Which kind of marketing might actually get you to pay attention — a monkey driving a banana car, or fourteen paragraphs of features and benefits?
Yeah, I thought so.
“Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.”
- Mark Twain
I’ve always thought of advertising in any form as a trade. You’re asking the reader or listener for something extremely valuable — a slice of their attention. So what are you going to offer in return?
For some reason, I’ve noticed an awful lot of articles lately with lists of “Forbidden Words”. Maybe it’s a new year tradition. As a service to our beloved SharediDiz readers, I’ll bring together the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) from several of these lists.
1. Tighten it up.
Credit union marketers (or maybe it’s just marketers in general) have a particularly hard time knowing when to stop putting words on a page. More words don’t persuade more — they just get in the way of making your point. Edit ruthlessly.
Apologies in advance for lack of credit union content…
Back in January, I finally got my first smart phone. Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies have been a lot of fun, and the eBay app makes it waaaay too easy to spend money on obscure motorcycle parts.
Band-Aid. Kleenex. Google.
These three very different items have something in common. Can you guess what it is?
All have fallen victim to “genericization,” or when a brand becomes so popular, so engrained in our brains that the name becomes synonymous with the product. At first blush, you might think this is a great thing. All tissues are known as Kleenex! How great is that for the makers of Kleenex? After all, no one ever says “I need a Puffs for my nose.”
As a Wordsmith (that’s the official title I put on my business cards, anyway), I’m a big fan of new words. I recently ran across a doozy: skeuomorph.
Briefly, a skeuomorph is an object or element of design that serves no real purpose, but only echoes some past object. For example, many calendar applications on modern-day computers and mobile devices mimic paper calendars. This is useful because it’s instantly understandable to most people.
True confession: I actually read most of my junk mail, even the misguided pitches for adult diapers and hearing aids.
Maybe I’m a little strange, but before the mail hits the recycling bin, I always take a few moments to see what the competition is up to, and think about ways to keep our clients’ “direct mail” from turning into “junk mail”. (A lot of marketers do this, right? I hope so…)
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