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In some cases we have forgotten things we used to know about the holistic process of advertising Today we are most focused on price box checking keeping one39s head down keeping up with the workflow speed required at each stage and staying abreast of new companies and acronyms and the best use of newest buzzwordsamp160The infusion of new generations into the cadre has also had a profound effect The new generations are not shy about acting upon their inherent biases toward the media they themselves use mostly digitalWords are thrown around without regard for their actual denotative meaning kludging together entirely different things like recall and attitudesBrilliant minds who happen to be newcomers to the profession jump to conclusions that the task of advertising is to get attention keep it get emotion and make sure the brand is associated with the rest of the data packet encoded in the brain of the audience members Not that this is wrong it is simply incomplete and because it39s incomplete it isn39t very helpful to marketers and creative people trying to get the intended business outcomesLet39s see if in a threeminute read we can review back to basics and end with a clearer understanding of how to do advertising that gets the desired outcome Given spacetime constraints I39ll focus on screen media but almost all the remarks below relate equally across all mediaFirst what is the outcome we should intendOne size does not fit all but the classical answer is a brand growth b consumer lifetime value CLV or LV c shortterm incremental sales whose profit contribution exceeds media and creative cost and d brand equity The Marketing Accountability Standards Board MASB continues to work toward a standardized and accepted way of calculating brand equity Currently I use CLV as a proxy for brand equity Other contenders as practical proxies for brand equity are brand love and Net Promoter Score NPSEstimating in postevaluation mode what advertising achieved is currently the work mostly of marketing mix modeling MMM and brand lift studies Random Control Trials RCTs would be far more accurateLet39s say you have set the outcomes you want and set up a true full funnel RCT to measure them post hoc Okay that39s good now you have to create the adsTo begin think in terms of quotadsquot not quotadquot There are many types of people you want to influence with them Hence you need more than one ad Also your brand may have more than one story worth telling right now and with proper media optimization you can tell those stories in bitesize pieces in a sequence of creative executions personalized to the specific ID working with publishers enabling deterministic targeting and measurementYour research must have identified what motivates the different pools of people who buy your product category These motivations are what your ads need to speak toThe opening of the ad is crucially important If you don39t catch the attention quickly enough the impression could be virtually valuelessDon39t forget the audio in connection with the beginning of the ad Sure the visual is vitally important but so is the audio The audio is capable of bringing wandering eyes back to the screen If your opening words are clearly understandable and hook into the apperception survival mechanism by being relevant to the individual39s motivations you will get attentionThe ad then must maintain attention Attention is relatively easily gained remember David Ogilvy39s famous dictum about a gorilla wearing a jockstrap but even more easily lostAfter the first few seconds the maintenance of attention depends on the interest level of the story being toldBoth in the opening few seconds and thereafter surprise and novelty are powerful factors if executed well To achieve such executional excellence requires that the story remain true to the brand in memory must show something new and good about the brand adding a new attribute relevant to the motivations of that individual something new and good which engages the audience member39s emotionsToday39s ads are shifting in the direction of social purpose and altruism which is good because this has been thought of yet largely ignored since the 1970s and it is very capable of engaging the right emotions that make the brand more attractive to the individual as a potential life partnerThis attitude shift is also called quotpersuasionquot and is the closest thing to the outcomes listed above short and longterm sales and branding effectsPeople who think a lot about attention should not let their guard down as regards persuasion There will not be persuasion if there has not been attention but if persuasion is absent the attention might do you little good The Bert and Harry Piels beer commercials years ago taught the industry that commercials can be tremendous at achieving attention and liking without any sales effectThis is the barest bones outline of a simple set of guideposts to not lose sight of in optimizing advertising for the most vital business outcomes Reductionistically one can keep in mind the words quotattentionquot and quotmotivationquot and the rest will fall into placePhoto by Jose Antonio Gallego VazquezClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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