How many “pennysavers” and community bulletins do you get? Ever read them? I don’t just mean look for the coupons you want. I mean actually read the ads?
Know why you don’t? Most of the ads don’t offer you any benefit. So you’re not motivated to read past the headline. In fact, too many of the ads I see don’t even have a headline! Just the name of the store in big letters. You know what’s really sad? Most of the mom-&-pop shop owners who run those little ads are the very people who can least afford to throw out money on impotent advertising.
John Wanamaker complained: “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is… I don’t know which half!”
It doesn’t have to be that way. There are tested ways to make advertising more effective. Even a low-budget ad campaign—strategically targeted and executed—can get far more results than an expensive production with a muddled sales message.
Over a career of 26 years in advertising and direct marketing, I have often needed to explain the laws of advertising… even to some very sharp business minds. Unfortunately, business smarts alone are not enough to create—or even to recognize—effective advertising. So, I figured, how much grief and waste could I prevent if I wrote some plain-talk, easy-to-read advice on advertising?
I selected the pieces here from articles and columns I wrote over the years for DM News, Direct Marketing, Target Marketing, Catalog Marketer, the Direct Marketing Creative Guild’s Creative Forum, and the Learning Annex. There’s a lot more to say. I could write a book about it! Maybe I will.
Rereading the articles I collected for this website, I noticed that there is one message that keeps getting repeated like a recurring theme. It is the fundamental law of advertising—one that’s hard for a lot of people to swallow. But ignoring it is a sure way to lose money: Nobody cares about your product!
Sorry. It’s true. Unless you happen to be lucky enough to ride the comet of the latest fad, your product is usually irrelevant to most people’s lives. People only care about what you can do for them. How can you improve their lives? …Save them time and money? ...Make them more beautiful and popular? …Make them healthier, wealthier and—yes—wiser? The sum and substance of advertising is still reaching people in such a way that links their problems to your solutions.
Why am I so sure I’m right? I have sold millions of dollars worth of merchandise by mail. Why, you might ask, all the emphasis on mail order and direct marketing? Isn’t mail order the world of novelty catalogs, sweepstakes and other “Junk Mail”? What does that have to do with “real” advertising like Coca Cola and GM? Let me answer by borrowing an analogy from Trout & Ries’ Marketing Warfare. General image advertising is like “saturation bombing.” You make a hell of an impression. But you’re never quite sure of the exact results.
The mother of all advertising wars is in the trenches of mail order. The lessons I learned from that battlefield generated secret weapons for reaching out from the printed page (or the web page) into the reader’s mind and heart. To say nothing of the wallet.
That’s why I call what I do the ultimate “How to Win Customers and Influence People.”
How to win an argument
Be sure to get the last word. People have short memories. If you do not get the last word, no one will remember what you have said. If this requires repeating your argument 50 times, so be it. This may appear repetitive, however, which will cause people to begin ignoring your messages; you may wish to alter a few words each time rather than repeating it verbatim. This will make it appear as if it were an entirely new message.
Reply to every comment. Not addressing the concerns raised by others will make it appear as if you are evading them. Thus it is important to address every comment made in a thread. If you are discussing on the mailing list, you must reply to every message. If you consolidate your responses, some people may miss that you have responded to a point addressed in another message. Therefore, you should reply to every message, even if your reply is only one sentence long and contains the same argument you have already made.
Remember that Wikipedia is an experiment in mob rule. The only way to ensure that your position is heard over the din is to create a mob. Sometimes, there are so few reasonable people willing to support you that you must create your own mob. Be sure to give them clever names subtly reinforcing your position, as this will make it appear that these editors have already shown an interest in your position and are merely supporting an issue they are concerned about, rather than being sockpuppets. You should also post as an IP (or two, or twenty), so no one will trace it back to your account. This will create a majority on your side and you will win.
Be bold in updating policy. This is a wiki. If policy does not conform to the way things ought to be done, edit it. Editing it right before you cite the relevant page will impress others: they are not familiar with the new policies, and you are.
Your opponents are vandals. If you can't edit policy, you can decide it says something else. After all, if you disagree with the interpretation, there is no consensus, and what's more, anyone disagreeing with you is clearly deliberately attempting to compromise the content. You are free to revert, block, ban or take any action necessary to keep their vandalistic opinions away from your work.
Assume that you are more intelligent and rational than your opponent. This is usually a safe assumption. After all, if they were as intelligent as you were, they would agree with you! From here you may argue from the position of intellectual and moral superiority. Stating that if other editors would just consider the problem for as long as you have, they would come around to your point of view, is an effective response. After all, how can they argue? They have been wasting their time editing their own subjects, while you have remained the staunch defender of your position for your entire editing career.
Remember the true meaning of NPOV. NPOV means that nobody may delete a POV. All POVs must be in an article to make it NPOV, so your opinion must have a space. Those who want to delete your theory, no matter how minor, are breaking NPOV and going against one of the very foundation principles of WIkipedia. Instead, insist that others should enlarge the article with their own POV so that it can be even more neutral and representative.
If you are alone, you must be right. All great geniuses were at first standing alone with their visions while the rabble persisted in their misguided way of thinking. Therefore, if you are the sole holder of an unpopular position you know will solve the wiki's problems, you are thinking ahead of the crowd. If you are alone, do not back down; opposition only proves how much your input is needed to correct bias. If they tell you that you're all alone, explain that Wikipedia is not a democracy and cite 'Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not'.
Know your rights. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects your freedom of expression and being blocked is an infringement of that right. Also, state and federal consumer protection laws make it a punishable offense for the site to advertise that "anyone can edit" and still block you. If you are blocked, don't hesitate to file a complaint; the relevant agencies will be very interested in hearing from you. And if you are CheckUsered, the Freedom Of Information Act requires that Wikimedia tell you what the results were, so don't listen when they say they can't, and tell them you know your rights under the law.
Do not water down your language. Using words like "I think" and "in my opinion" water down the effect of your argument. You must state, unequivocally, that your position is the only reasonable one. If it is true that it would be idiotic to disagree, intellectual honesty requires that you say so. Calling the intelligence of your opponents into question will shock them out of their misguided thinking and make them question their assumptions, so they will eventually come around to your position.
If all else fails, remember that Jimbo is on your side. Wikipedia was created to be a free, open encyclopedia that anyone can edit. And that means you. By shutting out your positions, other editors are censoring you, and that runs counter to the spirit of the project. Bringing Jimbo into it by leaving a concise message on his talk page (6 or 7 paragraphs will do) will ensure that the others will see the error of their ways.
Demand citations for all claims. And if anyone ever provides one, you may dismiss it point-blank. If the cited work was a classic in its field, it must be out-dated and therefore inaccurate. If you've never heard of it, it's just an anecdotal coffee-table book with no status what-so-ever. And you can always deny the author's expertise — no amount of acknowledgement by his peers has to suffice to you. You know better. Or, if the work was put together by a panel, the cited part was probably added by a layman proof-reader without subsequent review. If someone floods the argument with multiple sources, dismiss one of them as derisively as you can and you can ignore the rest. If someone ever demands you to cite your claims, just say that it is all common knowledge. If they keep insisting on a source, say: "do a Google search, it's all there".
Never leave the argument. If the argument is going nowhere in an endless cycle, tell the opposition that the project is hopelessly broken and announce that you're going to leave Wikipedia forever. Tell them that Wikipedia isn't what it used to be, and they'll be sorry when they come to realize what you now know. Post a bitter farewell message on your user page. Then, keep on arguing. When others start asking "weren't you leaving?", tell them that you're not going to reason with idiots and pretend to ignore them, while continuing to make your grievances known wherever possible.
Reply to every comment. Not addressing the concerns raised by others will make it appear as if you are evading them. Thus it is important to address every comment made in a thread. If you are discussing on the mailing list, you must reply to every message. If you consolidate your responses, some people may miss that you have responded to a point addressed in another message. Therefore, you should reply to every message, even if your reply is only one sentence long and contains the same argument you have already made.
Remember that Wikipedia is an experiment in mob rule. The only way to ensure that your position is heard over the din is to create a mob. Sometimes, there are so few reasonable people willing to support you that you must create your own mob. Be sure to give them clever names subtly reinforcing your position, as this will make it appear that these editors have already shown an interest in your position and are merely supporting an issue they are concerned about, rather than being sockpuppets. You should also post as an IP (or two, or twenty), so no one will trace it back to your account. This will create a majority on your side and you will win.
Be bold in updating policy. This is a wiki. If policy does not conform to the way things ought to be done, edit it. Editing it right before you cite the relevant page will impress others: they are not familiar with the new policies, and you are.
Your opponents are vandals. If you can't edit policy, you can decide it says something else. After all, if you disagree with the interpretation, there is no consensus, and what's more, anyone disagreeing with you is clearly deliberately attempting to compromise the content. You are free to revert, block, ban or take any action necessary to keep their vandalistic opinions away from your work.
Assume that you are more intelligent and rational than your opponent. This is usually a safe assumption. After all, if they were as intelligent as you were, they would agree with you! From here you may argue from the position of intellectual and moral superiority. Stating that if other editors would just consider the problem for as long as you have, they would come around to your point of view, is an effective response. After all, how can they argue? They have been wasting their time editing their own subjects, while you have remained the staunch defender of your position for your entire editing career.
Remember the true meaning of NPOV. NPOV means that nobody may delete a POV. All POVs must be in an article to make it NPOV, so your opinion must have a space. Those who want to delete your theory, no matter how minor, are breaking NPOV and going against one of the very foundation principles of WIkipedia. Instead, insist that others should enlarge the article with their own POV so that it can be even more neutral and representative.
If you are alone, you must be right. All great geniuses were at first standing alone with their visions while the rabble persisted in their misguided way of thinking. Therefore, if you are the sole holder of an unpopular position you know will solve the wiki's problems, you are thinking ahead of the crowd. If you are alone, do not back down; opposition only proves how much your input is needed to correct bias. If they tell you that you're all alone, explain that Wikipedia is not a democracy and cite 'Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not'.
Know your rights. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects your freedom of expression and being blocked is an infringement of that right. Also, state and federal consumer protection laws make it a punishable offense for the site to advertise that "anyone can edit" and still block you. If you are blocked, don't hesitate to file a complaint; the relevant agencies will be very interested in hearing from you. And if you are CheckUsered, the Freedom Of Information Act requires that Wikimedia tell you what the results were, so don't listen when they say they can't, and tell them you know your rights under the law.
Do not water down your language. Using words like "I think" and "in my opinion" water down the effect of your argument. You must state, unequivocally, that your position is the only reasonable one. If it is true that it would be idiotic to disagree, intellectual honesty requires that you say so. Calling the intelligence of your opponents into question will shock them out of their misguided thinking and make them question their assumptions, so they will eventually come around to your position.
If all else fails, remember that Jimbo is on your side. Wikipedia was created to be a free, open encyclopedia that anyone can edit. And that means you. By shutting out your positions, other editors are censoring you, and that runs counter to the spirit of the project. Bringing Jimbo into it by leaving a concise message on his talk page (6 or 7 paragraphs will do) will ensure that the others will see the error of their ways.
Demand citations for all claims. And if anyone ever provides one, you may dismiss it point-blank. If the cited work was a classic in its field, it must be out-dated and therefore inaccurate. If you've never heard of it, it's just an anecdotal coffee-table book with no status what-so-ever. And you can always deny the author's expertise — no amount of acknowledgement by his peers has to suffice to you. You know better. Or, if the work was put together by a panel, the cited part was probably added by a layman proof-reader without subsequent review. If someone floods the argument with multiple sources, dismiss one of them as derisively as you can and you can ignore the rest. If someone ever demands you to cite your claims, just say that it is all common knowledge. If they keep insisting on a source, say: "do a Google search, it's all there".
Never leave the argument. If the argument is going nowhere in an endless cycle, tell the opposition that the project is hopelessly broken and announce that you're going to leave Wikipedia forever. Tell them that Wikipedia isn't what it used to be, and they'll be sorry when they come to realize what you now know. Post a bitter farewell message on your user page. Then, keep on arguing. When others start asking "weren't you leaving?", tell them that you're not going to reason with idiots and pretend to ignore them, while continuing to make your grievances known wherever possible.
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