StratTalk eNews — Issue 9, February 2009

Welcome to 2009 and this year’s first issue of StratTalk eNews, courtesy of The 60 Minute Strategic Plan. In this economic climate, the old adage, When the going gets tough, the tough get going, comes to mind, but we’d like to add the tough get strategizing! How can you know where you’re going without a strategy? That’s why we continue to do well with our book and software sales and workshops despite the state of the economy—because it’s clearer than ever that to be effective, the use of time must be economized. And that requires strategy! If you haven’t created your 2009 strategic plan, it’s time to do so. It’s February, so take heart and reach out for The 60 Minute Strategic Plan. Both the book and workshops can help to make this a “strategically successful” year for you. Please let us know how we can help!

John E. Johnson, CEO
Anne Marie Smith, President

Advertising Creative Strategy: Using Attraction to Make the Sale

“Git In” Where You Fit In

Advertising “gits in” when your product’s reason for being fits in with the prospect’s need for information. Advertising attracts when it motivates the customer to act on what they want to do anyway. What triggers that action depends on the customer’s personal purchasing criteria. For example, in our last newsletter, we encouraged you to estimate two key customer purchasing criteria as it relates to your product or service.

• The level or degree of importance your product plays in the life of your customer
• Whether that person is primarily responding to your sales appeal with cool logic or warm emotion

Note: Without a written creative strategy, those with less information will guide advertising development, creating the likelihood that it will go off target, thus wasting your advertising money.

Four Purchasing Criteria Categories and Correlating Communication Styles

Customers View Your Product or Service as:	Therefore, How to Communicate:
Important and logical	Provide ample information to justify long‑term return on investment
Important and emotional	Illustrate how ownership will personally reflect and enhance the buyer
Unimportant and logical	Stress utterly dependable performance; once tried, always used
Unimportant and emotional	Portray the personal benefits experienced with each and every use

Creative People: Different in the Same Way

The creative minds in advertising—copy writers and art directors—are talented and highly individualistic people. How, you ask, can such a crowd of innovators be convinced to act as a harmonious team? How do you avoid the issue of terminal uniqueness? How do you welcome each person’s individuality, and at the same time, support them to blend in contributing to a common cause? The answer lies in strategy. Just as musicians can bring their individual gifts into an orchestral whole by focusing together on a single composition, directed by a single conductor, so too are copy writers and art directors brought into harmony. Here the single composition is a well‑formulated creative advertising strategy led by the advertiser.

Mike Koelker described his approach to creativity as the strategic alteration of reality. Note the emphasis on strategic, which implies clear intention to build creativity on top of reality. The ads created by Mike Koelker (copy) and Chris Blum (art) won National and International awards for Levi Strauss & Company, and set new standards of advertising excellence for their two decades of teamwork.

You Get the Advertising You Deserve

Creativity is the magic bullet in advertising selling. How do you get it? Here are some thoughts on the subject.

DO NOT

• Involve yourself in the creative process. Doing so compromises the accountability of the creative team.
• Allow creative approval by committee. Remember: A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
• Permit your advertising to bear any resemblance to your competitors’. If you do, customers will assume there is little difference between your two products.

DO

• Insist that the creative aspect of the advertising is strategically grounded. Always present the strategy before presenting the creative dimension.
• Trust your creative people to do what they do well, but verify their work.
• Verify by testing the creativity with a selected customer group.
• Ask what specific action by consumers will be hastened as a result of seeing the ad.
• Ask the creative people, Is this your most imaginative work?
• Have the advertising creators themselves present their work to the client’s creative people.
• Spend the appropriate amount on advertising production.*

* It is well documented that 95% of the advertising budget is allocated to buying media and the remaining 5% to producing the advertising. That disproportionate percentage has never made sense to me. Media is just a blank time slot. It’s what you place inside that time slot that makes all the difference. It’s also a fact that, like a lot of other things, you get what you pay for. Creative on the cheap is not a sound advertising practice—or investment.

What People Say About Our Workshops

It was a great presentation that did an amazing job of bringing not only focus but also a realistic action plan for a solution to the challenge. I feel like it was a fantastic use of my time!!!

Nancy Allardyce, Allardyce Resources

I really enjoyed the workshop even better this time than last. I would ‘chalk’ it up to business maturity—my appreciation for simple, quick and effective business tools has risen dramatically in my time as president. So this really hits the spot!

Stephen C. Patterson, President, Central Valley Builders Supply