Think about this list for a moment: These are TV spots people chose to watch online, by the millions. That’s an advertiser’s dream.

But what makes these ads so popular? Why did the Darth Vader Volkswagen spot get over 45 million YouTube views? Why did 25 million people view the Royal Wedding dance ad for T-Mobile?

It’s not crazy gimmicks or over-the-top production techniques, though some of the ads on the YouTube Top 10 list have spectacular visual effects.

I think it’s about storytelling. The most watched ads of 2011 engage viewers in a compelling story.

Here’s why storytelling is such an effective advertising technique and how to tell stories in your smart marketing strategy.

Why Stories Work in Marketing

Storytelling is fundamental to every culture. Stories work in marketing because everyone understands what a story is about. When the story is highly relevant to the needs and interests of the audience, it’s a powerful and persuasive way to convey information.

Stories have a plot, characters, and a narrative point of view. The mostly highly viewed YouTube ads – the Volkswagen and T-Mobile spots, Jennifer Aniston creating a video for Smartwater, or Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” campaign – combine these elements brilliantly.

7 Characteristics of Effective Advertising Storytelling

As a marketing strategist, I believe there are seven characteristics of a great advertising story:

1. It’s engaging: The viewer is immediately drawn into the scenario. Something interesting is happening and you want to know what it is.
2. It’s emotional: The best advertising stories make you feel something: Empathy, humor, joy, tension, excitement.
3. It’s memorable: You get it and can’t forget it.
4. It’s easy to retell: You can describe the basic scenario in one sentence.
5. It has a plot: There’s a beginning, middle, and end.
6. There’s an element of suspense: You have to stick with the ad to see how the story will turn out.
7. Most important, the product plays a pivotal role: The product is woven into the story so well that the story couldn’t be told with it.

Lessons for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

Storytelling can be a smart marketing tactic for almost any marketer and great stories don’t have to be told just on TV.

One example is the excellent Avis marketing campaign on the front page of the Marketplace section of The Wall Street Journal. Avis uses real letters from grateful customers to tell stories about the company’s commitment to customer service.

To create dynamic marketing stories like these, I advise clients of my marketing consulting firm to think about the following:

• How are your products or services used? What stories might your customers tell? Plot out the scenarios and explore how to make these scenarios interesting to prospects.
• Who are your customers? What type of character is your customer? Use real-life case studies to showcase customers as themselves or create similar characters prospects can relate to.
• What emotions do people feel when they use your products or services? Do your customers feel confident, safe, happy, relieved, excited, satisfied, proud? Capture these emotions in the stories you tell.
• What is your product’s role? How does your product enable your customers to achieve success? Build your stories around the benefits of what you sell.

A final tip: Don’t make the mistake of telling such a great story that the product gets lost in the narrative. See my prior post about the Kevin Bacon ad for Logitech.

What stories do you think made the most compelling advertising campaigns?

Since we’re moving soon to new offices (a new suite in the same building in Cleveland, Ohio), I decided to take the opportunity to weed out our idea file, especially our massive collection of direct mail.

I tossed a lot of old stuff, but I was surprised at how many direct marketing campaigns created five, ten, or even 20 years ago still pack a powerful marketing punch.

I wondered: Why do some direct marketing campaigns stand the test of time? What do these campaigns have in common that makes them so effective?

Here are four things our old idea file taught me about great direct mail that you can apply to your smart marketing strategy.

Proven Principles of Direct Marketing Don’t Change

As a marketing consultant who advises clients on direct marketing strategies, I’m always on the hunt for effective business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) direct mail ideas and techniques.

Looking back through the gems in our idea file, I was reminded again of four proven principles of effective direct mail:

1. Write engaging teaser copy that grabs the reader and doesn’t let go: Teaser copy is the most important message in a direct mail package. Here are four irresistible examples of excellent teaser copy:

• 5 Words You Never Want Your Wife or Husband to Say. Know what they are? See inside. (Life insurance; payoff copy inside: “There wasn’t enough life insurance”)
• What NEVER to eat on an airplane. (Newsletter subscription)
• As it turns out, your mother was wrong. (Software company; payoff copy inside: “You DO know everything”)
• “We need someone with vision, creativity, and great marketing instincts: Someone like Jean Gianfagna.” (Cartoon caption on an Advertising Age subscription mailing that’s still a classic)

2.  Use paper to make the reader want to touch and hold the mailing: Many of the most effective campaigns in our idea file use paper creatively. Translucent or clear carrier envelopes, a brown paper bag, high gloss paper, or a rich, textured stock can transform a direct mail promotion.

3.  Select a creative format to stand out in a cluttered mailbox: Direct mail offers unlimited creative options, especially with formats. Mailings with odd dimensions, interesting folds, string or ribbon ties, very large envelopes, very small envelopes, die cuts, wax or foil seals, and pop-ups are among our keeper campaigns.

4. Deploy dimensional direct mail that screams “open me:” Dimensional direct mail can’t be beat to get attention, especially in B2B marketing. A small, clear plastic bottle holding a note, sand, and a tiny beach umbrella, a piece of wood, a small box with a key inside, an actual metal mailbox, and a lumpy mailing with half a Swiss Army Knife showing through a window (and a great teaser: “Open carefully: Knife inside”) are just a few examples of outstanding dimensional mail we’ve saved.

Keep an Idea File for Education and Inspiration

Truly great marketing campaigns grab your attention, engage you immediately in a relevant message, get your head nodding in agreement, and make you eager to say yes. If you run a marketing agency or a corporate marketing department, an idea file can help educate your team on these principles of effective marketing and get the creative juices flowing when you’re looking for new marketing ideas.

Do you have favorite or classic promotions in your idea file? Please share them!

The Next Great American Consumer by Brian Braiker provides a fascinating look at this development. Braiker says branding at birth is “a trend—fueled in part by the growth of digital devices—toward aggressively targeting a demographic that didn’t exist, in marketers’ eyes, until recently: infants to 3-year-olds. By getting their logos and iconic characters in front of babies—even those with still-blurry eyesight—they hope to establish brand-name preference before she or he has uttered a word.”

Is this a smart marketing strategy? Or is this the scariest thing you’ve seen all week? The answer to both questions is yes. Here’s why.

The Brilliance of Early Marketing

Establishing brand awareness and brand preference is the goal of every smart marketer, and as a marketing consultant, I have to acknowledge the brilliance of this strategy. The article cites plenty of research to prove the impact of early marketing on infants and toddlers, including studies which show that an American child can recognize an average of 100 brand logos by age 3. If you’re marketing products to kids and parents, you certainly want your logo on that list.

The real power of this marketing strategy may be its influence on parents. I bought Disney-themed baby toys for my kids and if Kate Spade had made designer baby bags when my daughter was born, I’d have been first in line to buy one.

I probably also would have let my young children play with my iPhone or iPad if I’d had one back then, as many parents do today. That’s why so many marketers like Fisher-Price and Nick Jr. are creating branded apps and online games for the very youngest technology users and why Dora the Explorer has a Facebook page (supposedly for parents) with over 770,000 followers.

But How Young is Too Young?

Of course, licensed characters on clothing, toys, and other products for babies and toddlers are nothing new.

But I wonder if marketers are beginning to take this too far. The level of marketing to infants and toddlers is clearly on the rise, as Braiker’s article illustrates, and the idea of marketing to someone too young and vulnerable to perceive the difference between reality and fantasy makes me queasy. In my experience as a marketing advisor, when it feels like you may be crossing the line of what’s appropriate, you probably are – and the negative fallout usually outweighs the marketing benefit when you do.

Is This Really a Branding Strategy?

From a marketing strategy standpoint, I also wonder whether this approach really can be called “branding.”

Branding is making a promise to a customer about the value you deliver and the experience the customer will have when they choose to do business with you. Is that what these marketers are achieving by targeting consumers far too young to understand product value and differentiate between products? Or are they just cementing an image of an icon in a young child’s mind without attaching any meaning to it?

If that’s the case, I think it’s an open question whether this will pay off as a branding strategy in the long run. Brand recognition doesn’t automatically translate into sales; sales are driven by value.  Even if a young child can recognize and name a brand logo or character, that’s not the same as achieving true brand loyalty among children and parents because of the quality of your products. And marketers who go too far by targeting infants could find themselves facing a backlash from society and parents.

What do you think? Where should marketers draw the line when it comes to targeting images and messages to babies and toddlers? When does a smart marketing strategy become a societal concern?

Like all direct marketing practitioners, I’ve been dismayed to watch the U.S. Postal Service struggle for survival. As the organization tries to right its ship by cutting costs, it’s also trying to grow revenue by drumming up new business from mailers.

That’s the right thing to do, but perhaps not the way the USPS is doing it.

Case in point: The latest USPS direct mail campaign mailed to my marketing firm this week. Here’s where the USPS went wrong and how to avoid this mistake in your smart marketing strategy.

Nice Mailing, Terrible List Prep

The USPS is using direct mail to promote its shipping services to businesses and they’ve done a lot of things right with their latest direct marketing campaign. They’ve selected the right target market and the right service, created an attractive, three-panel selfmailer, and made a good offer: a free shipping kit. There’s a strong call to action, a personalized URL (PURL), and a QR code, many of the elements of effective business-to-business (B2B) direct mail.

So what’s wrong with the mailing? The addressing.

Our marketing agency got five copies of this promotion and all were addressed to us at our old office suite number, though we moved three years ago.

Even worse, only two are correctly addressed to individuals who still work here. Two were sent to me, one correctly addressed and one to Gean Gianfagna, an erroneous spelling of my name from an old, compiled B2B list that never seems to go away.

Two others are addressed to former employees who moved on more than five years ago. One of these former staff members got the mailing in her maiden name and she’s been married for 10 years.

Yes, we received all the mail, so they effectively delivered it, and that’s to their credit. But how effective is the message when it’s sent to the wrong people? Especially people who are no longer at the address?

The Shoemaker’s Children?

What’s most ironic about this direct marketing campaign is that the mailer with the list problem is the organization whose job is to deliver the mail.

Why didn’t their merge/purge pick up the likely duplication between Jean and Gean with the same last name at the exact same address? Why is the suite number wrong on all the mail? And how did they end up using a B2B mailing list with data that’s at least five years out of date – and in our case, 10 years?

Unfortunately, much of their investment in good creative and the postage they spent to send it to us, five times over, is wasted on an outdated list and a bad merge/purge.

The Key Lesson for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

As a marketing consultant, I strongly believe in the value of direct mail in a marketing plan. I also know that every mailing list has errors and B2B lists are notoriously difficult to keep current.

But that’s what list hygiene is for—to correct mistakes and get as much of the mail as possible delivered to the right people at the right place. To achieve this, you need to start with the highest quality mailing lists and follow the industry’s best practices for data management.

The most important lesson direct marketers can learn from this example is that no matter how creative your direct marketing campaign is or how valuable your offer, if you mail to the wrong people at the wrong addresses, you’ve wasted your money.

I hope the Postal Service will be able to apply this lesson to future direct mail campaigns with better list selection and preparation. Direct marketers like me are counting on their success.

And guess what? I’ve discovered a simple secret about social media: To achieve success, you need to think like a direct marketer.

Why Social Media Marketing is Like Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is about targeting specific individuals with information and offers relevant to their needs and making a call to action to generate response.

Marketers are using social media to connect with specific individuals who have a high level of interest in their products and services. The goal is to get those individuals to respond in the form of likes, follows, shares, posts, links, check-ins, entries, coupon redemptions, and sales. That sounds a lot like direct marketing to me.

5 Direct Marketing Principles that Apply to Social Media Marketing

Here are five proven principles of effective direct marketing strategy that I think apply to the effective use of social media:

1. Targeting: Sure, half the civilized world is on Facebook and millions are on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other channels. But smart marketers don’t care about reaching billions or even millions of people. Like direct marketing, social media marketing is intended to deliver a targeted message to individuals who are most likely to be interested in a company’s value proposition. Social media makes it easy to find these individuals and to create content and promotions that help them find you.
2. Teasing: Direct marketers use the carrier envelope, catalog cover, or email subject line to tease the audience and get them to pay attention. Social media marketers do the same with Facebook copy and tweets. My most retweeted tweets happen when I tease my followers with a question or an interesting statement that makes them want to click on a link to know more. That’s exactly like writing direct mail teaser copy.
3. Engaging: The most effective direct marketing campaigns use compelling content and a personal, you-oriented copy approach to keep readers engaged in the sales message to the point of asking for the order. Social media’s great value is the ability to have similar one-to-one engagement and conversations with individual followers.
4. Inciting action: Like direct marketing, the best social media marketing campaigns have a call to action that gets followers to respond to a specific request. Look at posts by the most popular brand marketers on Facebook and you’ll see offers, discounts, bonuses, invitations, questions, contests, polls, and quizzes, all designed, like a direct mail offer, to get a response.
5. Testing and measuring: The beauty of direct marketing is the ability to test approaches and measure results. Social media is exactly the same in this regard, with even more measurability and more instant reaction. You’ll know within minutes if your followers or fans are interested in your post.

Target, Engage, and Ask to Achieve Social Media Marketing Success

Direct marketers achieve success by targeting their marketing, focusing on the needs and interests of the prospect, using great content to engage the prospect in the message, and making a compelling offer to generate a response. Applying these same proven principles to social media marketing is a smart marketing strategy.

Do you agree? What other principles of direct marketing do you think are relevant to social media marketing?

Telling a brand story through well-crafted marketing copy can capture the essence of a brand. And building those brand messages into the physical product itself can reinforce the brand’s value proposition every time the product is used.

Here are three consumer product marketers who are doing this brilliantly, and some branding advice for your smart marketing strategy.

How Three Marketers Make the Product a Brand Ambassador

1. Old Spice Classic Men’s Deodorant: Yes, it’s been around forever and it hasn’t changed much. But Old Spice has rejuvenated its brand with attention-getting TV ads and a branding strategy driven by its heritage.

Here’s the clever copy that appears on the product label of Classic Men’s Deodorant, where you see it every time you prepare to apply it: “If your grandfather hadn’t used this, you wouldn’t be here.”

While most of us don’t want to think about exactly how we got here, the underlying message – attractive men have always turned to Old Spice, and with great results – is the essence of Old Spice’s brand. And because it’s part of the physical product, it’s a can’t-miss marketing message.

2. Tilley Endurables: Made in Canada, Tilley Hats are designed for people who enjoy outdoor life. The company positions its products as long-term investments in comfort and self-protection. So Tilley sews a fabric label inside every hat with a stitched message that reminds you why you spent so much money on a head covering.

“This is the Tilley Hat,” says the label in the classic men’s version. “It is the best outdoor hat in the world. It floats, repels rain and mildew, won’t shrink, and will be replaced free if it wears out. (Yes, put it in your will.)” Boy, were you smart to buy a Tilley. And your kids will thank you, too.

The company’s Canadian roots also are crucial to its brand identity as a team of perfectionists up north who fuss over every detail of their products. The label also assures the user that the hat was “sewn with Canadian persnicketiness.”

3. Altoids: Candy maker Callard & Bowser has built a phenomenal brand identity for Altoids, the “curiously strong mints” that are so potent they require a metal box. Inside each Altoids package is a paper liner that protects the product.

Clever Callard & Bowser realized that paper = messaging opportunity, but instead of boring copy, they print brand-centric messages on the liner that emphasize the powerful taste of Altoids and the courage of those brave souls who dare to enjoy them. “Not for the Faint of Tongue” and “Enter at Your Own Risk” are two examples.

Since a typical package of Altoids contains about 75 pieces, that’s up to 75 repetitions of the marketing message per pack. Not bad for adding a one-color message to a product liner that had to be there anyway.

Branding Advice for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

As a marketing consultant who helps companies plan branding and marketing strategies, I advise clients to see every space inside and outside the package as a potential opportunity to say something meaningful to the customer and restate the brand promise. 

I also believe that product packaging is most effective as a branding and marketing strategy when the message is delivered via the actual product itself – not just the wrapper it comes in. Building the brand message into the physical product can make the product itself a brand ambassador.

But creating a direct mail campaign that makes it past the mailroom and the administrative assistant to the desk of a business decision-maker – and captures the executive’s attention – can be a real marketing challenge.

Here are 13 ideas for creative direct mail formats – some familiar and some you may not have thought of – that can help get your next B2B mailing past the gatekeepers and entice business executives to open your package.

Test these B2B Direct Mail Format Ideas

1. Dimensional mail: A box with a premium inside is a classic B2B direct mail tactic because it’s so effective. Few people can resist opening a box; finding a gift inside is even more engaging, especially if the gift is valuable and there’s a clever creative theme that relates to the executive’s business interests.
2. Hand-addressing: Genuine hand-addressing is so unusual in business mail that it can be a real attention-getter. It’s easy to do internally or via a calligrapher if you’re mailing a small quantity; for larger quantities, use a sophisticated lettershop that offers this service. Autopen is another addressing option worth testing.
3. Green triangles border: The classic border of green “first class mail” triangles along the edge of the envelope isn’t sexy, but it works. This format communicates “real business mail” in a clear, straightforward way and many B2B mailers use it.
4. Mailing in a tube: Using a cardboard or plastic tube as a carrier is almost guaranteed to get your mail opened. People just have to know what’s inside a tube, especially if there’s something loose moving around inside it.
5. An oversized envelope: Mail in an envelope bigger than the typical #10-size or 9” x 12” business envelope, such as a #11 envelope (4.5” x 10 3/8”) or a 10” x 13,” to help your mailing stand apart from the standard-sized pieces in a business in-box.
6. An undersized envelope: A very small mailing can be as attention-getting as a very large one, especially if it looks like a personal note.
7. Stationery-quality or unusual paper stock: Using the highest quality paper stock gives a business mailing a distinctive, high-end look. An unusual paper stock, such as a textured paper, can have a similar effect.
8. Live stamps: Colorful live stamps, especially if you’re mailing first class, can make a business mailing look like important correspondence.
9. Invitation format: A personally addressed invitation that appears to have been sent to a few select individuals is something most mailrooms and administrative assistants will deliver and most executives will open.
10. Lumpy mail: An envelope that should be flat but isn’t because there’s something three-dimensional inside (such as a pen or a key on a key fob) is called lumpy mail. This tactic can be effective and attention-getting if the item inside has high perceived value.
11. Translucent envelope: Being able to almost see what’s inside a mailing that’s in a translucent carrier makes recipients want to open it. Translucent paper also can be an elegant presentation of your message.
12. FedEx or UPS delivery: Nearly every gatekeeper will deliver a package sent via FedEx or UPS. USPS Priority mail works, too. The cost is high, but if your target is a C-suite executive, it’s worth it.
13. Non-box dimensional mail: Besides a box or a tube, almost any container you can think of can be a direct mail carrier if you’re willing to pay the postage. The best B2B mailing I ever got was an actual mailbox. Challenge your creative team to come up with carriers that will demand attention.

The Most Important Recommendation for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

As a marketing consultant who has helped clients plan hundreds of B2B direct mail campaigns, my most important advice is to properly address the mailing. There is almost no excuse for incorrect addressing, especially if you’re mailing to a highly-targeted list of C-level decision-makers that you believe are your best prospects.

Hire a telemarketing team to call each prospect’s office and confirm their name, title, and address before you mail. An incorrectly addressed mailing negates your efforts and almost guarantees that your promotion will be diverted to the trash before it reaches your prospect.

But what’s the difference between a good brand and a truly great one? How do you create a brand identity that’s so powerful, it becomes one of your most valuable assets — and the centerpiece of a smart marketing strategy?

Here are six factors that separate the best brands from the rest, and examples of marketers who are using these factors to set the bar for branding success.

6 Factors Shared by Great Brands

1. A Clear Identity: The marketer’s brand stands for something unique to the customer, something clearly different from any other competitor in the company’s marketplace. What Apple and Mercedes-Benz represent, for example, is so distinctly different that no competitor can match them.
2. Trust: The customer trusts that what the marketer says is true, because the customer knows from experience they can believe what the marketer tells them. When you ship with FedEx, your package will arrive on time. When you buy from L.L. Bean, the product is guaranteed for your entire life.
3. Value: The brand delivers something the customer wants, needs, and appreciates, and the customer believes they get a fair deal for their money. Target sells consumer products of very high quality at modest prices. Tiffany customers pay top dollar for jewelry, but the value of a Tiffany’s piece, from the quality of the product to the beauty of the distinctive blue package, is perceived to be worth the investment.
4. Consistency: The customer’s experience is consistent every time they encounter the brand, whether it’s in advertising, a retail store, face-to-face with an employee, or using the product. Disney is the master of brand consistency in entertainment, Nordstrom in retailing. You know exactly what to expect from these marketers because you almost always receive it.
5. A Distinctive Voice: The brand has a point of view, attitude, or persona that comes through to the customer in everything the marketer does. This point of view is so well-defined that the customer can recognize it even when the brand logo isn’t present. You don’t need to see the logo to know you’re watching a Victoria’s Secret ad, reading their direct mail catalog, shopping in their store, or wearing their clothes.
6. Intimacy with the Customer: The customer feels they have a relationship with the marketer; the marketer knows them and knows what they like. Amazon.com customizes messaging and product selection at every step of online shopping to make you feel they actually know you. Starbucks customers and baristas share a private language where words like skinny, tall, and a double shot have a special meaning; baristas often remember customers’ favorite drinks.

Can Your Brand Do This?

You don’t have to be a FORTUNE® 500 company or a giant consumer marketer to do branding well.  Any company can use these same six factors to create a unique, memorable, and meaningful identity that establishes an effective presence in the marketplace.

For more tips on branding, see 10 Steps to Building a Great Brand.

Here’s how a regional painting business in Cleveland, Ohio nailed a prospect direct mail campaign with a simple postcard, while Dell, a huge business-to-business marketer, committed several cardinal sins of direct marketing in a B2B direct mail promotion.

A Simple Message, Driven by Simple Data

Curb Appeal Painting does interior and exterior commercial and residential painting. To get new residential business in Northeast Ohio, the company mails postcards to neighborhoods near its painting projects.

This little mailing works for several reasons. The postcard invites prospects to “come by and see the quality” of a project the company is about to start at a neighbor’s house. The jobsite address is prominently displayed. The call to action is big and bold. The company’s credentials – Better Business Bureau approved, Angie’s List, etc. – help build trust.

The reverse side of the postcard has a photo of a home they’ve painted and their website. The message is short and sweet, and it’s personalized with information relevant to the prospect.

Dell Delivers a Direct Mail Dud

Dell, on the other hand, needs to reboot its B2B direct marketing.

Our marketing agency recently received three identical mailings from Dell on the same day, addressed to three different people. One addressee was our former office manager, who left eight years ago. Another was addressed to a vice president of our firm, but with the wrong suite number. The third mailing was sent to “Geane Gianfagna,” whom I’m assuming is me.

Most of our office PCs are Dells. We are Dell customers. But Dell clearly doesn’t know who we are, or indicate we’re receiving any special treatment as valued business clients, which might be a natural expectation on our part.

The offer is weak and vague. The teaser copy promises “savings inside,” but all you see inside is pricing. Are these discount prices?  It’s hard to tell, because there are no comparisons to the regular prices.

Worst of all, this “savings” offer is for a limited time – and the expiration date expired two weeks before we received the mailings.

4 Lessons for Direct Mailers

What can direct marketers learn from these examples? Four lessons:

1. Address your mail correctly. This rule is so basic, but it’s absolutely essential to get the addressee’s information right and de-dupe your lists before you mail. When a customer gets multiple copies of the same direct mail campaign with multiple addressing errors, it’s highly likely that all the mail will be discarded and the marketer’s investment will be wasted.
2. Simple formats can make a big impact. Direct mail postcards can be highly effective in delivering a marketer’s message, especially if the marketer can boil the copy down to a few key points and use graphics to get attention. Granted, selling a business PC isn’t as simple as selling painting services, but if the goal of a mailing is to generate web traffic and calls, direct marketers should avoid the temptation to over-complicate the mailing and test simple formats.
3. Use data to deliver a relevant message.  Use your prospect data to personalize the message to prospects’ interests. The painting company has two types of simple data: the location of its painting jobs and rented name and address files of nearby residents. They used this data to highlight the local job with closest proximity to the prospect, creating a personal, “in your neighborhood” feeling.  Meanwhile, Dell, which must have years’ worth of rich customer data on our company’s IT purchases, used none of it to deliver a message targeted to us.
4. Get time-sensitive deadlines right. There’s no excuse for mailing a time-sensitive offer with a due date that occurs BEFORE the mailing lands. Deadlines are great for incenting action, but plan your production schedule to give the respondent time to respond.

More Direct Mail Recommendations

As a marketing consultant who often recommends direct mail, I might suggest a few tweaks to the painter’s direct mail campaign. The postal bar code obscures their website on the address panel. Their free estimate offer could be more attention-getting. And the offer and the phone number should be on both sides of the mailing.

But all in all, especially compared to Dell, this little guy showed the big guys how to use direct mail effectively in a smart marketing strategy.

When the audience’s reaction to an ad is “Huh?” instead of “Wow!,” it’s a painful waste of marketing resources.

Here are three examples of advertising and marketing campaigns that fail the “Huh?” test – and three tips to avoid making mistakes like this in your smart marketing strategy.

Value – Huh?

This Allstate Insurance billboard appears on highways around Cleveland, Ohio, where my marketing agency is located. I also spotted it last weekend in downtown Columbus.

What was Allstate thinking when they came up with this headline? No one can read, pronounce, or understand the meaning of the word “Value’Lujah” at a quick glance, not even after seeing this message many times.

Imagine how much more effective the message would have been if instead of “Value’ Lujah – New Lower Rates,” the copy had read, “Hallelujah! New Lower Rates.” Everyone knows what hallelujah means, but “value’lujah?” I doubt it.

Good Banking is What?

Charter One, a regional bank that markets in the greater Cleveland area, has a new marketing tagline that’s a real head-scratcher: “Good banking is good citizenship.”

What? As a consumer, I have many beliefs about what good banking is, but “good citizenship” isn’t one of them. This message may be linked to a creative concept they’re using in TV ads where the founding fathers discuss modern banking, but even if you had just seen the founding fathers spot, would this tagline make sense to you? And what does it have to do with the audience? It’s a message (I think) about the bank, not about the customer.

Monsters Behind the Wheel?

Just last night, I saw this new ad campaign for the Honda Civic HF. The creative concept has something to do with a female college student (she’s in a college classroom and has pink nail polish, so I’m making this assumption) who’s a monster and drives a Honda Civic HF with her girlfriends.

I had to replay this spot multiple times on YouTube to get the basic storyline and even then, my reaction was, “Huh?” What does this have to do with a car? And how does this convey any meaningful, takeaway message that differentiates the product in the marketplace? What you remember after seeing this ad is a goofy-looking girl monster driving some type of white car. I doubt that’s what Honda was aiming for.

3 Lessons for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

Here are three tips to be sure your marketing campaign passes the “Huh?” test:

1. Keep it simple. When I was learning how to write advertising copy, my boss, who is one of the best copywriters I’ve ever met, edited and re-edited my copy to strip the message down to its essence. She often reminded me to use words a fourth-grade audience can understand. She was right. Your odds of delivering an effective marketing message increase exponentially if you keep the message and the concept simple.
2. Clever can backfire. As a marketing consultant, I’m always advising my clients to be original and creative in their marketing campaigns. But there’s a clear line between an attention-getting creative concept and one that’s so incredibly clever it totally loses the audience. If your marketing agency presents a new creative campaign, ask yourself and others how quickly you grasped the message they were trying to deliver. If most people don’t immediately understand the concept and message — in seconds, the very first time they see it — insist on a new approach.
3. Don’t expect repetition to clarify the message. Some marketers believe a complex or elaborate campaign concept engages the audience. Their theory is that the audience will pay attention to such ads in an attempt to puzzle them out, and that repeated viewings will result in high awareness and understanding. I don’t buy it. Audiences don’t have the time or interest to figure out what you’re trying to tell them. No one wants to work at “getting it” – they just want to get it. And making sure they get it, with an engaging, but easy-to-understand marketing campaign, is essential to a smart marketing strategy.