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.

No related posts.