A Picture Beats a Thousands Words

This following list is a great thing to keep in mind when you are trying to catch the attention of customers - particularly over your competition.

Most of these are based on testing or research by Gallup

1. When appropriate, cartoons attract most attention. They can work well on postal items like envelopes.
2. Photos convince most people. It is sensible to use them if looks or credibility matters.
3. Charts and statistics often attract interest - e.g. weight-loss figures or interest rates.
4. People look at people. 
5. Responses for can double when people can see who is talking to them in adverts.
6. Men look at attractive women; so do women. But women look at babies even more.
7. Illustrations or pictures that relate directly to the message work on average 32% better.
8. Captured TV frames from commercials are extremely effective.
9. If you don't illustrate the product or the idea, your advert can be 27% less effective than average. 
10. Generic stereotypes - smiling business people, chatting 'friends', loving couples and ecstatic eaters can kill your adverts -  they don't demonstrate and develop an uniqueness.
11. If the picture has something odd about it, people remember the message - ask a newspaper photographer!
12. One big picture usually attracts better than several small ones.
13. Pictures should demonstrate what you are saying - Before and after pictures are particularly effective.
14. Cut out pictures with 'free form' shape attract the eye better than squared-up ones.
15. Don't have pictures just for the sake of it; they cost money and can divert attention needlessly.
16. Research suggests that you should never use pictures that have nothing to with the product or service but seem a clever idea... There is a balance between number 11 and number 16!

Top Ten Tips on Writing Copy from a Master

Drayton Bird

I love getting emails from Drayton Bird. Always worth a read - some more than others, but hey ... he is a prolific emailer.

David Ogilvy (an advertising god is case you are too young!) said Drayton Bird "knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world." - that's a hell of an accolade from someone who should know!

Today Drayton sent this excerpt from a book called 'The Unpublished David Ogilvy' that was originally privately printed over 25 years ago.

"The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. 

Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning - and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don't write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

Wise words. You can be as clever as you like, but the idea about writing things to be read is just that - they should be written to be ... read. Do yourself and your readers a favour - follow Ogilvy's 10 tips on writing.

To find more Drayton Bird Droppings see - http://drayton-bird-droppings.blogspot.com/

Is it Sales and/or Marketing??

Someone has ignited a fuse.... MY fuse ... I have been following Twitter and the tweets from @MarketingWeekEd and with that many of the comments about Sales and Marketing as separate entities. Some I just couldn't. I was on the verge of tipping myself over the edge.

I know they are only commenting ... and everyone only sees things from their own point of view .... but what a bucket of generalism!

• On one side there is: Remembering Ritson's view Know When to Shut the Door on a Customer.

• One the other side there is apparently 'controversially' the CIM suggesting sales & marketing merge  Marketing needs to Merge with Sales to Safeguard its Future 

PURLEEZ!! First and foremost it depends on what the business is trying to achieve... It is then up to Marketing to make that happen or at very least influence results enough to make it easier for the rest of the business to make that happen....

... And given that there are a lot of businesses out there, that are more focused on working to get and keep paying customers, most marketing people couldn't function if they didn't understand sales... and when I say 'sales' I mean .... to be a quality that makes people want to buy, have, to do or not do something.

Its all very well sitting there in a Marketing tower, talking.

Marketing - like Sales, should, and in the main is, measured on results. And Marketing should be lead by what the business for which/whom it is fulfilling its role actually wants - ie The Marketing function understands their own clients needs and works to get them what they want.... It's not rocket science and it astounds me every time when people try to make it complicated!!!