The goal of the first is to make yours the company the customer thinks of immediately and feels the best about when they – or any of their friends – need what you sell. This is called a “relational” ad campaign. It works better and better with each passing year.
The goal of the second kind of advertising is to cause the reader/listener/viewer to buy something from you immediately. I began my career writing these “transactional” ads. I was good at it. This type of campaign is called “direct response.” Transactional ads work less and less well the longer you run them.
Today I write only the first kind.
If you have the staying power to build a relational ad campaign, you’re going to need to remember your origins. You’re going to have to write your Genesis Story.
There are two kinds of staying power. The first is financial.
Here’s my advice: Don’t launch a relational ad campaign so big that you would not be able to sustain it indefinitely. If you say, “I can fund this for 6 months, but by then it needs to be self-supporting,” then you’re spending more than you can afford. It’s impossible to predict the moment of breakthrough, that moment when all your previously fruitless efforts will begin to radiate results like a newborn sun.
This is why you have to have the second kind of staying power: emotional staying power. Three or four months into your campaign, you’re going to begin to panic. But the only thing worse than never launching a relational ad campaign is to launch one and then abandon it.
Relational ad campaigns are never about having the lowest price. A customer who switches to you for reasons of price alone will just as quickly switch from you for the same reason. And there is nothing that some other company can’t do a little worse and sell a little cheaper.
People don’t bond with companies so easily as they bond with people. We bond with people we like, people we feel good about, people we think we know.
“My Dad was a house painter. He taught me to sand and scrape old paint until my fingers were aching and raw. But I wanted to make him proud, so I always worked hard. I’ll never forget the day we opened our brown bags at lunchtime and he said, “Son. I’m proud of how hard you work, but I hope that someday you’ll get a job where you can wear a tie.” And because I wanted to make him proud, I decided to open a jewelry store. I watched as my Dad took his last seven hundred dollars out of his sock drawer to help me get started. But he never got to see that store. He died just before it was open. I lived on wieners and beans for the next 11 years until I finally figured it out: Lose the tie… And be a regular guy just like your Dad. That’s when things turned around for me. I’ve been sharing the story of that 700 dollars with young entrepreneurs in High Schools and Colleges for years. America’s newest and best Kesslers Diamonds is about to open in front of Cabela’s next to the Rivertown Mall in Grandville. I’m Richard Kessler, and I’m hoping to become your jeweler.”
Tom Heflin was a railroad conductor. His wife had a sister. That sister had two little boys. One day she took those boys on a train to Winslow, Arizona to spend a few days with them. Tom took those...
