WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT ABOUT?

Have you ever had the same reaction to an ad, whether in print, radio or television, that Dagwood had? If you watched television during the Super Bowl in recent years, I'll bet you have. One of my favorites of all time were the series of ads for an Internet company called Outpost.com. Remember them? Probably not. Ever been to their Web site? Nah. But what great commercials!

You remember...the well-dressed older gentleman speaking to the camera in a soft voice while seated in a large chair next to a cozy fireplace. He was talking to us about a new kind of company that helped you do something on the Internet....what exactly I have no recollection. But then....then the camera panned over to the other side of the room where gerbils were being loaded into a cannon and fired at a small hole in the middle of a brick wall. The first several missed, and each time the sound of a splat was followed by a camera shot of the older man saying, "Just missed," and "That was close." I believe the second series of commercials involved the same old man setting a pack of hungry wolves loose on a collegiate marching band. We talked about it at the office water cooler the next day, but had no idea what the heck it was all about.

The above is a great illustration of what is wrong with the bulk of advertising today. Too many ad agencies creating slick-looking, over-produced ads that are nothing more than eye candy. Sure, they look great, and they win the ad agency awards, but are they effective?

What Roy Williams writes about this problem is the following:

Advertisers assume that people comprehend their ads. Most often, they do not. The volume of advertising which gushes toward the customer’s mind is like a fire hose aimed at a teacup. There is simply too much rushing in to contain. Most advertising in America is deflected, spilled and lost. At the end of the day, precious little information is retained.Will your advertising be part of that precious little, or is it being deflected, spilled and lost?

The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience is read by doctors and medical students who desire to understand how human beings recognize and identify objects, use visual mental images, read, produce and comprehend language, move and store new information in memory, etc. (I think it makes sense for ad writers to understand these things, too.)

Stephen Kosslyn, an editor for the journal and a professor of psychology at Harvard, tells us how auditory pattern activation is an essential element in language skills. Kosslyn says, "A word is like a key. When a word unlocks the correct stored memories, it is meaningful."

I believe the carefully guided recall of a sequence of these stored memories is the magic behind every powerful ad. Do the words of your ads unlock stored memories in the mind of the listener? The memories can be real or imagined. The important thing is that they be recalled from the mind in such a manner as to actively engage the imagination. To put it plainly, you must cause the listener to see himself taking precisely the action you so artfully describe. When the listener does not mentally participate, the advertising is deflected, spilled and lost.

"Engage the imagination and take it where you will. Where the mind has journeyed repeatedly, the body will surely follow. People go only to places they have already been in their minds."

What Is "Branding," Really?
"Branding" is the hot, new buzzword favored by smooth talking ad people who always seem to speak as though it were something new and mysterious. So far, I have yet to find even one of these empty suits who has the slightest idea of how branding is accomplished in the mind.

Branding is far from new. Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel prize for his research into branding in 1904. Remember the story? Day after day, Pavlov would ring a bell as he rubbed meat paste onto the tongue of a dog. The dog soon began to associate the taste of the meat with the sound of the bell until salivation became the dog’s conditioned response. In psychological terms, this is known as, "the implantation of an associative memory." In other words, "branding" in all its glory.

There are three keys to implanting an associative memory into the mind of your customer. The first key is consistency. Pavlov never offered food without ringing the bell and he never rang the bell without offering food. The second key is frequency, meaning that Pavlov did it day after day after day.

The third key, anchoring, is the tricky one. When implanting an associative memory, the new and unknown element (the bell,) has to be associated with a memory which is already anchored in the mind, (the taste of meat.) Frequency and consistency create "branding" only when your message is tied to an established emotional anchor. Pavlov’s branding campaign was anchored to the dog’s love for the taste of meat. If the dog did not love meat, the frequent and consistent ringing of the bell would have produced no response other than to irritate the dog.

If I say, "It’s a Norman Rockwell kind of restaurant," you immediately think of the place as being, "cozy, happy, warm, innocent and kid-friendly," right? Your assumptions about the restaurant would be anchored to your feelings about the art of Norman Rockwell. To frequently and consistently associate the restaurant with Norman Rockwell would be to implant an associative memory into the mind. Branding.

The buying public is your dog. If you desire a specific response from it, you must tie your identity to an emotional anchor which is already known to elicit the desired response. If you make such an association with consistency and frequency, branding will occur...but don’t expect too much too soon. It takes a lot of repetition to train a dog to salivate at the sound of your name.

Do you have the patience, Pavlov?