Creation of large advertising campaigns

Here I present my recipes for preparing advertising campaigns - eleven commandments that you must follow if you work in my agency:

- What you say is more important, not how you say it say so.

- If your advertising campaign is not built around a specific idea, it will fail. The content of the advertisement, and not its form, determines whether your consumer will buy or not buy the product. Your important task is to decide what you are going to tell about your product and what benefits you are going to promise. Two hundred years ago, Dr. Joson said: “A promise, a big promise is the spirit of advertising.”

- Give the facts. The consumer is not a weak-minded creature. You insult him if you think so. that a simple appeal and a few enthusiastic adjectives will persuade him to make some purchase. He wants all the information you can give. When I was a hawker, I found that the more information I gave about my product, the more I was able to sell. Fifty years ago, Claude Hopkins made the same discovery about advertising. But most modern text writers find it easier to write short, lazy promotional messages. Gathering facts is hard work.

- You can't force people to buy. The average reader now reads only four of all the advertisements that appear in a regular magazine. He skims more, but usually one quick glance is enough to realize that the ad is too boring. Competition for customer attention is becoming more intense every year. The client is bombarded with a billion dollars a month in advertising. Thirty thousand trademarks compete for space in his memory. If you want your voice to be heard amid this deafening onslaught of advertising, your voice must be extraordinary. If you use our rules, you can reach more readers for every advertising dollar spent.

- Have good manners and don't make yourself look like clowns. You should try to persuade the consumer so that he will buy the product with pleasure. This doesn't mean your ads have to be too witty or comedic. They don't buy anything from clowns. When a housewife fills a basket with shopping, she is in a completely steady mind and clear memory.

- Make your advertising modern.

- Committees may criticize advertisements, but they will not write them . Advertising, in my opinion, gives more when it is written by one person. He must study the product itself, research and precedents. Then he must slam the door in the office and write an advertisement.

- If you do not know how to write new good advertisements, repeat the old ones as long as they have a positive effect.

- Never write an advertisement , which you wouldn’t want to suggest reading to your own family. You wouldn't lie to your own wife. So don’t lie to me either. If you don't tell the truth about a product, it will be discovered either by the government, which will prosecute you, or by consumers, who will punish you by refusing to buy your product a second time.

- Image and Brand. Each advertisement must be a contribution to a common symbol called "Brand Image". If you accept this point of view, most daily problems will resolve themselves. Most manufacturers are reluctant to accept any framework within which the brand image must be created. They want their brand to be universal, so they usually settle on one that has no personality.

- Don't imitate others. If you've ever created a successful advertising campaign, you'll soon find out that another agency stole your idea. This is annoying, but don't let it bother you: no one has yet created a trademark by copying advertising invented by others.

©   D. Ogilvy