• by Karl Greenberg , October 9, 2007

Common-sense advice can't be repeated too often. Philip Sawyer, senior vice president and director of GfK Starch Communications, took that tack during his presentation at last week's American Marketing Association panel in New York, "The Push and Pull: Consumers Driving and Being Impacted by New Trends and Innovations."

His advice to marketers on print and interactive advertising: Keep it simple, entice readers to delve into body copy with a compelling benefit, don't play "guess this product," and don't distract Internet users with lots of what Shakespeare called "sound and fury signifying nothing."

Sawyer, a regular speaker on advertising at Association of National Advertisers, the Ad Club of New York and other venues, spoke as part of a GfK Custom Research-sponsored panel discussion on the media-platform jigsaw puzzle.

Sawyer pointed out that GfK Starch Communications looks at print ad effectiveness from different angles. The most important is "most read," a percentage showing how many subjects actually read at least half of the ad's body copy. "That's where the engagement takes place."

He warned against assuming that mainstream magazines and Internet sites, with highly engaged consumers always having highly engaged responses to ads.

Based on the firm's research, ads in both high- and low-engagement magazines describe the same bell curve on a graph: so readership of content is based on ad creative, not the media or the magazine content, or passion of readers. So, for advertisers, the medium is not the message.

Sawyer illustrated that point--and that there is a direct relationship between the number of consumers who dive into print copy and the number who take action (buying the product, talking about it, etc.)--with two different ads for the same product. A Cingular Wireless B-to-B ad had the headline: "Take care of business and look good doing it." It scored high for having been noted and for readers having "gotten" who the advertiser was, probably because it featured a photograph of a Cingular phone. But the ad fared poorly in numbers of readers who actually read the body copy. And only 17% took any action.

The second Cingular ad had a photo of an employee of TaylorMade Golf Co. examining a club, and the headline: "Being ahead of the game gave TaylorMade more time to sell." It actually garnered much lower scores in terms of simple recognition and brand identification. The ad, however, scored nearly twice the read-throughs, and 28% of consumers who saw the ad took positive action, he says. The ad had a compelling story to tell.

"When readers read copy they are likely to take action, and that's the engagement issue," he says, adding that those who delve into ad copy are also people who are favorably inclined toward a brand, or who just bought the brand's product and are reading the ad for confirmation of their decision.

And, says Sawyer, those consumers are potentially a more important audience than owners of competitive products, because--as every marketer knows--it's much more difficult to convert than to get someone who likes you to talk about you. "Advertisers should say: 'You like us? Tell your friends'," he says.

More common sense: The quick route to getting readers to read, and therefore take action, is to offer an explicit benefit. Three ads demonstrated the point--one for Hershey's Whole Bean Chocolate Brownies, whose print ad declared that the product had as much fiber as an apple. It garnered a 57% "took action" score (with a 3-71 range). Another was for Bagel Bites. It noted that the snack is made with real cheese, and included a chart to make the point. Sawyer said 57% of people who saw the ad took action.

Sawyer's points on creative: Get a powerful image with a single focal point using colors like blue, green, gold and yellow and red; emphasize product benefits; don't be afraid of body copy. "If you are in the right publication where people are receptive, they will read it. It's not all about the medium, but the individual creative differences" that define an ad's success or failure.

The issue gets complicated online because ads are becoming more like TV ads, but consumers aren't on the Web, by and large, to be entertained. "Actually there is a perverse relationship. The more engaged one is with an online publication, and the more entertaining the ad is, the more consumers hate the ad because it distracts them from what they are trying to do. You have to be careful. Studies we have done indicate people start to get angry the more the ads distract them," says Sawyer.

His advice, given the migration of advertising video to the Internet, is paradoxical: old school is better. In fact, he says, the best Internet advertising is often the most static. By way of example, he says a certain ad for Neiman Marcus was voted by Starch focus group panelists as the best of all they were shown. It shows a woman in black, against a two-color background, on which the Neiman Marcus brand is clear.

One ad that scored very well in the consultancy's focus-group research was for Nokia wireless, with a "Connecting People" theme. The ad showed a postcard photo of a woman on a beautiful beach about to toss a Frisbee to a leaping dog. The animation shows her throw the disc, with a leaping cat grabbing the disc just before it reaches the dog. That image drops down, as the Nokia brand takes precedence. "Among the reasons the ad works is ad flow and the color," he says.

By contrast, two ads using interesting visuals didn't do well, he said, because they were ambiguous, and seemed more to dissemble than to illuminate brand and benefit. "Americans want answers and want them now," he joked. "If you are going to advertise on the Internet, get to the point. Emphasize the benefits. Simply being in print isn't enough. You can't just be there, you have to think about creative issues and product benefits. [To] those who look at it as a media issue, it isn't. Consumers want this question answered: 'What's in it for me?' If you do that in any form, that's great."