One of my heroes in direct marketing is the esteemed David Ogilvy.
Whenever I study his ads or read his books on direct marketing, I always find myself scribbling pages of notes and creating new wrinkles in my grey matter.
In his classic, “Ogilvy on Advertising” he makes a point so simple, yet so powerful, it just had to be shared.
On page 16, Ogilvy talks about “The Big Idea.”
And unless your advertising (emails, sales letters, websites, squeeze pages, blog posts) contain a BIG IDEA, your message will pass “like a ship in the night”.
Unfortunately, true, Big Ideas are extremely hard to create.
This is due to the fact that recognizing Big Ideas require a rare combination of hyper awareness, research, and the right product.
Ogilvy claimed to have had, MAYBE 20 in his entire, illustrious career.
The point is to get your marketing message as CLOSE as possible to having a Big Idea for maximum effectiveness.
Luckily Ogilvy created a list of 5 questions to help you recognize your Big Idea:
- Did it make me gasp when I first saw it?
- Do I wish I had thought of it myself?
- Is it unique?
- Does it fit the strategy to perfection?
- Could it be used for 30 years?
Think about how extraordinarily effective and successful an advertisement must be for its product to continue selling for more than FIVE years. But 30?
And when your target market reads the sales letter for your product, does it make them GASP?
That’s the goal for all of us as marketers.
To create products that are unique and evergreen, with strategic marketing that makes your target market gasp with delight, and your competitors wish they had thought of it.
-James D. Lee
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