Breaking news: advertising is dead!

You do not agree?

Ask your wife, husband, or significant other—in other words, the closest typical consumer—to answer the following 7 questions:

  1. Does seeing pop-up ads on your computer give you orgasmic pleasure? Yes or no?
  2. Does a mailbox full of junk mail make your palms itch and sweat with nervous anticipation? Yes or no?
  3. Do you suffer from outbursts of violent rage when a TV commercial is interrupted by a TV movie? Yes or no?
  4. Do you prance around the parking lot with ecstatic abandon every time you find a flyer on your car windshield? Yes or no?
  5. Does keeping a phone next to the soup spoon on the table (for fear of missing the telemarketer’s next call) aid digestion? Yes or no?
  6. Do you drink cups of black coffee at 10 p.m. so you can stay up and watch 30-minute infomercials at 4 a.m.? Yes or no?
  7. Do you drool at the thought of spending $300 on an iPhone just so you can see interactive ads on its big, cool screen? Yes or no?

Have I made my point? Yes or no?

Advertising is dead. If you are a seller…save your money.

Consumers have been over-advertised and over-sold.

Unless you’re running a white sale, clearance sale, or going out of business sale, and halving or quartering your prices, advertising isn’t going to give you a bang, a groan, or a penny for your money. Not anymore.

The only advertisements that still stand are those in newspapers and supermarket windows that read:

Big sale

Buy 1 can of Campbell’s Soup for 89 cents

and get a second can-FREE!

Limited supplies!

(or something like that)

Beyond that, the first reaction most consumers have when seeing any other type of ad is not to believe anything it says.

And if they have no need, desire, or knowledge of you, your product, or your service, their second reaction is to play basketball. The muscles in their arms and hands reflexively contract, causing them to roll their ad into a tight little ball and shoot it into the nearest basket.

Beware of the third eye anti-advertising consumer

Because the consumer has become so desensitized to ads in general, if you don’t push your ad, sales letter, or flyer squarely and firmly into their hands, they won’t even notice.

It is as if they have developed an anti-ad third eye that instinctively alerts them to the presence of an ad and then immediately fires a signal to the brain, instructing their other two eyes not to see it.

For example…

How often, while browsing the web, have you come across a web page with a bright red 40-word title and sentence, ending with an exclamation mark or two or three?

Unless you’re looking for that particular web page, the average surfer looking for information will immediately recognize that site as an ad and click through, without even reading two words.

The same thing happens when they read the newspaper or walk past a billboard on the highway…consumers simply refuse to look at the ads.

So what’s a seller to do?

Advertise!

Hey? I’ll explain…

The success of the Internet has come to one thing above all else. Human beings, which includes consumers, are information junkies.

Google, the Internet’s version of a catalog of library cards, exists, thrives, dominates, and will eventually own the world, because consumers are in a constant and endless search for more and more information.

And why do consumers increasingly want information that convinces, compels and persuades them of a certain point of view?

So that they can make the most efficient, prudent and intelligent decision about whatever they want to own, own, consume or BUY.

Yes, BUY.

Although consumers hate being sold to; they still love, however, to SHOP.

And their decision to buy is most effectively influenced when they are provided with information that supports, confirms and enhances their already existing desire to BUY!

Enter the advertorial

The advertorial is an advertisement disguised as an editorial. A cunning wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s about 80% useful, compelling, and persuasive information and 20% sales pitch.

The name of the product, its characteristics or benefits will never be mentioned in the headline. Because that would be too obvious: it would scream advertising and immediately activate the consumer’s anti-advertising third eye.

Instead, in a newspaper, direct mail promotion, or on the Internet, the advertorial will attract attention and readers by simply dangling the tantalizing promise of useful and profitable information…if the reader continues reading.

An advertising headline will not scream: LOSE 10 LB OF FAT IN 10 DAYS OR YOUR MONEY BACK!

Instead, the advertorial headline will say: John Hopkins Research PhD discovers active ingredient in ice cream that causes rapid weight loss.

The advertorial will then proceed to show and prove, in a pseudo-journalistic way, the What, Why, Who, Where and When of how the product or service does precisely what the consumer wants and needs.

The advertorial offers valuable, documented information that relentlessly leads the reader to the inevitable conclusion that the solution to their problem or need is…whatever you’re selling.

It doesn’t look, taste or smell like an ad, and the consumer’s anti-ad third eye will never see it coming.

Try it… you’ll like it.

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