Residents of Saratoga Springs, NY have been noticeably more clueless over the last two months because of delivery problems with the Wall Street Journal.  Apparently there is some kind of turf war among carriers. So every morning I go online to https://services.wsj.com, sign in with my account number and login, and report the missed delivery.

A few minutes later I get an email that confirms my delivery problem and tells me I will be credited for the missed issue and the local office is working on the problem. It then goes on to advise me: “In the future, please go to services.wsj.com to report any problems with your delivery.  It’s easy and quick to use, and our delivery staff is notified directly from the site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

See the problem? Since that’s exactly what I did, WSJ assuming I did not do it puts into question the rest of the message. And the takeaway is that I assume they are in fact doing nothing about my delivery problem, which in fact they are not.

Then, every few days they vary the mix and send an email that says “To make sure we provide the field office with everything they need to resolve this issue, please answer any of the questions below that apply to your situation.

Location questions:
– When did the problem begin?
– Where is the paper usually delivered?” Etc.

Once I rose to the bait and responded that nothing had changed about my delivery situation (the house has been here for 130 years) but it didn’t actually make any difference. Nor should it, since this is boilerplate that some helpful scribe inserted in the rotation (“if missed deliver complaints = >5, then print ‘n’ ”) so I wouldn’t see the same thing constantly. Instead of fixing the problem, they’ve focused on creating an extended library of customer service correspondence for people who get the same message over and over again.

The lesson here: If you have a contact strategy as elaborate as this one, then there’s something wrong at the core that needs to be addressed. Handle it, instead of asking some copywriter to paper over it. Oh, and don’t insert a marketing message when a customer is already pissed off, such as “Here’s an opportunity to give a great gift at a great price: The Wall Street Journal Print and Online for just $119!” Hey, I could give it to my dad… then he and I could both not receive the paper.

You can’t make this stuff up. The VP, I mean Vice President of Marketing at GM, I mean General Motors, has asked all employees to stop calling Chevy by that casual name and refer to it by the formal “Chevrolet” henceforth. The request presumably extends to the brand’s new agency, Goodby Silverstein, but hopefully did not originate with them.

“We’d ask that whether you’re talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising, or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward,” read a memo which was also signed by the Chevrolet Vice President for Sales and Service. “When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke [they mean “Coca-Cola” of course] or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding. Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”

Of course, you can also make a brand recognizable through generations of casual use until it becomes part of the national vocabulary as well as the title of several Facebook fan pages and the auto dealership of its chief NASCAR representative, Jeff Gordon Chevy. And presumably Don McLean will be asked to return to Café Lena here in Saratoga, where he originally penned “American Pie”, and revise its most memorable line to “drove my Chevrolet to the [whatever Chevrolet rhymes with] but the [whatever] was dry”.

The New York Times article which broke this story reports that there now is a “cuss jar” at Chevrolet headquarters and employees must deposit a coin every time they use the forbidden word. Once it’s full the proceeds will be used for a “team building activity”. Times reporter Richard S. Chang suggests that activity will probably not be a Mexican dinner at Chevy’s.

Thanks to Carol Maxwell to bringing this to my attention. And thank you America for making possible this badvertising epiphany. Your tax dollars at work.

Did you ever get punished as a child for doing something naughty, because a parent or teacher didn’t believe you even though you were telling the truth? The problem here is a lack of authenticity—or, to borrow a favorite word from ace copywriter and gore movie maven Herschell Gordon Lewis— verisimilitude.

Consumers in general tend to be skeptical of marketers, which is why verisimilitude is very important. In addition to actually being true, a claim must APPEAR to be true or you break the spell and lose the sale. Today’s badvertising classic is a case in point.

Original State Seal Label (from a plaque at the springs)

I live near the bubbling natural springs of Saratoga, NY. Folks have been coming here to “take the waters” for centuries and the greatest number of springs, as well as the classic bath houses, are located in a park which is owned by the state.

Early in the 1900s an entrepreneur had the idea to bottle the water and sell it nationally. To emphasize the official connection, it was called “State Seal” water and the antique-y state seal of New York was actually shown on the label. Millions were sold and FDR became a big promoter of the springs and the water.

State Seal Spring Water label, c. 1980

Fast forward to the 1980s, and another entrepreneur had the idea to revive the brand. But he/she picked the wrong thing to revive. The new water is again called “State Seal” but the label design is bland and modern. Within a few years the revived brand was defunct.

The original State Seal water had verisimilitude. It looked like the kind of packaging a civic department might come up with if it had no clue about marketing but was simply trying to promote healthy water to its citizens. The revived water had none of this charm and authenticity. The revivalist probably thought the old design was out of date when in fact it was the essence of the brand.

Fetch me that paddle, ma. I think some marketer needs a whuppin’ here….

You know the economy is improving when the incidence of bad advertising and clueless products starts to rise. In tough times, every single product and marketing manager has to justify its existence. But today there’s a place for talent like the creative committee that came up with this slogan for Perkins: Our people deliver more.

Get it? It’s a delivery company. But when some copywriter (not a great one, but at least with a pulse) came up with the slogan “our people deliver” the committee was not comfortable. “Any delivery company can make that claim,” the CEO or CFO perhaps pointed out. “I’ve got it,” yelled a board member. “Let’s add a ‘more’ after the catchphrase and turn it into a USP.” Well he didn’t exactly say that because he doesn’t know what a catchphrase or USP is. But see what he did? Took a workable slogan and turned it into a generic statement.

Want some cleaning supplies with that sirloin?

This is a company with quite a tin ear for marketing.  Take a look at the Perkins home page pictured here. Does anybody else feel a little queasy with the juxtaposiition of the juicy steak and the guy with his foot on the bumper of the car linked by the recycling logo that makes it look like one is turning into the other? Turns out Perkins is both a foodservice delivery company AND a janitorial/sanitation/laundry company. I can see that the same hapless copywriter pointing out that these are rather dissimilar services that maybe shouldn’t be shown side by side on the page, and I see CEO barking “why the hell not?”

Lucky for this misplaced copywriter, a job will soon be opening up at one of the recognizable brands in America: Lysol. They are now advertising the “No Touch Hand Soap System” because—did you know—germs can get on the handle of the soap pump? Wait a minute, I thought that was why you have soap. Do people not know to use the soap after they dispense it into their hands? I think Lysol is underestimating its audience (even the people who are watching “All My Children” which is where I saw it advertised) and indeed, this product is already being remaindered at Overstock.com. The product is on its way out and the product manager may not be far behind.

Happy days are here again.

This week I ran across the website of the Green Cleaners Council, whose “About Us” page states in part:

The Green Cleaners Council counts the many ways a professional dry cleaner can be ‘green’ by providing cleaners and consumers with defined environmental sustainability benchmarks to judge them by.

It is our mission to provide the necessary gravitas, which has been lacking regarding green marketing and greenwashing in the dry cleaning industry. We afford consumers a verifiable mechanism for judging how GREEN their cleaner is, while giving professional cleaners a vehicle to herald their genuine environmental accomplishments and strategies to help them achieve their green goals for the future.

In other words, this trade association provides consumers with tools to evaluate the environmental conscience of a dry cleaner, while providing the dry cleaner with marketing tools to show how green they are. This is what they do, but is it a “mission”? And are they helping their cause with grandiose words like “gravitas” and “herald”?

What went wrong here is that the Green Cleaners Council confused its mission with its marketing. A mission statement is not inherently a bad thing, but it should be primarily internally focused. Especially in a young and chaotic organization, it helps people keep their eye on the ball. It can remind them that their purpose is to serve customers or improve the world in some way, not just to make money.

A nice article on mission statements can be found on the FastCompany website, called “How to Write a Mission Statement that Isn’t Dumb.” The author, Nancy Lubin, points out that most corporate mission statements are like Hallmark greetings while a good one should encapsulate what the “Built to Last” folks call a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG for short).  Here’s a successful example, from Microsoft:

A computer on every desk and in every home, all running Microsoft software.

Here’s one that is more amorphous, and the company turned out to be less successful in keeping its eye on the prize:

Respect, integrity, communication, and excellence.

And here’s one that might well have been scribed by the marcom writer at the Green Cleaners Council in a former position:

It is our job to continually foster world-class infrastructures as well as to quickly create principle-centered sources to meet our customer’s needs.

A mission statement shouldn’t be written by the marketing department, but by the leaders of the organization who are responsible for living up to it. (Though I’d say it’s okay to have a professional writer on tap in case the execs get too full of themselves.)  And mission statements aren’t marketing and shouldn’t be featured in your marketing as a general rule.  It’s a lot easier to look silly than to effectively communicate or persuade, as the bad examples demonstrate.

By the way, the middle mission statement is from Enron Corporation. And the last one isn’t for a real company but was created by the “Dilbert Mission Statement Generator”. It isn’t available online anymore, unfortunately, maybe because too many real companies were using it to write their mission statements.

The Unique Selling Proposition is the attribute that makes your product or service different from any other, at least in the way you describe it. The USP can be a powerful weapon once you know your product and you know the audience’s needs or desires: now you have the opportunity to present the sole solution that gives them exactly what you want.

Every now and then you come across a product that truly is unique… durian, anybody? But often the USP is a matter of a clever marketer identifying a product attribute that’s unique and then blowing that up until it becomes an identity for the brand. Example: M&Ms melt in your mouth… not in your hands. The Mars company found during WWII that sailors in the South Pacific preferred them to Hershey Bars because they didn’t melt in the sun, and turned that into a brand identity.

Jerry Della Femina, who had a successful agency in Los Angeles when I was getting my start in the business, used to run a great long copy ad in the local Adweek about the “Capo D’Astra Bar”. Seems he was a cub copywriter hired to a backwater piano account and went to learn about the client’s product at their remote upstate NY factory.  The client kept saying “all pianos are pretty much the same” till Della Femina crawled under the piano and noticed a heavy band of metal across the bottom.

“Oh, that’s the capo d’astra bar, and I guess it is unique” the client said and it reminded him of the time that they’d had to knock out the wall at Carnegie Hall to install their pianos by crane, because the capo d’astra bar made them too heavy to go up the elevator. Carnegie Hall?? “Oh, didn’t I tell you, all the pianos at Carnegie Hall are our brand.” And thus was born the campaign for Steinway, the official piano of Carnegie Hall, with a resourceful copywriter digging deep to find a USP.

In a competitive market, especially for parity products (example: credit cards), finding a USP can be challenging. Sometimes it’s good enough to claim the high ground with a benefit statement so clearly stated that any competitor who says “wait a minute, we have that too” will look foolish. (You never heard Reese’s Pieces say “we don’t melt either.”) Also, remember that your competition is not restricted to competitors; it also includes doing nothing or doing without. A powerful USP will be good enough to overcome that inertia.

With this post we’re back to my series based on the “Copywriting that Gets Results” class I teach for the Direct Marketing Association. Visit the Copywriting 101 category to see them all.

As a copywriter, I get goosebumps from promos like the “Amish Miracle Fireplace” full page ad which has been running of late. This is the Ronco/Popiel school of long form copy I pored over when I was learning my trade. (In fact, I once interviewed at the Ronco offices in North Hollywood. I recall they had the various examples of their direct marketing prowess… the Veg-o-Matic, Pocket Fisherman and more… lined up on a shelf like Teddy Roosevelt’s African hunting trophies). As a cub copywriter I felt these ads were more audacious than deceptive… they were so entertaining in their own right that no one should feel cheated if they didn’t get their money’s worth.

Ad for Amish Miracle Fireplace, from consumeraffairs.com

The Amish Miracle Fireplace copywriter would have old Sam Popiel sitting up in his grave and saluting. The miracle is the heater being promoted in the ad, which puts out a high level of radiant heat for such a tiny object and will be yours FREE as long as you buy a wooden box/mantle to house it, which is the part made by the Amish. A little sleuthing gets to how the marketer makes money: At $300 plus shipping, the price of the box is much more than the apparent value of the “free” heater. But still. So many marketing touchpoints here: thrift, American tradition, pride of ownership in something that makes your hope more cozy, who wouldn’t want one at the bargain price of free?

Unfortunately, the folks at consumeraffairs.com have burst our bubble. Their article is a miraculous bit of digging, and along the way they respond to such consumer queries as “I thought Amish people didn’t use electricity” and “I thought Amish people didn’t allow themselves to be photographed.” They also tell us why such endorsements as UL-approved and the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval are essentially meaningless. And they point out that a device that produces the same level of electric heat (while sending your utility bill through the roof, by the way) can be bought at Target for $20.

The vice president of the company that makes the heater is interviewed in the article, and he is delightfully unrepentant. The “miracle”, he explains, is actually the imitation flames that are displayed on the front screen of the heater.  “These heaters are being called a miracle because they have what’s being called the ‘Fireless Flame’ patented technology that gives you the peaceful flicker of a real fire but without any flames, fumes, smells, ashes or mess. The patented ‘Fireless Flame’ looks so real it amazes everybody,” says David Baker, of Heat Surge in Canton, OH. I happened to have spent a weekend in Canton last fall and I wish I had had the presence of mind to check out this miracle for myself.

It is hard to avoid sexual analogies with the “close” but I will try. This is the part where the sale wraps up and the salesperson gets the act of commitment—a satisfying reward for handling the previous steps in a methodical and unhurried manner. The copywriting counterpart should be just as satisfying because this is where you get your reader to respond to your call to action; if you have a good and smart client, the higher percentage of people who respond, the more you will get paid.

Because it is so important and satisfying, salespeople like to linger a bit on the close and add a bit of art to it. There is lots of ink on best/proven/classic closing techniques. A good salesperson will first make a trial close in which they soften up the prospect to get them to agree to a small point before proceeding to the actual sale. (Example: “Sounds like the hatchback is a better fit for your family’s needs, am I right?”) Then they might use the assumptive close in which they act as if the sale has already been consummated and query on a subsequent point (“Will you be using a credit card for this?”) or the alternative close which also makes an assumption and gives the reader a subsequent choice (“Now, do you want that in red or black?”)

Roy Chitwood, whom I’ve quoted throughout this series, offers The Guaranteed Close: “If we can (reprise something the prospect said was important) then can you think of any reason we shouldn’t (consummate the agreement)?” E.g. “If we can get those red slipcovers you liked, can you think of any reason we shouldn’t get the paperwork started?” The beauty part is that the salesperson gets the sale by making the prospect say “no”.

Good direct response copywriters will close the sale in a manner that’s quite different but leads to the same outcome. They will sprinkle their emails, web pages or letters with repeated brief calls to action because you never know when you’ve provided the right amount of sell for some readers to make a commitment. Then, for those who have stuck with you all the way to the end (this applies mainly to classic long-form direct mail letters), reward them with a wind-up in which you:

• Spell out in detail all the benefits that are waiting for the prospect, accompanied by a description of the response options available (today it’s usually click the link or call).
• Couple this with your guarantee that proves there is absolutely no reason NOT to say yes.
• Include a limited time offer if you have one, or penalty for NOT responding. (Only 25 attendees can be accommodated to insure personal attention to each student! This guide is available in very limited quantities and when they’re gone, they’re gone!)

Then you’re done… as is this 7-part series, in which we have mused upon how good copywriting follows many of the same formulas as face to face selling. If you’ve joined us late, please go back and start from the beginning. Thanks for reading!

The general public has an image of “pushy salespeople” who cajole or badger them into buying something they don’t want or need. But good salespeople don’t actually do this. Instead, after they have presented the benefits of their product or service they will tease out any objections in the prospect’s mind and then respond to those before closing the sale.

Objections, also known as FUD (fears, uncertainties and doubts), are perceived reasons not to make a purchase that is otherwise attractive. By making an objection, the prospect is giving the salesperson a clue about something important to them. And by completely and correctly answering the objection, the salesperson can actually increase the prospect’s commitment level.

For example, if the prospect says it’s too expensive the salesperson can point out how it will actually save money, how not having it is costing them money, how the price is likely to be higher tomorrow.  If they say they want to shop around the salesperson will ask what they’re looking for from the competition and then prove how this product solves the problem in the best possible way.

So how does a copywriter answer objections, when you don’t have the reader in front of you to gauge their reaction to your written sales pitch? One answer is research—which can come from talking to a sales rep or product manager, reading up on the industry you’re selling to, or ideally from information in a good creative brief. You’re looking for big objections—the top one or two reasons buyers don’t buy—because that’s all you have time to respond to in your copy without getting off track.

A good example is the control direct mail I wrote for Geneva, a merger and acquisition consultant which wants to get business owners to attend a free seminar on how to evaluate their business. (The letter from this package is available on my website.) The #1 objection that business owners put forward was that they couldn’t admit to themselves (or to their employees) that they would consider selling the business. So we created a lift note that said just that with a pull quote on the outside: “I’m not about to sell my business… not after all the work I put into it!” And inside they read the story of a peer who felt the same way, but got a fabulous offer for more than he thought the business could possibly be worth. Objection answered.

Also, if you’re selling via direct response, certain objections come with the territory since customers can’t touch and feel the product. Will it work as advertised? What if it’s delivered and I don’t like it when I see it? And the answer is to paint very clear word pictures of how great it will be to use the product so the reader starts to visualize themselves doing just that, successfully, and becomes invested in your pitch. Couple this with a strong, clearly stated no-risk guarantee and you’re on your way.

Next time: we’ll conclude this series with thoughts on “The Guaranteed Close”.

According to sales trainer Roy Chitwood, every prospect makes the same 5 buying decisions and they always make them in the same order:

1. About you… are you a person I want to do business with?
2. About the company you work for or represent.
3. About your product or service.
4. About the price of the product or service you are selling.
5. About the time to buy.

Most copywriters spend all their time on step 3. But if you haven’t established credibility and trust, it doesn’t matter how appealing your product or service is because your audience doesn’t believe you are capable of providing it. And until you have created a need in the reader’s mind, it doesn’t matter how affordable it is or if you can buy one get one free for a limited time. (Which is why it’s rarely a good idea to use a price discount offer in prospecting for new leads.)

In my copywriting class we go through a role playing exercise where one student is a salesperson following Chitwood’s Track Selling method, and the other is the owner of a small insurance agency acting as the prospect. The prospect needs a new high speed copier but is concerned about cost and ease of use. However, they are also embarrassed that the current copier makes poor copies that do not represent the agency well. It’s the salesperson’s job to dig out these needs and concerns (which are described on a briefing sheet the salesperson does not see) and get an act of commitment.

This exercise happens shortly before lunch the first day, and I usually have two or three pairs of students go through it. Very few of these students have ever sold anything face to face before. The exercise gives them new respect for the concept of selling through your copy, as opposed to the straightforward presentation of technical features which is what most of them do in their marcom jobs.

Yet the salesperson’s job is easier in one way, because they have the prospect in front of them and can modify their pitch on the fly based on audience reaction. Next time: how you can too, sort of, in the way you handle objections and FUDs.