Introducing the Communication Efficiency Test (CET)

I am sure that 10 is a good number, but in this context the number 9 is even better.

I am going to anticipate what is going to come when I have written the last couple of posts on advertising fundamentals set forth by Horace S. Schwerin and Henry H. Newell in their book Persuasion in Marketing. As I have stated plenty of times I urge you to get this book and pick up this research information directly from the source. The fundamentals are the result of extensive testing based on more than 50.000 ads and commercial. I am not saying that this is the whole story there is, certainly not, but is a good basics if you want to avoid big blunders in advertising.

You need, of course, to add a dash of campaign strategy, lots of creativity and originality to get things working for you. And you will better off if you bring a couple of bare bones to the party as well. So that is just what I am going to suggest to you in setting up a basic check list for your future expertise as an advertiser. Or as an advertising consultant. You will be surprised how well this is going to work for you.

You may ask, is this really necessary. Do I need a check list for this. Well, I leave the answer to you, but before you speak it out, take a local tour in the magazines, in the newspapers, on the commercial television canals, that you have access to. Look briefly, or less briefly, over the ads and commercials that demands your attention. I have done that, and what I see produced from even highly estimated ad agencies, does not impress me. Not all of the time anyway.

Using the CET checklist will secure you against possible pitfalls. Expensive ones, even. Particularly if you are the one paying for the game.

So here is what I am going to do: I am going to let myself be inspired from the arguments from Schwerin and Newell, and I am going a couple of barebones to the list, which will bring me to the number of 9 (nine). These is going to be 9 separate checkpoint in the CET checklist, then. Right?

The CET check list:

1. One Unified Impression.

2. Dominant Mood.

3. Visual and Verbal.

4. The Simple Truth.

5. Product of Consumer.

6. The Right Consumer.

7. Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

8. Connotations.

9. Gestalt factors.

How to use?

How do you use this check list? Basically anyway you want, but my suggesting is you give each checkpoint a stretch from minus 3 to plus 3 so you have some room to mark your evaluations.

Could look like this:

1. One Unified Impression.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

You will do that for each of the checkpoint in the CET checklist I just introduced. I will have the full checklist made ready for you in later post, but there is enough for you already here to get you down to work.

Crash Criteria:

As you see the evaluation scale have a red area and a green area. The span from -3 to 0 is the crash area (left) , and the span from 0 to +3 is the non crash area (right). Just like the traffic light: red you stop and green you walk.

Here is how I suggest you use it. If, to the best of your ability, you find that a certain checkpoint not fulfilled in the add or the commercial, you rate it on the red side of the scale (minus something). If you find the criteria fulfilled you rate on the plus side of the scale.

Crash criteria are: If even one of the 9 checkpoints are evaluated to the red area you crash it, you dump it, you don’t pay out.

Pretty tough?

You may argue that this is a pretty tough test. Only one checkpoint in the red and then you dump the whole thing? Could we say, mayby, two or three in stead? No we could not. It is not possible to half or even partially pregnant.

The argument for this toughness is that the 9 checkpoint are weaved together. You will find, that if you down an ad or a commercial on “One Unified Expression” you will probably experience that it fall apart on many other checkpoint, as well.

Seventh Advertising Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining

I am updating blog logistics. This post will be written soon.

Other posts

You’ll find the other posts in this series on advertising fundamentals, below. If the post title is linked, it means that the posts have been submitted, and that you will get to it if you follow the link. If the fundamental is not yet linked, it means that that the post is not there yet. So you need for have a little patience.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

For an overview of the whole section please go here.

If you want to go for the book making your learning curve steeper and faster, here is the Library Thing information on it. You’ll get the full information here as well:  Persuasion in Marketing, The Dynamics of Marketing’s Great Untapped Resource, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981.

Sixth Advertising Fundamental: The Right Consumer

I am updating blog logistics. This post will be written soon. You’ll need to come back for this post.

Other posts

You’ll find the other posts in this series on advertising fundamentals, below. If the post title is linked, it means that the posts have been submitted, and that you will get to it if you follow the link. If the fundamental is not yet linked, it means that that the post is not there yet. So you need for have a little patience.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

For an overview of the whole section please go here.

If you want to go for the book making your learning curve steeper and faster, here is the Library Thing information on it. You’ll get the full information here as well:  Persuasion in Marketing, The Dynamics of Marketing’s Great Untapped Resource, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981.

Fifth Advertising Fundamental: Product or Consumer

Basically, I was never a Mac fan. This obscure little company, Apple, run by Steve Jobs that seemed to go in and out of business for so many years. The gear might be good for designer and other hippies, but not for more regular people using their desktops or portables for normal business. Windows was good enough. More than good enough. So where the boxes it came in.

But that was last year. My company came with an offer for an employee lease/buy that, for the first time, included some Mac options. Three packages based on PC’s, and three packages of Mac’s as well: the IMac, the Macbook, and the Macbook Pro. Six different solutions to chose from, and six set of expectations to be met.

It did not take me long to decide and I basically did so on aesthetic criteria. The new IMac is a beauty. In fact, there are lots of barebones connotations over it. And it work, and that is a good thing. It has been with me since November last year.

Since then I am the regular visitor on the Apple Site. And I was there October 14th this year (2008) for the Apple Special Event and Steve Jobs introducing another round of groundbreaking software and hardware. You need to go see his keynote speech, because it is a good introduction to what I am going to target in this barebones post: product or consumer.

Sales numbers displayed at the keynote meeting are impressive, and so are briefs into the Apple production technology. Normally you would not, from a selling point of view, want to dwell to long a time on production techniques because lots of user would not take an interest. My reaction was quite the opposite since the idea of carving out the frame structure of the new MacBooks from one single bloc of aluminium is good thinking. It’s brilliant. Unibody Apple calls it.

(This post is to be continued, so you need to come back later).

Other posts in this section.

You’ll find the other posts in this series on advertising fundamentals, below. If the post title is linked, it means that the posts has been submitted, and that you will get to it if you follow the link. If the fundamental is not yet linked, it means that that the post is not there yet. So you need for have a little patience.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

For an overview of the whole section please go here.

If you want to go for the book making your learning curve steeper and faster, here is the Library Thing information on it. You’ll get the full information here as well:  Persuasion in Marketing, The Dynamics of Marketing’s Great Untapped Resource, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981.

Fourth Advertising Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

You may not connect “truth” to the world of advertising at all. And maybe you should not. It has always been accepted by conventions that advertisers, and advertisements therefore, are allow to bend the truth a little. To be interesting, to be persuasive, to be competitive. To catch and hold attention.

However, there is one truth that you don’t want to bend: the simple truth. Meaning “the structure and order of a persuasive message should be a simple as possible. As far as structure is concerned, this means leaving out all extraneous elements”. (page 165).

Simple as that. Cut the crap and leave out the fat.

Again the example is from the world of commercials. This time not for toothpaste or cars, but for a cold tablet, a medical. You know, a tablet you take for not getting cold (it that possible?).

Schwerin and Newell tells the story about two different commercials trying to tell the story.

The first execution contained only three scenes: a) a man walking in the rain passing a billboard for the product in question; b) he enters a store, sniffling a bit, and is advised to buy an item of the brand; c) he is then seen well and happy again. End of story.

The second version is much longer, consisting of 7 different scenes. A much more complicated structure and argument.  

The measured difference between the two in terms of preference change was clear. The simple version of the cold tablet commercial worked twice as good.  

Not only simplicity of the structure is important. So is the order of things. Schwerin and Newell, in their book, refers to a test done with different order formats. One of the most popular formats is “before and after”. Here is the way they describe it: ” X is at a disadvantage because he does not use the product. X uses the product. X is better off”. This is called the normal order format.

Other formats are: reverse order, extended normal order and simultaneous. I am sure you can guess where this is leading; the more simple structure, and the more simple order, normally gives the more persuasive message.

If you need to go in details with these studies, please consult the book and its references. All you need as a reader of this blog, however, is to remember that simple makes better, and you handle simplicity through message structure and the order of things.

It is very easy to remember. Try training it the next time you see or read an advertisement, or a commercial that attracts your attention.

Other posts

You’ll find the other posts in this series on advertising fundamentals, below. If the post title is linked, it means that the posts have been submitted, and that you will get to it if you follow the link. If the fundamental is not yet linked, it means that that the post is not there yet. So you need for have a little patience.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

For an overview of the whole section please go here.

If you want to go for the book making your learning curve steeper and faster, here is the Library Thing information on it. You’ll get the full information here as well:  Persuasion in Marketing, The Dynamics of Marketing’s Great Untapped Resource, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981.

Third Advertising Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

The third fundamental to deal with is visual and verbal. 

And again: It should not come as a surprise to anyone, that this third fundamental links closely to the other fundamentals.  It is not a third fundamental in terms of something entirely different from the the first two. It’s another side of the same coin. An added aspect.

In a commercial, a good idea is to check if it contains the same message sound turned off. Simply block the sound and describe the message. Then turn up the sound and describe the message once more. If you, roughly, don’t get the same result, you may have some revising to do.

Visual and verbal need to be coherent and stick together? In what way?

Don’t tell, show!

First of all, research seems to stress that it very important that support your message actively: don’t tell, show.

Schwerin and Newell mentions two different commercials they did for a shockproof wristwatch. The first commercial “was a straight stand-up pitch by an announcer, interspersed with occasional static shots of the the watch and superimposed legends”. That commercial did a very poor selling job, says the two authors.

And they continue: “The second commercial showed the product on the wrist of a sculptor who was violently hammering away at a block of marble with mallet and chisel”.

And guess what: In terms of selling the second commercial did much better than the first commercial by far. Measured by Schwerin and Newell it did SEVEN TIMES better.

Not at odds

Is does little good if the visual is at odds with the verbal, says the authors. SCR tested two commercials for a toothpaste. The message being that the toothpaste leaves a clean and fresh taste in the user’s mouth. The first version showed a white row of sparkling teeth, and a speaker told the story. The second version showed the same set of shining teeth, but this time the commercial included” a misty balloon effect surrounding the words CLEAN BREATH”.

The latter commercial worked better, and in terms of recall of the message it worked twice as good as the first one.

Not at the same time

Again, don’t try do to too many things at the same time. I will not work. Trying to get someone to respond to more than one message at the same time seems to destroy impact. Schwerin and Newell refers to a case where a car commercial flashes the words “fasten your seat belts” at the same moment as a speaker asks the audience to see the local dealer. It did not work. ” …. the consumer becomes emotionally paralyzed because he can respond to only one stimulus at a time and he is being confused by two simultaneous alternatives”.

Other posts

You’ll find the other posts in this series on advertising fundamentals, below. If the post title is linked, it means that the posts has been submitted, and that you will get to it if you follow the link. If the fundamental is not yet linked, it means that that the post is not there yet. So you need to have a little patience.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

For an overview of the whole section please go here.

If you want to go for the book making your learning curve steeper and faster, here is the Library Thing information on it. You’ll get the full information here as well:  Persuasion in Marketing, The Dynamics of Marketing’s Great Untapped Resource, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981.

Second Advertising Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

It can come as no surprise, that the importance of one unified impression fundamental sets the stage for the rest of the fundamentals that Schwerin and Newell points to in their research. And yes, the fundamentals are derived from research into more than 50.000 ads and TV-commercials. So these fundamentals then are much more than one man’s (or rather two men’s) grand tale of what works, and don’t work, in advertising. Make no mistake here. These research results sticks to efficient communication. Not as a bible, but as a kind of default setting for persuasion. You can always go against these rules of persuasion, but I would consider that as risky business.

In this research, Schwerin and Newell found that there was yet another a common denominator for successful persuasion in marketing.. Successful campaigns fall in one of two opposite poles of persuasion: they are either emotional or logical in their “argument”.

What does this mean?

Sometimes the easiest way to explain a thing is telling a story of what it is not. The argument here does not imply that you need to rid every emotional element from a logical advertisement. That is hardly possible. And, it does not imply that you need to get rid of all logical hints in an overall emotional advertisement. This is hardly possible either.

The lesson to be learned seems to be that you need to pick your main road; either logical or emotional. And you need to stay on that road as best you can. That can sometimes take some effort. You need to know what means you have to your disposal for staying on the road. These means could easily be some you find in the barebones toolbox. For instance, it will help you a lot if you are aware of the difference between denotation and connotation, when you draft you concept and later on, the specific layout for the e.g. print ad. You can use gestalt factors to hold things together (text and main visuals).

When you chose your main road you should chose one of the two options mentioned; emotional or logical. Do that, and you chose a dominant mood for your persuasion. And advertising is about persuasion of people.

Let’s be more specific.

I need your help in imagining the following picture (sorry I do not have one in the real). I need you to imagine a white refrigerator. About 1.80 meter tall, and 0.60 meter wide. Doors open so you can see the empty shelves. (It is a brand new refrigerator. Just unpacked).

Do you manage this? Are you able to smell it as well, and sense the depth of it? (You will be amazed of how many people, that will not be able to imagine such a simple scene, but I bargain that you are not one of them. So, I continue).

Here, then, you have this imaginary brand new and very white refrigerator, right? Next step: Now you will image a newspaper and reading it a Sunday morning. On the third page is a picture of that same refrigerator, that you have just imagined. The text that sits above of the picture reads like this: “Be there Sunday before 01.00 p.m, and you get this Siemens for half the price“. The text body goes on telling you about the size of the refrigerator, how good it is to cool your wine, milk and groceries, how cold it freezes, that you don’t have to de-ice it ever, and that it, in terms of energy, will help the polar bears to stay on the North Pole in stead of in the North Pole Zoo.

Such an advertisement, may indeed raise you emotions, but in terms of dominant mood it is riding the logical main road. You build up an argument, and you stay with that argument. The main string in such an argument could be size, price or polar bears. Or it could be something else. It am sure that you get it  

Now to the emotional advertisements, and the second of the two main road available within the scope of dominant moods. Let me see if I can find a suitable picture so that this post will not end up consisting of text only (people don’t read much nowadays). And this post has already too many words.

Here is a suitable picture. Let’s look at it. You look at it.

 

So, what have we got?

For sure, this is not then the inside or the outside of a refrigerator, as in our imagination above. No, this is a picture of two deck chairs in front of a Bacardi poster. Shot on board one of the large ferries taking people and cars from Copenhagen, Denmark to Oslo, Norway. Shot, as I recall, in 2006.

Now, to the next little experiment. Forget the refrigerator, and in your imagination place this picture over the whole page in the same Sunday paper, that you “had in your hands” a while ago. Add the following headline to it: Free Drinks. 

Having this image in you mind, would you say that this was a dominant mood of what: logic or emotion. Would you be travelling on the emotional road or the logical road. What do I hear you say? Do I hear you at all … no, I don’t so I will have to speak once more

You could, of course, say that the heading “free drinks” could be a part of a logical argument. For instance “free drinks and you will save money”, which most of us will understand as a reasonable argument. But in this context, I would argue that this imaginary advertisement is dominantly emotional. How do I come to that conclusion. Well, why not use the connotations that might come with this picture. Here are some suggestions: relaxation, vacation, travel, sunshine, good feeling, et cetera. 

And that is nearly all I have to say this time. Sorry for such a wordy post. YOU need to continue from here

Very quick summary. Dominant mode is one of the advertising fundamentals stressed by Schwerin and Newell in their research. You are better off if you chose one road, logic or emotion, in stead of trying to travel both at the same time.

You should notice, that research in advertising goes very well with more academic sources like semiology, gestalt psychology and with phenomenology, even if all these sources have not been made explicit in this post.

Basically, the idea of merging resources are what barebones communication is all about: How different sources of competence may work together. They can even do so in very practical situations. Like, for instance, analysing or “constructing” a piece of communication like “an advertisement”.

If you want to read the first post in this barebones section on advertising, please go here. For an overview go here.

Other posts

You’ll find direct links to the other posts in this series on advertising fundamentals, below. If the post title is linked, it means that the posts has been submitted, and that you will get to it if you follow the link. If the fundamental is not yet linked, it means that that the post is not there yet. So you need to have a little patience.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

If you want to go for the book making your learning curve steeper and faster, here is the Library Thing information on it. And you’ll get the full information here as well:  Persuasion in Marketing, The Dynamics of Marketing’s Great Untapped Resource, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981.

Stay well. A post on the third fundamental will emerge on this blog soon.

The “Rules” of Persuasion

I have been waiting for this. Or rather waiting for this book. I had it once, but it seem to have been lost. So I had to order a new copy. Used copy arrived to day from a book store in Canada. I had some difficulties tracking down a copy, but I managed by the help of Amazon. Thanks.

The name of the book is simply Persuasion in Marketing. Written by Horace S. Schwerin and Henry H. Nowell. Published by John Wiley & Sons in 1981. And if you belong to one of those (and there are many) that means that anything written more then 6 months back are either outdated or out of fashion, you should think again. If you are one of those simple minds, you are probably reading the wrong blog

The reasons I anticipated this book (apart from the fact that I have misled my original copy) are many. First of all I have written a series of articles based on it; secondly I have written a book partly based on it; thirdly it is extremely good reading for anyone who have the ambition of doing efficient, economical (and I don’t even mean money) communication. Commercial or not. The validity goes way beyond the area of marketing if you deal with the core message in the book. And again, I am surprises, that when I added this book to Library Thing less than 30 minutes ago, I am the only one to have this book in a personal library there.

The chapter that works particularly well from an operative point of view starts at page 157, and is titled The “Rules” of Persuasion. The section Seven Fundamentals is where we want to dig in. “Over the span of more than two decades SRC tested, in the United States and several other countries, some 50.000 commercials and other advertising messages. We could not help observing that certain fundamentals recurrently characterized the successful campaigns of our clients and were much less often to be found in weaker efforts. These fundamentals, it should be added, were not our brilliant personal discovery; all have been stated in similar form at one time or another by astute practitioners of advertising both before and since.”

Here are the seven fundamentals. Take good care of them, because they might turn out extremely valuable for you as well. And that might particularly be if you are in the advertising business and are in the habit of making huge sums of money doing expertise work in communication for products, people , ideas, causes or whatever the reason may be.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

Well, is does not seem of much, does it? I knew that I would hear that argument, because for many these fundamantal are merely trivial. You might think so, but I am not at all sure that you are at all right. Unless you want to lower that standard of persuasive communication.

From I have seen lately, and not so lately, very few people are able to live up to these “trivial” fundamentals when doing communication. If you are in the advertising business you may have a particular hard time meeting the standard here, since the audience sometimes are diffuse, the media scattered and the competition for mere attention to your message is hard to get.

I will not, of course leave it at this Hopefully you did not think so. I will, in future posts, elaborate on each fundamental. So just stay tuned, and get ready for some interesting stuff here as well. The first thing you should do is, however, getting a copy of Schwerin and Newell’s book. If is is still out there.

If you are into the Scandinavian languages, and are able to read the letters of The Royal Kingdom of Denmark you might in fact do very well and maybe a little bit better with this book. That is, if you can get it. Hmmm …. I might even have a word with the publisher.

Give it a thought on communication: Be serious in answering this question: How many pieces of advertising have you seen lately that really engage thought worth entertaining? And sent me a list of campaign so I can get entertained, as well

If you have read this post, your should also read this analysis of a famous Danish commercial.