The concept is this and it’s a simple one: In your advertising, sell YOUR particular brand of product or service and not just the idea of buying the type of product or service that you sell. If you manufacture fans, for example, and your advertising convinces a potential customer to buy one—it’s summer, it’s hot, fans cost less to operate than air conditioning—but falls short of why the buyer should purchase YOUR fan, you very well might create a sale for your competitor.
Seems like a no-brainer, but helping competitors with poor advertising happens all the time and not just by unsophisticated mom-and-pop businesses. Cruise lines sell the idea of getting away from it all. Automakers ask if, by golly, you don’t deserve a new convertible. Internet service providers push how much faster DSL is than dial-up service. But which cruise line, which make of car, which ISP? Ads that fail to position the advertiser properly can sizzle with a call to action—successfully driving consumers to a travel agent to book a cruise, to a car lot to purchase a car and to the Web to research Internet access—but who gets the sale is a crapshoot.
Of course, convincing your market that it needs whatever it is you sell is right up there on the priority list too, but directly opposite your brand, not below. Don’t just sell “a” vacation, “a” convertible or DSL service. Sell that your cruise line travels to where others don’t; that your make of automobile gets 45 miles to the gallon; that your ISP offers same-day installation.
Simple? Quite, but sometimes it’s the small stuff that’s overlooked. At Ryan William’s Agency, while we’ve got some big, creative widget-selling ideas, we also won’t let you forget the basics.
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