a) Nip to the loo?

b) Pop the kettle on? Or

c) Fast-forward the adverts?

The presenters on some channels even encourage you to leave the room now (which would upset me a little if I’d paid thousands of pounds to show my advert on their channel).

Let’s imagine you choose option C (otherwise this will be a very short post).  You fast-forward the adverts.  But one of them is so compelling, you have to rewind the recording and watch it.  Surely that is the new power of advertising.  It happened in our house last night and I was absolutely amazed that my husband (who really dislikes marketing!) rewound the adverts to watch one that had shown.

…which got me to thinking.  Perhaps we should be designing adverts (if we don’t already) that work fantastically well on fast-forward.  Many people do watch the adverts at speed, so advertisers can perhaps use that to their advantage.  I for one would love to see what they could achieve.

The ads will use a ‘sex sells’ strategy to see if advertising triggers primate responses in the monkeys.  They’re keeping it simple – a billboard shows a graphic shot of a female monkey – Well… if it works on humans!

Yale University research shows that monkeys understand money and behave in similar ways to humans when faced with decisions in games, so the results should be fascinating.  If you’re as fascinated as I was, you can read more at http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-06/28/advertising-campaign-aimed-at-monkeys

It’s business suicide.  If someone walks into your business, or calls you up on the phone, or drops you an email for a quote, that’s about as sure a sign as you get that they’re in the market for your product right now.

Are you allowing people to get away without offering to help?  It costs you nothing to ask… I bet that company spends thousands on marketing and advertising and then misses the people who do come through the door.  What a waste!

One of the sales agents didn’t even get out of her chair to speak to us.  Now maybe she’d had an entire morning of people wanting to (and ready to) buy houses from her and was exhausted by the time lunch arrived.  (Since the office was empty when we arrived and when we left, I’m not sure that was the case and, as she got up to find us some property details later on, I know she wasn’t injured or unable to stand.)

In contrast, another agent selling similar properties was able to tell us about each individual property and the situation of each buyer.  Which were keen to sell and which were unlikely to negotiate.  She was able to discuss which properties would rent easily and which wouldn’t and, although she wasn’t the manager of the office, she was incredibly knowledgeable, friendly and helpful.

Both of these estate agencies are within 100 yards of each other.  I wonder which one has been the most profitable throughout the recession?

Some tips to take from the story for your own business include:

1. Do you greet everyone with a smile?  It’s such a simple thing, but are you happy to speak to customers (whether face to face, or by phone) or do you treat them like an interruption?
2. Do you offer to help?
3. Do you know your products / services in detail (and do your point of service staff know your products and services sufficiently well)?
4. Are your computer systems available at all times (one of the agents’ systems was down for the whole day as the servers were being upgraded, so they couldn’t give us property details.  Why couldn’t the servers be upgraded on Sundays – when they’re closed?)
5. Which brings me to… are you open when your customers are shopping?  Most people view and research properties at evenings and weekends, but those timings differ from when most estate agencies are open.
6. Do you collect information from people who visit or speak to your company?  Offering to send information, follow-up, keep people informed of new products, enter them in a prize draw… whatever it takes.  It’s worthwhile collecting data wherever possible, so you can use it in your marketing.
7. Do you follow-up?  If someone gives you their telephone number, do you call them back?  We viewed a new property two weeks ago which was for sale for £129,000. We were happy to leave our details, but the sales person never even called us to follow-up.  Are you guilty of the same thing?

We know it’s not just estate agents.  These things happen in every company – and they lose sales.  If you’re spending any money at all on advertising and generating new prospects and you’re failing to implement some of the points above, you’re wasting your money.

The seven tips cost you very little (if anything) to implement and they’ll have an immediate impact on your sales.

Good Luck and let me know the results…

This morning, we had the launch of product placement in TV programming, which has been common in the USA and other European countries for years and the BBC interviewed someone from PACT (the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television) who clearly stated that fewer people watch adverts on TV.  So why are we extending ad-breaks, I wonder?  (I won’t be recommending that any of my clients advertise in longer breaks.)

Product placement is a fascinating area though.  The great thing is that this should assist in funding programming – leading to higher quality programmes which are better for the viewer.  I don’t think anyone is against programmers making money, so they can make better programmes.  I just hope the product placement isn’t limited to the same few brands who can afford this exposure – I think that would be an opportunity wasted to embrace and support small businesses.  Whilst it’s new though, there could be some good deals available…

Researchers at IBM are working on a similar product based on the Oyster card technology used on London Underground.  These billboards will be able to react to personal preferences known from your Oyster card, credit card and mobile phone.

What I’d like to know is how they react to a crowd?  I’ve never seen an underground advert or billboard location with just one person in it’s line of sight. Billboards are designed to reach mass audiences, so is it possible to personalise or will they spend their time adapting and miss the passer-by as they change?  All comments welcome…

His advice includes:

• Using long headlines – adverts with more than 10 words as their headline are proven to sell more
• Include the target audience in your headline, for example ‘brides’ or ‘teenage men’ etc.
• Put your headline in quotes to improve recall

I can highly recommend his book ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ if you want to know more.

In addition to the list above and from our own experience, we would add the following:

• Include your company / product name in the headline – if 80% of people only read the headline, at least they’ll receive your branding within it
• Focus on the benefits – customers and prospects want to know what’s in it for them, not your product features
• Tell the truth – if you can make claims that can be backed up by fact, then make them, but be honest about your product – if you aren’t, the internet review sites will be.

If you are employing people to design your advert or piece of direct mail, please don’t assume they know the rules of advertising, in terms of what sells and what doesn’t.  We would urge you to find people that do know and then let them do their job – because you may not understand the rules of advertising either.

There are formulas that work, there are formulas that sell.  If you follow them, you’ll increase your return on investment.  So please create marketing that works for your customers – not marketing that you or your designer like the look of.

There is no doubt that some companies use advertising to fantastic effect and the medium enables them to reach mass markets in a way that previously wasn’t possible using any other medium.  But, with the advent of digital TV and the emerging online media, the world of advertising has changed.  Audiences are being increasingly fragmented, which means less people are watching your ads.  Using innovations such as Sky Plus and video on demand, customers can avoid watching any adverts at all.

So… I was intrigued to see the advertising industry taking its own advice recently and advertising itself.  I’m even more intrigued to see what the results will be.  The advert itself clearly works – we were told about it at a dinner party, before we’d seen it.  When the advert started, we were anticipating the punchline and watched it from beginning to end.  And thinkbox have created an amusing and memorable advert and a memory hook of ‘every home needs a Harvey’…you need to see it to understand.

I’d love to know what you think about it…please let me have your feedback as to whether you like the advert, but also (crucially) whether it would encourage you to buy advertising.

How times have changed. And for me, they’ve changed for the better.  Customers now have an endless source of information about products they might like to buy.  They can review them on forums and ask their friends about which they’d recommend.  They can ‘Google’ the brand and test how socially aware a company is.  And, ultimately, they have the power to decide who they buy from.

Convenience is king – and the internet has brought that in spades.  It’s changed the way our high streets look and created a whole new raft of brands unheard of 10 years ago.  Most companies now have a large number of competitors; some online and some offline and, unless you’re doing something unusual, it’s very difficult to stand out from the crowd.

Generalist services and companies have given way to niche products and services.  Customers like to know you understand their particular wants and needs and can offer them better customer service.  The plus side is that they’ll then share you with their friends online – provided you make it easy for them to do so.

Kevin Roberts, worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi said in a recent interview “We’ve moved from an attention economy – where marketing was about interrupting people – to a participation economy, where people want to pass on things they like to a friend”.

What exciting times we live in…We hope you’re taking advantage of those changes in your business.

The secrets to the success include creating likeable characters, entertaining adverts and the designers have also managed to cleverly repeat the brand name several times – without being annoying.  What’s even better is the follow-up to the campaign – it’s not just a TV advert; the meerkats have their own web page and Aleksandr has his own Facebook profile.

Whilst the campaign’s a huge amount of fun, you know I’m always focused on the profits from marketing – so what about the results?  According to a recent edition of ‘The Marketer’, the results speak for themselves:

• From January – August 2009, there was an 83% increase in traffic to comparethemarket.com’s website
• Direct traffic rose from 30-50%
• Aleksandr Orlov’s own Facebook page has 600,000 fans

If only all advertising could be so effective – and so entertaining!