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ABC’s of Advertisements

The ABCs of Effective Advertising…

If you want your advertising to resonate with prospective customers, it’s essential that you appeal to their emotions in some way. Fail to do this and you might as well be throwing money out the window.

Effective ads sell your message, company, or product. They may or may not be creative, but if you can package some good creative in with a message that appeals to a strong need or want within your target audience, it will certainly help. Effective ads are convincing. They engage prospects as if you were speaking directly to them, and when you succeed in making this connection your prospective customer’s thoughts will become your brand itself. Be sure to check out Advertising Basics for Small Businesses for some pointers.

Even if you achieve the enviable position of having a provocative ad execution with an effective message, your work is far from over. In fact, in the world of advertising, your work is never over. Continually exposing your customers, prospective customers, and suspects (those who aren’t currently interested in your company or product, but who might be shortly) to the same messaging over a prolonged period of time will lead to stagnation. Eventually, you’ll fail not only to inspire brand loyalty, but also to retain it. Even Coke, one of the world’s most valuable brands, reinvents its messaging and image when it decides they have begun to lose effectiveness.

Creating an Effective Ad Campaign…

So how do you create an effective ad campaign? One way is to go with the single benefit methodology, which directly links your brand to a single benefit. If your deodorant lasts longer, tell the world about it. The characterization or personification angle involves creating a character that expresses the product’s benefits or personality. The narrative methodology involves developing a narrative story with episodes describing a problem and its outcome.

Again, aim to produce advertising that states not only a product’s facts, but that also appeals to emotions. Using the deodorant example, you might accomplish this by playing off your customers’ fears of having body odor at an inopportune time.

Although a calculated and well thought out advertising campaign may do a good job of creating brand awareness, it may fall short of inducing product preference or, the end goal, purchase. For this reason, don’t rely on advertising as a complete solution. Instead, support it with marketing and sales promotion to help trigger a purchase.

Apply the following criteria to test the effectiveness of your advertising message:

1. The ad intelligibly and simply states a single message.

2. The ad evokes a specific, acute emotion.

3. The ad is being presented in a space where it will likely be noticed.

4. The overriding message is clearly evident.

Finally, understand that even a carefully thought out, highly creative campaign with a strong, concise message will fall flat if the product you’re advertising just isn’t any good. Be honest with yourself on this one. Solicit existing customer feedback. Then decide whether or not it would be a wiser investment if you were to spend the money and time on first improving your product. The better your product is, the less time and money you’ll need to spend on traditional advertising. After all, word of mouth advertising is free, and it’s often what ultimately makes or breaks a product, brand, or company.

Special thanks to my friends at ALL BIZ for this information.

http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/advertising/2589-1.html

Abraham Lincoln says…

A work of ART!

So I said to him, “Barack, I know Abe Lincoln, and you ain’t Abe Lincoln.”

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

…..Abraham Lincoln

Sing at the Showdown

It’s good practice to enter a contest. It’s only $15 to sing and compete. Someone will win $1,000 cash and advance to the regionals and if you were to go to nationals- $50,000 and a recording contract and all kinds of offers to tour.

America’s #1 Country Music Talent Search is signing singers …. It’s the Colgate Country Showdown. Come on! Sing at 5 sanctioned events this year!
Come on and sing! Call us an save your spot at 906-228-6800

* June 27 – Ojibwa Casino Harvey
* July 3 – The Exchange Club’s International Food Fest
* July 4 – Ishpemings 4th of July Community Picnic 1p-4p
* July 25 – Ojibwa Harvey
* August 15 – Marquette County Fair

Sheep dressed in LED’s

I love this video of SHEEP in LED’s at NITE.  Fun stuff!

Sheep in LED\’s

REAL Teacher Comments about KIDS

These are comments made on students’ report cards by teachers in the New York City public school system. All teachers were reprimanded.

1. Since my last report, your child has reached rock bottom and has started to dig.

2. I would not allow this student to breed.

3. Your child has delusions of adequacy.

4. Your son is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.

5. Your son sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.

6. The student has a ‘full six-pack’ but lacks the plastic thing to hold it all together.

7. This child has been working with glue too much.

8. When your daughter’s IQ reaches 50, she should sell.

9. The gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn’t coming.

10. If this student were any more stupid, he’d have to be watered twice a week.

11. It’s impossible to believe the sperm that created this child beat out 1,000,000 others.

12. The wheel is turning but the hamster is definitely dead.

These are actual comments made by 16 Police Officers.
The comments were taken off actual police car videos around the country:

16 ‘You know, stop lights don’t come any redder than the one you just went through.’

15 ‘Relax, the handcuffs are tight because they’re new. They’ll stretch after you wear them a while.’

14 ‘If you take your hands off the car, I’ll make your birth certificate a worthless document.’

13 ‘If you run, you’ll only go to jail tired.’

12 ‘Can you run faster than 1200 feet per second? Because that’s the speed of the bullet that’ll be chasing you.’

11 ‘You don’t know how fast you were going? I guess that means I can write anything I want to on the ticket, huh?’

10 ‘Yes, sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don’t think it will help. Oh, did I mention that I’m the shift supervisor?’

9 ‘Warning! You want a warning? O.K, I’m warning you not to do that again or I’ll give you another ticket. ‘

8 ‘The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?’

7 ‘Fair? You want me to be fair? Listen, fair is a place where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy and corn dogs and step in monkey poop.’

6 ‘Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven.’

5 ‘In God we trust, all others we run through NCIC.’

4 ‘How big were those ‘two beers’ you say you had?’

3 ‘No sir, we don’t have quotas anymore. We used to, but now we’re allowed to write as many tickets as we can.’

2 ‘I’m glad to hear that the Chief (of Police) is a personal friend of yours. So you know someone who can post your bail.’

AND THE WINNER IS….

1 ‘You didn’t think we give pretty women tickets? You’re right, we don’t. Sign here..’

Costly Disasters

This includes property damage and expenses incurred related to the accident such as cleanup and industry losses. Many of these accidents involve casualties which obviously cannot be measured in dollar terms. Each life lost is priceless and is not factored into the equation. Deliberate actions such as war or terrorism and natural disasters do not qualify as accidents and therefore are not included in this list.

The sinking of the Titanic is possibly the most famous accident in the world. But it barely makes our list of top 10 most expensive. On April 15, 1912, the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage and was considered to be the most luxurious ocean liner ever built. Over 1,500 people lost their lives when the ship ran into an iceberg and sunk in frigid waters. The ship cost $7 million to build ($150 million in today’s dollars).

On August 26, 2004, a car collided with a tanker truck containing 32,000 liters of fuel on the Wiehltal Bridge in Germany. The tanker crashed through the guardrail and fell 90 feet off the A4 Autobahn resulting in a huge explosion and fire which destroyed the load-bearing ability of the bridge. Temporary repairs cost $40 million and the cost to replace the bridge is estimated at $318 Million.

On September 12, 2008, in what was one of the worst train crashes in California history, 25 people were killed when a Metrolink commuter train crashed head-on into a Union Pacific freight train in Los Angeles. It is thought that the Metrolink train may have run through a red signal while the conductor was busy text messaging. Wrongful death lawsuits are expected to cause $500 million in losses for Metrolink.

Here we have our first billion dollar accident (and we’re only #7 on the list). This B-2 stealth bomber crashed shortly after taking off from an air base in Guam on February 23, 2008. Investigators blamed distorted data in the flight control computers caused by moisture in the system. This resulted in the aircraft making a sudden nose-up move which made the B-2 stall and crash. This was 1 of only 21 ever built and was the most expensive aviation accident in history. Both pilots were able to eject to safety.

The crash was captured on video. It shows one B-2 Bomber successfully taking off followed by the B-2 Bomber which crashes. The crash starts at 2:00

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was not a large one in relation to the world’s biggest oil spills, but it was a costly one due to the remote location of Prince William Sound (accessible only by helicopter and boat). On March 24, 1989, 10.8 million gallons of oil was spilled when the ship’s master, Joseph Hazelwood, left the controls and the ship crashed into a Reef. The cleanup cost Exxon $2.5 billion.

The world’s worst off-shore oil disaster. At one time, it was the world’s single largest oil producer, spewing out 317,000 barrels of oil per day.
On July 6, 1988, as part of routine maintenance, technicians removed and checked safety valves which were essential in preventing dangerous build-up of liquid gas.
There were 100 identical safety valves which were checked. Unfortunately, the technicians made a mistake and forgot to replace one of them. At 10 PM that same night, a technician pressed a start button for the liquid gas pumps and the world’s most expensive oil rig accident was set in motion.

Within 2 hours, the 300 foot platform was engulfed in flames. It eventually collapsed, killing 167 workers and resulting in $3.4 Billion in damages.

The Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after takeoff due on January 28, 1986 due to a faulty O-ring. It failed to seal one of the joints, allowing pressurized gas to reach the outside. This in turn caused the external tank to dump its payload of liquid hydrogen causing a massive explosion. The cost of replacing the Space Shuttle was $2 billion in 1986 ($4.5 billion in today’s dollars). The cost of investigation, problem correction, and replacement of lost equipment cost $450 million from 1986-1987 ($1 Billion in today’s dollars).

On November 13, 2002, the Prestige oil tanker was carrying 77,000 tons of heavy fuel oil when one of its twelve tanks burst during a storm off Galicia, Spain. Fearing that the ship would sink, the captain called for help from Spanish rescue workers, expecting them to take the ship into harbour. However, pressure from local authorities forced the captain to steer the ship away from the coast. The captain tried to get help from the French and Portuguese authorities, but they too ordered the ship away from their shores. The storm eventually took its toll on the ship resulting in the tanker splitting in half and releasing 20 million gallons oil into the sea.

According to a report by the Pontevedra Economist Board, the total cleanup cost $12 billion.

The Space Shuttle Columbia was the first space worthy shuttle in NASA’s orbital fleet. It was destroyed during re-entry over Texas on February 1, 2003 after a hole was punctured in one of the wings during launch 16 days earlier. The original cost of the shuttle was $2 Billion in 1978. That comes out to $6.3 Billion in today’s dollars. $500 million was spent on the investigation, making it the costliest aircraft accident investigation in history. The search and recovery of debris cost $300 million.

In the end, the total cost of the accident (not including replacement of the shuttle) came out to $13 Billion according to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

On April 26, 1986, the world witnessed the costliest accident in history. The Chernobyl disaster has been called the biggest socio-economic catastrophe in peacetime history. 50% of the area of Ukraine is in some way contaminated. Over 200,000 people had to be evacuated and resettled while 1.7 million people were directly affected by the disaster. The death toll attributed to Chernobyl, including people who died from cancer years later, is estimated at 125,000. The total costs including cleanup, resettlement, and compensation to victims has been estimated to be roughly $200 Billion. The cost of a new steel shelter for the Chernobyl nuclear plant will cost $2 billion alone. The accident was officially attributed to power plant operators who violated plant procedures and were ignorant of the safety requirements needed.

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70 to 80 degrees day and night

Hi, I’m back from a 15 day visit and work project in Honduras.  14 men and women went to Honduras and built a church and toured the countryside too.  I enjoyed rabbit hunting as well. The weather was perfect, no bugs, nice temps, t-shirts day and night.  I enjoyed delicious fruits and vegetables along with good Spanish cooking.  It was a great time with friends and New friends.    But now, back on the Radio in March,  whoppieee!

Global Warming Conference in Marquette

On Holiday till Feb 26, 2009

Hello friend….I’m on Holiday from my BLOG till Thursday Febrary 26, 2009.  May God Bless yah!

a Deer Surprise…

Wow!  Could be a Dear Surprise…