Check List of 10 things that Great Advertising should do

When you are in the midst of an advertising project, and you’re feeling stuck as a Brand Leader use this simple check list to find out where things might be missing for you.  The best Advertising should do these 10 things:

1. Set Yourself Apart.  Beloved Brands must be different, better, cheaper or not around very long.   The story telling of the brand’s promise should help to separate the brand from the clutter of our minds. That starts with creative that feels different and makes the brand seem different.
2. Focused!   A focused target, a focused message, a focused strategy against a focused communication idea and a focused media.
3. Keep the Idea and Communication very simple.  Communication is not what is said, but what is heard. Too many people try to shout as many messages as they can in one ad.  What the consumer hears:  a confusing mess or nothing really.  My challenge to you is to stand up on a chair and yell your main message as though you are standing on top of a mountain.  If you can’t YELL it out in one breath, then your idea is too complex.  The Volvo Brand Manager gets to yell “Safety” in one clean simple breath.   Can you do that?
4. Have a Good Selling Idea.  While big ideas break through, they also help you to be consistent, because you have to align your thinking to the Big Idea.  You’ll see consistency over time, across mediums–paid, earned, social and search, throughout the entire brand line up of sub brands.  Consumers will start to connect to the big idea
5. Drive Engagement: Too many Brand Leaders get so fixated on saying their 7 messages that they figure the ability capture attention is just advertising fluff.  But it all starts with Attention.   The consumer sees 5,000 ads a day and will likely only engage in a handful.   If you don’t capture their attention, no one will remember the brand name, your main message or any other reason to believe you might have.
6. Let the Visuals do the talking.  With so many ads, you need to have some visual that can capture the attention, link to your brand and communicate your message.   The ‘see-say’ of advertising helps the consumers brain to engage, follow along and remember.  As kids, we always love the pictures.  We still do.
7. Sell the solution, not your product.  People use brands to solve problems in their lives.  They’d prefer not to have that problem than have to buy your brand.  No one has ever wanted a quarter-inch drill, they just need a quarter-inch hole.
8. Be Relevant with the Consumer. A beloved brand finds a way to matter to those who really care. Not only the right brand promise but in the right communication of that promise. You can’t sell carpet cleaning to someone who just has hard wood floors.
9. Based on a consumer Insight.  Insights are not facts about your brand.  That’s just you talking AT the consumer.   Insights allow you to connect and turn the ad into a conversation.  Insights are something the consumer already knows but they didn’t realize that everyone felt that way.  Insights enable consumers to see themselves in the situation and once you do that, the consumers might then figure the brand must be for them.
10. Tell the story behind the brand.  Talk about your brand’s purpose.  Why did you start this brand?   What do you hope that the brand really does to help people?   Why do you get up in the morning.

Advertising Sweet Spot when the Creative Idea drives the Attention, Branding, Communication and Stickiness