I’ve been reading “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. Excellent book for any small business owner who handles their own advertising, manages people, or needs to communicate with people… basically every small business owner.
In the Introduction, they discuss an advertising study done by an Isreali group. The finding surprised me. Basically, all highly rated advertisements can be categorized into 6 groups. In fact, 89% of award winning ads can be placed into one of these groups. These 6 groups are basically templates that anyone can use to generate good ads. If your ad doesn’t fit into one of these six groups, it will not get good ratings.
Now, the phrase “it will not get good ratings” should send up red flags in any small business owners mind. The research was done on focus groups who rated how much they liked the ads. Clearly, “an ad that is liked” and an “ad that makes money” are two very different things.
For instance, I “like” the Geico caveman commercials. Yet, I do not use Geico as my insurance provider. Liking and buying are probably only loosely correlated if at all. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there is a negative correlation (I’ll bet ShamWow’s! sell like hotcakes… but surely those ads would flop in front of a focus group).
Any small business owner would rather have an ad that converts to sales than an ad that is only liked. Most small business owners don’t have the budget for branding campaigns that rely on cute, funny, or otherwise memorable ads that are liked so much they “stick” and payoff later down the road. We need results now. A dollar spent on advertising better return that and more. Who cares how much it is liked by a focus group.
Nevertheless, the research is interesting and the finding still significant to small businesses. For instance, these categories can probably be used to create an effective viral campaign. Also, the 6 categories of highly rated ads probably do contain principles that can be used in direct response mediums to create more effective ads.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
What are the six groups? Are they different balances between how good the ratings are and how good the conversion is?
That makes me think about those Cash4Gold ads that cropped up a few years ago. At first, I was really surprised when I saw that the company had an ad during the Superbowl this year, but it made sense that now that the economy is in the toilet, people are getting desperate and selling off their old jewelry (sad, but it’s the reality). Those ads are terribly unattractive, but they very clearly and directly communicate to the target customer what the business is and what they do, and the benefit it will give the customer.
So as a small business owner, what do you think is the better approach: going the viral route with a nice looking ad, or getting Billy Mays to yell at people about how useful your product/service will be to them? (By the way, the ShamWow! really is a great product.)
Hi Gwen!
It looks like Carlos answered your question about the categories (below) which is great because, to be honest, I haven’t made it far enough past the introduction to find out myself.
I think, from what I’ve seen, that most small business owners are forced to use ads that won’t win any awards simply because they need a direct response to the ad – they’ve got to communicate the benefits of their product or service and then get them to call, sign up, etc. Unfortunately, I think it’s hard to do this in an appealing way but the people who need the product don’t care.
Hey Brian, great post. It made me go online and find out what these groups may be. I don’t want to be a spoiler but I believe the six categories are the following: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories. The book seems very interesting and could certainly help small business owners with ad creation.
Hi Carlos,
Thank you for taking the time to look that up for me.