Wednesday Words
To Go Where Your VisionPoints, a few inspiration points for you and your business.
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
—David M. Ogilvy
How do you say, “We’re right for you,” to your customer?
Do you say, “We’ll change your life,” or do you say, “Damn, we’re good?” (Hint: Advertising your greatness is a turnoff.)
Worse yet, does your advertising (website, blog, brochure, DVD… ) say “Look how pretty” and expect the customer to decide that means you can help them out?
When it comes to promoting yourself, forget overly clever, forget loud, and definitely forget long-winded. I don’t want to know you’re good, and I sure don’t want to know your writer/ designer/ ad agency is good. I want to know that when I buy from you, I’ll feel good.
It’s not about you. It’s about the folks who pay your bills.
Would you rather buy from the company with the coolest ads, or the company who wants to make you cool? How does your company sell without drawing attention to the sales materials?
Grow and be well,
Kelly Erickson
The Big P.S.: Monday, we talked about connections. Coming up, I’m going to connect you with some great voices in Experience Design.
Tomorrow something very different for MCE: A Pixelated Blog Conference, inspired by Mitch Joel by way of the inimitable, life-changing Chris Brogan.
The first ever Maximum Customer Experience Conference, not-at-all-live, with a super roster of experts speaking on some of my favorite aspects of strategic, integrated Experience Design.
Does Experience matter? Can you really engineer it? Does your company matter to your customers? Can you make more money by improving your Customer Experience? (Haven’t you been reading here?) Get fresh takes on the questions that keep you up at night when you listen to what these folks have to say tomorrow. “Attend” as many “breakout sessions” as you like. I’ll write a quick intro to each so you can find the topics that interest you.
I hope you’ll come out from behind the firewall make some time in your day for a few of these brief videos, to learn and laugh (you know I’m looking for a few funny guys) about growing your business with Maximum Customer Experience.
Hey, why am I hyping it so much? You know if it’s here at MCE, it’s free, right? So come on back tomorrow. But today, subscribe, leave a comment, or bookmark this post to share with others.
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8 October 2008, 7:28 am
Stop making me think! Ack! You’re making me think!
This is good.
And I’m laughing about the firewall bit… sounds like you were talking about some Factory workers!
-Brett
Brett Legree’s last blog post…still doing crazy things…
8 October 2008, 8:21 am
Brett,
Gee, I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.
No?
Bring Friar on over, I’m sure we can get off track and scare my potential customers away with his help.
[Friar: Easy, now...]
Psst… speaking of going slightly off-topic, if you didn’t click away to “advertising your greatness,” do. One of my fave in-jokes that you don’t have to be “in” to get.
Yeah, we’ve got bankers, factory managers, corporate types, at least one Tax Woman, and The Widget Factory workers reading, so believe me, I know tomorrow might cause trouble for a few firewalls. *sigh* Good stuff coming!
Regards,
Kelly
Regards,
Kelly
8 October 2008, 8:27 am
Kelly,
You do it well, milady. I’m sure Friar will be here shortly, once he finishes drawing Special Ed pumpkins…
Off to click on that link now!
-Brett
Brett Legree’s last blog post…still doing crazy things…
8 October 2008, 8:31 am
Kelly,
Just returned from clicking… that was so good!
-Brett
Brett Legree’s last blog post…still doing crazy things…
8 October 2008, 11:02 am
I suppose it’s too much to ask to have a pretty ad AND a pretty product?
Psst… I’m not sure if it’s showing up this way for everyone or if I’m just special — ya know, like Friar’s Basil — but your links are showing up as a very light turquoise. Like, too-light-to-read light.
Amy Derby’s last blog post…Hump Day Reading for the Restless Soul
8 October 2008, 1:47 pm
Amy,
If pretty/ fancy/ splashy is not interfering with the message, okay. A lot of times, though (think Super-Bowl ads or flash games for soft drinks, etc.), all that gets remembered is the ad, not the product.
… …
Turquoise? Unvisited, they should look like the category heads in the sidebar; visited, darker. Pretty much the colors in the banner. If not, please tell me, and I’ll have a look on a –gasp– PC later this week. Maybe the upgrade messed with my CSS, though I don’t know how it could.
Oh, and if they do look like they should and you don’t care for it anyway, come back and razz me. I’ll think about changing the entire deisgn of the joint just for you.
(Seriously, I see this on a Mac most of the time, and PCs do have a color shift, though usually darker. If it’s causing a readability problem let me know.)
Until later,
Kelly
8 October 2008, 2:13 pm
Kelly,
It’s the same color as the sidebar headings. That would be hard to read too, but it’s bigger. Maybe I’m just going blind?
The visited links are easy to read. Maybe the key is visit all of the links?
Actually, now that I’m looking, the green in the sidebar is really light too. Maybe my colors on my laptop are just off or something. I don’t remember having trouble reading anything here before. I don’t spend much time in the sidebar though.
I know what you’re saying about the ads. It’s overkill. And stupid. You’d think they’d want to use all that technology to make a cool ad that actually worked to promote their cool product, but hey what do I know?
Amy Derby’s last blog post…Hump Day Reading for the Restless Soul
8 October 2008, 4:35 pm
“Would you rather buy from the company with the coolest ads, or the company who wants to make you cool?”
If you’re a male between ages 18-25 (in the Peak Darwin Years), the answer would be
“Like…..YEAH?!!”
Friar’s last blog post…Assorted Friar-O-Lanterns
8 October 2008, 5:44 pm
Amy,
Will do a PC visit and tweak, all for you (probably next week). I don’t get insomnia anymore now that the downstairs folks are behaving, so I need a little free daytime or evening. I’ll miss my mid-tone blues, though. I suppose you’ll tell me next that my greens bug you?
Let’s have it, folks. Is Amy alone in not being able to see my blues or has everybody been waiting for a chance to tell me? *sniff, sniff*
*ducks and runs away*
Friar,
“Like, yeah,” has me worried. We’re raising a generation… or two… or three… of people who can’t umm, put together a sentence, and they kinda like, sound stupid. But yeah, umm, coolness is like, rockin’.
They may be easier to please, too, or maybe they just, umm, sound that way. Aargh.
Later,
Kelly
8 October 2008, 6:02 pm
Kelly,
No problem with the colours from here, but I use either my MBP or my HP from work, and I’ve done colour correction on both of them, plus I have really good eyes. But not everyone’s me (lucky for them!)
-Brett
Brett Legree’s last blog post…still doing crazy things…
8 October 2008, 6:18 pm
@Kelly
And they’d probably add a “dude” or two, to the sentence.
“Like..dude….uh, YEAH?!”
Friar’s last blog post…Assorted Friar-O-Lanterns
8 October 2008, 6:20 pm
“Duuuude, like, don’t go for a commercial that thinks it’s, like, more cool than it really is”
- Skateboard Dude, who like, hangs out in front of the Seven-Eleven.
Friar’s last blog post…Assorted Friar-O-Lanterns
9 October 2008, 1:32 am
Hey Kelly,
I just messed around with my computer, and they look better now. So I dunno if you changed the colors or if it was just my computer. But everything seems back to normal.
Amy Derby’s last blog post…Dances With Muses
9 October 2008, 1:33 am
I wish I had thought to make a screenshot of how it looked before so I would know if I’m going colorblind. LOL Plus, it could have been very entertaining for you. Very neon, this particular look was.
Amy Derby’s last blog post…Dances With Muses
9 October 2008, 6:32 am
Amy,
I didn’t touch it, so I am now crossing that off very very long TTD (things to do) list.
Thank goodness.
Later,
Kelly
9 October 2008, 4:56 pm
Happy to make your to-do list a little shorter. Even though I’m the reason it was longer.
Amy Derby’s last blog post…Bringing New Meaning to Mental Health Day