling as well, contact me here.
When they are shown a new idea for an ad campaign there are only three possible reactions: Either they like it, they hate it, or they have no idea what to think of it.
