Fred's Advertising Clinic - Part One: The Formula

Years ago I had quite a chuckle when I saw a poster on the wall of a friend's office. It read, "Mankind's greatest need is to edit another person's copy."

If you've written any sort of copy - from a business letter to a commercial to an article for a science journal - you get the joke. You might write the world's greatest copy (hmm ... sounds like me), but once you submit it to the client or your boss, it's torn to shreds (hmm ... how could they!). Maybe the edits are an improvement; perhaps they're not. The only thing we know for certain is that your copy will be edited.

People who run small businesses, as always, are up against a special challenge. Not only do they have to write their own copy, but they have to edit it too. With a limited budget for advertising time, it's especially important that their commercial copy gets results.

In this series we'll take a look at copy writing as both an art and a science, and explore some techniques for writing great copy.

Unlike many things in life, writing ad copy can be broken down into a formula. This formula has been used by professional writers forever because it works. Are you ready? Here it is:

Attention - Interest - Desire -Action.

It's known throughout the ad world by its acronym, AIDA, and it's a blueprint to effective copy. Just follow the steps in order.

1. Attention - The foundation of all effective ad copy is to get your listener or viewer's attention. So you write a catchy headline, or ask an important question. Amuse them, question them or shock them. How you do it doesn't matter as long as you grab your audience's attention.

2. Interest. Once you've got your audience's attention, your second step is to keep it and build interest in your message. In part, you're building on your attention grabbing lead, and you're setting the audience up for the next step.

3. Desire. This may be the most important step of all, because if you don't build a desire for your product or service, your audience won't want it. I find it's often the hardest part of the formula to write.

4. Action. This is the windup. It's time to get your audience to act, so tell them what they should do. Buy your product. Visit your store. Call for more information. Or cross only when the light is green. If you've done the previous steps well, that's exactly what your audience will do.

In principle it's a very simple formula. But some take years to master it, and others never quite do. That's where good copy writing becomes an art form.

Start practicing the formula now by applying it to daily life situations. Use the AIDA formula as the structure of your next letter or e-mail. Try it on your next sales call, or even with friends and colleagues in everyday conversation. Instead of just talking about last night's game over the water cooler, see if you can instill a desire to attend the next one or watch it on TV. Just follow the formula and see what happens. It's good practice.

Check back for the next article in this series, as we take an in-depth look at step one.

By the way, did you notice this article uses the AIDA formula? I'm sneaky that way. Thanks for reading!

Fred Pagano's Brown Cow Studios offers complete creative and production services. From great copy writing to creative audio production and lots more, let the creative herd at Brown Cow Studios of Boston help grow your business. Send an e-mail to Fred@BrownCowStudios.com, or visit our web site, www.BrownCowStudios.com.

Should you take advantage of a station's offer to produce your ad for free?

Just about every radio station, and many TV stations too, offer their advertisers free commercial production. To advertisers pinched by today's economy it's a very attractive offer that's hard to refuse. But should you refuse it?

I think so. From my years of experience in the broadcasting industry, I believe a very strong case can be made for declining the station's offer and instead using a professional, independent voiceover artist.

First, if your ads are being produced by the station on which you've bought time, your ads are being produced by one of the station's staff announcers. The voice will be one of the five or six people who voice probably 80 percent of all their spots - those of your competitors too! I'm not saying that the staff announcers aren't good at what they do; on the contrary, they're probably excellent. But your spots will end up sounding like every other spot on the station, and listeners will easily tune them out because they don't sound any different from everything else they hear. They'll just be part of the "clutter".

To be their most effective, it's very important for your ads to stand out and sound different from the rest. This is particularly important with 10- or 15-second "shorts."

Secondly, auditory memory plays a big role in the success of your ad. If a listener dislikes a particular personality for whatever reason - maybe they think those dulcet tones are too syrupy, or they don't care for the subject matter of that DJ's show (think of your local "shock jock"), that voice will have made an unfavorable impression. That impression carries over, subconsciously, to your product - it's quite likely that just hearing the voice of the announcer they don't like will work against you.

If you've ever found yourself talking back to the radio or arguing with a particularly annoying or stupid commercial you know what I mean.

But when you use an independent voiceover announcer, you're using a voice that's not heard every day - day in, day out for years. So your spot cuts through the clutter, is more likely to command attention, and won't suffer ill effects from a listener's auditory memory of an unfavored personality.

Many voiceover actors have spent years in training, taking acting classes, courses on dialects and accents and the like. The result is not just a "read" of your copy, but an interpretation of it. Even with relatively straightforward copy, professional, independent voice actors bring elements of drama, credibility, and showmanship to your spots. They don't get lost in the clutter.

In the end, your advertising is more successful because it commands the listener's attention and gets results.

Finally, there's the price issue. Free sounds great, but how much is that "free" actually worth? Most voiceover actors, myself included, operate their own studios and can provide complete creative services - from copy writing to voiceover to producing a finished spot at very reasonable rates.

You also gain the benefit of a professional who gives your spot complete attention and wants to earn your repeat business. Radio DJs and staff announcers don't get paid extra to do your spot, and they may not be happy about it either - it's just one more spot on the list of 5 or 10 spots they have to do that day, in addition to doing prep for their on-air show, paperwork, and the show itself. Because they simply don't have the time to give you their full attention, you might end up with a spot that's not great, but "good enough."

When you think about the total cost of your advertising schedule, the cost of choosing a a pro voice actor versus the station's "free production" offer works out to a small percentage of your ad budget. But the results a pro voiceover actor will get you are much greater!

So when the sales exec from the station offers you free production, tell him "no thanks." Then get in touch with Fred@BrownCowStudios.com, or one of the many fine VO talents working today.

- Fred Pagano