My Secret Sauce

When your advertising is accountable...you better be good.

I know the results of every campaign we have done because as a direct marketer I test and build in accountability to prove the success (or failure) of our advertising.
Over the years I've learned what the power of incorporating good branding into direct advertising can do. I've developed and tested the techniques that allow me to "fuse" brand and direct together to create a different type of advertising.

These techniques are my "secret sauce"

Here are the ingredients:

1. Reputation - What customers and prospects are saying about your product or service.


2. Promise - The tangible attributes that your product or service deliver.


3. Vision - What customers and prospects will be or become through interaction with your product or service.


4. Response Triggers - Words and visuals that get customers and prospects to take action.


5. Memory Triggers - Words and visuals that remain with the prospects who do not react to the response triggers.


6. Individuality - A unique communication experience for each customer or prospect.


7. Accountability - A risky ingredient, but well worth it to prove success.
   

When you combine these ingredients the right way, you create my secret sauce--advertising that delivers brand and generates response.

Jon

The Annual Roska Picnic

Our annual agency picnic is fast approaching!

That means all of the trash talk emails start flying around the agency as different agency teams try to recruit or just psych-out the competition. Ed B. and I love to play horseshoes and below is our trash talk email:

Equestrian Footwear Competition
That's right folks, it's that time again.
You have a shot at beating the unbeatable, of gaining some serious bragging rights by winning a game of horseshoes against the Jon R./Ed B. Equestrian Footwear team. We've won so many games over the years that we have lost count. The only team that even came close was the Ed R. team and we came back last year and beat them so bad that Ed R. needed a sock puppet to tell his therapist what happened to him.

Spectators and challengers are invited to watch Ed B. drink gallons of beer while throwing ringer after ringer. Don't miss Jon R. insulting the competition's Mother, children and dog as he caps their last throw. Come by, take your best shot, while Jon and Ed open a can of horseshoe whoop-ass on you.

Hear Ed and Jon not only insult you and everything you hold dear in life, but as a bonus you get to hear them insult each other with disparaging remarks sure to have you cheering.

So pick your partner, get some practice and say a prayer, light a candle or dance naked around a chicken, whatever works for you. See you there!
This trash talk is brought to you by the Jon R./Ed B. Equestrian Footwear World Champion Team.

Talk to your HR department before you send trash talk emails out.

Jon

Don't Forget the Memory Trigger

“Nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a Tasty Cake!”

A great advertising man, Charlie Coffey, who I had the honor of working with for several years, once told me, “If you can’t think of anything to say about a product, sing it.”

One of his best was the Tasty Cake jingle. Once you get that little tune stuck in your head, you were condemned to replay it over and over, for the next 24 hours. Now that’s a memory trigger.

Memory triggers are a key component to incorporating brand into a direct advertising campaign. They can come in many forms, visual, music, copy and they all relate to your product, service or brand.

Take a little quiz
Here’s a list of 10 memory triggers. You tell me what brand or product they represent –

1. Blue Box
2. Duck
3. Hot Air Balloon
4. Gecko
5. Repairman with nothing to do
6. LSMFT
7. Garden Gnome
8. Rabbit
9. Cowboy
10. Zoom Zoom

All of the above are memory triggers for large, broad market brands. Their advertising budgets give them the reach and frequency to ensure that most of you will be familiar with them, (#6 is worth bonus points if you get it right). The best memory triggers relate to things that we will see, hear or encounter in our everyday lives. It doesn’t matter how big the audience is; memory triggers can make an advertising campaign better.

Memory triggers help direct advertising work better
Many of you have a finite audience and using targeted direct advertising that delivers a memory trigger that ties back to your brand will do a better job.

We are working on a direct advertising campaign right now that uses famous statues in unusual poses as the memory trigger. The visuals are very creative, easy to remember and when people see a picture of the actual statue during their everyday work or play, they will relate it back to our client’s brand on a conscious or subconscious level.

Our objective is to generate an immediate response from a portion of the target market, while leaving strong brand memory triggers with the non-responders. This will maintain or improve response from the target market during future marketing efforts.

The RPV session leads to memory trigger development
As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, clearly defining your brand reputation, promise and vision gives you the positioning statements and power words you need to focus your creative thinking. It’s not unusual for a big idea to leap out of the process and deliver a great copy line or visual. Turn that into a memory trigger and you’re creating great advertising.

Here are the answers to the quiz

1. Blue Box – Tiffany & Co., if you’re ever lucky enough to get a gift from Tiffany’s, hang
onto the box. You’ll look like a big spender when you toss a $5 pair of earrings into it
and give it as a gift. In fact, that’s probably what the person who gave you the box did!
2. Duck – Aflac Insurance
3. Hot Air Balloon – RE/MAX Realtors
4. Gecko – GEICO, the lizard is good.
5. Repairman with nothing to do – the Maytag repairman
6. LSMFT – Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco – A famous campaign from the mid 40’s.
If you got this one, you’re old.
7. Garden Gnome -- Travelocity
8. Rabbit – you get two chances to get this one right. Kix cereal, “Silly rabbit, Kix are for kids”
or the Energizer Bunny.
9. Cowboy – Marlboro Man
10. Zoom Zoom – Mazda Automobiles

Jon