4 Types of Advertising Campaigns that Sell

by James Connor, CEO of The James Group
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ABOUT JAMES CONNOR
James Connor is a brand expert and CEO of The James Group, a brand positioning and full-service advertising agency in New York City. If you agree with this best practice and would like to discuss a new advertising campaign image for your company or product, please contact James at jamesconnor@thejamesgroup.com or call 212-243-2022 ext. 303.
19 W. 21st Street, Suite 202, New York, NY 10010
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In the history of the world, there have only been four types of advertising campaigns that both build brands and drive sales.
They are:

1 A WORD HOOK

2 A CHARACTER HOOK

3 A REPEATABLE THEME

4 A CONSISTENT BRAND LAYOUT

Without exception, the most popular and most successful advertising campaigns have used one of these techniques or combined several of these techniques, making them well-documented best practices in creating ad campaigns.

These principals hold true whether you do business-to-business, business-to-consumer, or even business-to-government marketing and regardless of the size of your marketing budget.

Fortunately, it is never too late to fix this problem by creating a new campaign based on time-tested best practices. This article will demonstrate how your company can use these techniques to improve your marketing results using examples from large budget advertising campaigns you will easily recognize and lower budget marketing campaigns that have proved successful for small and midsized companies.
To improve your marketing, you need to gain several levels of understanding:
1) Why these types of campaigns are essential. 2) How each campaign type functions. 3) How to isolate the sales moment. 4) When to change your campaign.

Why These Types of Advertising Campaigns are Essential

A brand is a set of visual and verbal images that combine to convey a single mental image. The company name, logo, tagline, and campaignable image all come together in one mental image at key consumer touchpoints.
When a target customer sees your website, print ad, TV ad, brochure, direct mail piece, or hears your radio spot, it may be the first time that person is encountering your brand or product. The average American encounters between 300-3,000 advertising impressions per day, depending on which study you believe and how you define an impression.
But one thing is certain, people are bombarded by too much information every day.
So, what will they do? They'll scan it in a blink, looking for a handle to process the information. Without a handle, they are most likely to reject the marketing piece by simply moving on to something else.

These four types of advertising campaigns first function as handles, or entering points, that allow information to be processed quickly. Because information can be transmitted, a sales proposition can be made. If the proposition is compelling, a sale can be driven. But all this starts with a campaign handle.

The second reason these campaign types are essential is they create powerful mental images. Understanding mental images is the link between branding and sales. Consider how your mind works. What did you have for breakfast this morning?
Did the information come to you in words or pictures? You saw a picture of your breakfast; for example, a picture of the bowl of cereal or cup of coffee, before your mind said, "cereal, coffee." What did you wear yesterday? Your mind is searching in pictures (even when you can't remember).

The same thing happens when people are making purchasing decisions. Mental images flip by in little movies at blinding speed. What company should I hire? Or what brand should I buy? By using one of these four campaignable ideas, you create a higher probability your company or product will be remembered.

How Each Campaign Type Functions

Campaign Type 1:
THE WORD HOOK

The word hook is a repeatable catch phrase from ad to ad. Great examples of advertising campaigns using the word hook include Verizon's "Can you hear me now?" created by Bozell/New York to convince the world Verizon has the best network.
How effective was it? Consider that in July of 2003, a J.D. Power & Associates survey ranked Verizon at the top of the list for wireless quality, while Alltel was ranked number seven—even though they share the same network through a nationwide roaming agreement.

Alltel CEO Scott Ford explained this point to investors at the Smith Barney Citigroup conference in January of 2004, commenting that the ranking difference could only be explained by advertising perception.

Another word hook is Mastercard's "Priceless" campaign created by Mc- Cann Erickson.Since 1997, Master Card has added new U.S. credit cards at more than twice Visa's rate.
Perhaps the longest running word hook with more than 1,500 ads comes from Absolut. Conceived by TBWA in 1980, the well-known ads feature images based on the bottle's distinctive shape with the word hook running at the bottom, like Absolut Manhattan featuring an arial view of Central Park in the shape of the bottle.

How effective were the ads? In 1999, Absolut commanded an amazing 58% market share for vodka—an alcohol that is defined as colorless, tasteless, and odorless. Wouldn't you like to command 58% of the market?
The word hook is like the chorus of a good pop song. They are catchy. Maybe, even insidious. Everybody knows how to play along. The triumph of a great marketing catch phrase, is when it becomes so well known, it additionally can serve as a cultural joke.

In a televised debate before the 1984 New York and Pennsylvania presidential primaries, Walter Mondale dismissed Gary Hart by saying "When I hear your new ideas I'm reminded of that ad, 'Where's the beef?'" The line drew a great audience response. The point is, over twenty years later, you are more likely to remember "Where's the beef?" than Gary Hart or Walter Mondale.


Campaign Type 2:
THE CHARACTER HOOK

A character hook uses a hero, villain, or victim to embody a key attribute of a brand. Great heroic character hooks include Ronald McDonald, a hero of happiness created in 1963. Ronald helped McDonald's to own family fast food. How effective was this character? Consider that 96% of school children in the United States can identify Ronald McDonald. Only Santa Claus is more commonly recognized.
A villain, savvy customers find appealing, is Joe Isuzu, the sneaky car salesman created by Della Femina, Travisano and Partners in 1985. Joe was later brought back into action in 2001.

The Maytag Repairman is a victim of great product dependability, created by the Leo Burnett Agency in 1967. The campaign helped build the company into the juggernaut sold to Maytag's rival, the Whirlpool Corporation in 2006 for $1.6 Billion.
Characters are tremendous for breaking through advertising clutter and establishing emotional connections with customers. They are vivid, intriguing, and cause us to care about them. If you care about a character, then you care about the brand.

Ever wonder, what Snoopy has to do with life insurance? Only emotional transference. Buying life insurance is something people would rather not think about. Few people enjoy facing the fact that they could die at any time. So buying life insurance is not a feel good experience. However, people like Snoopy. By using Snoopy, people like Metlife, making the company more approachable than other insurers.
How well did it work? Today, MetLife is the largest U.S. life insurer, by a wide margin. It is also the number-one provider of property and casualty insurance (P&C) products in the workplace. Meaning, the character hook worked for both their business-to-consumer and business-to-business side.

Campaign Type 3:
THE REPEATABLE THEME


A repeatable theme is a situation that plays out again and again calling out the need for a company's product. Examples of a repeatable theme include the Got Milk ads created by Lowe Worldwide and the York Peppermint Patty

ads created by Cliff Freeman.
Consumers know the punch line that is coming. They love to see the set-up played out in different situations. It is satisfying to be in on the joke, before it comes.
Repeatable themes make the target customer feel like they have the inside track. They know how to play along and thus feel connected to your brand.


Campaign Type 4:
CONSISTENT LAYOUT

A consistent layout uses a unique, design look and repeats these elements at each touchpoint. This allows customers to easily identify your company in a blink. The more distinct these elements are from your competitors, the easier it is to stand out from the clutter.
Great examples of consistent layout include the Continental ads, with the blue globe, yellow trim, and white all caps headline. NW Ayer put that design on everything from print ads to bag tags to cocktail napkins and helped Continental

become the number one airline in the world, as well as the most profitable.
Consistent layouts include Apple's iPod ads with silhouetted dancers people on bright backgrounds. Created by TBWA Chiat Day, the iconic ads helped make the iPod the number one MP3 player in the world and helped Apple extend its brand from a computer company to a consumer electronics company.

One of the keys to the consistent layout is to zig where everyone else is zagging. If everyone one else is corporate blue, you want to be another color. If everyone else is playful design, you want to go serious. Consistent design is about consciously standing out from the crowd and keeping your trademark design going on everything.
But more importantly, consistent layout serves a deeper purpose. Consistency instills trust. When a company plants its flag around one design look and feel, customers feel comfortable with that brand faster and longer. In an uncertain world, the consumer's deep desire for something they can consistently count on, is soothed by a consistent layout.


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