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project 03 :: Internet Marketing :: Advertising and PR 01
A LESSON IN ADVERTISING FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Hitting the big time with affiliate program marketing, or marketing on
the web in general, rests on on a number of elements; the item you pick
to market, the kind of advertising you utilize, the amount of your
advertising budget, etc. One article in particular has existed since
the advent of the net. It has in previous years, and still is churning
out large sums of money for scores of online businesses. The product I
am eluding to is information. On this site you will come across a wide
array of material on marketing programs, marketing, web site building,
advertising and much more. Enjoy!
Back in the 1760s, the great
Dr Samuel Johnson delivered himself of the dictum that ‘promise, large
promise is the soul of advertising’. It’s a good thought, a great
thought; and I contend that what was true then is equally true today.
But it seems to me that modern advertisers are tying themselves into
unnecessary knots in an attempt to reach audiences which they believe
are becoming increasingly indifferent to their blandishments.
Well, yes, markets are turning deaf ears and blind eyes, but they
always have done, though not for the reasons generally espoused by the
world’s marketers. I am convinced that despite all the sophisticated
research and marketing
effort that goes into advertising these days, the real reason that
markets are indifferent to advertising is because much of it ignores
the many splendoured principle that people don’t buy products, they buy
the benefits of owning those products.
Today, the great proportion of advertisers don’t deliver sales
messages, they tell what they hope are emotive stories with which the
market can empathise, then they drop the product in as an afterthought,
hoping that enough emotional cross-communication has been achieved for
people to reach for their credit cards. That it doesn’t and people
won’t has resulted in huge advertising budget cut-backs in the
developed world in recent years. Only a manufacturer who has taken
leave of his senses will throw even more money at a strategy that
doesn’t work.
The strategy responsible operates under the title Emotional Sales
Proposition (ESP), thought in some quarters to be an advance on the
Unique Sales Proposition (USP) which, on the contrary, does actually
work. What has been overlooked or, more likely, ignored, is that in
developing the principle of the USP in the late 1950s, the brilliant
Rosser Reeves was striving to replace an advertising strategy that had
been in situ for 30 or so years and was fast running out of steam. What
was the device he was hoping to supersede? Well, by any other name, it
was the emotional sales proposition. I won’t bore you with the detail,
but if you’d like to find out more, you should lay your hands on
Reeves’ book, Reality in Advertising (MacGibbon & Kee – 1961). It
could be an eye-opener.
So, it’s true – the one thing we learn from history is that
we never learn anything from history. Let’s go back to Dr Johnson. It’s
worth remembering that the kind of advertising old Sam was talking
about in the 18th century was fairly innocuous and largely
unexceptionable. It could be read in coffee- house flyers, in chapbooks
and in rudimentary newspapers; and it consisted of sales messages as
diverse as where to get your wig powdered and the date of the next
public hanging at Tyburn. Even so, the products and services on offer
were as important to the people of the time as mobile phones and
computers are to us.
In the human condition, nothing much changes. Our egos still need
to be massaged and we are all in hot pursuit of happiness. Only our
methods for achieving these goals, only our technologies, vary with
time.
So the next time you are tempted to commit advertising,
think about Sam Johnson and give your market a reason for owning your
product. A good reason.
About The Author
Patrick Quinn is an award winning copywriter with 40 years'
experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and
Edinburgh. He publishes a FREE monthly newsletter, AdBriefing.
Subscriptions are available at: http://www.adbriefing.com
We hope you found the information on this page useful and will return often to browse
the many articles throughout our site. We will be adding new material on an ongoing
basis in order to keep our visitors up to date on the latest promotion and marketing
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