By Rick Stanton
This just in! No one—and I mean no one—wants to be sold anything.
My dad was a very successful salesman, and his success was due to helping people make buying decisions. He always was uncomfortable with his job description. To him, it implied talking someone into something as opposed to acting as an agent for the customer. He wanted people to trust him. He figured that would help him “sell.”
He and I didn’t get along all that well, but this was a lesson I learned watching and listening to him. And, to this day, I thank him for that lesson. As you read on, I would like to offer some observations on some really ill-advised falsehoods, based on getting potential consumers to call your client on the phone.
When I got a toehold in advertising, I was—and still am—amazed at one of the dumbest things about the craft; that is saying the client’s phone number three times at the end of a commercial, mostly radio commercials. I don’t know the origin of this fallacy, but it may have come from the same person who said, “Make the logo bigger.”
A lot of radio is consumed in a car. When the phone number comes on, are you supposed to write it down in the dust on your dashboard at 60 mph?
Instead of saying the number three times, maybe if the ad made an emotional impression and provided useful information in a memorable way, it might stick better. That likely would make someone more eager to hear or see it again.
As I have opined many times, great radio has become a lost art. It’s the only form of media where a writer can’t have his assed saved by an art director.
If I may pass along a little creative wisdom, it’s this: 10 minutes after someone hears or sees your ad, they probably can’t recite much of the content, but they’ll remember how it made them feel.
During the last years of my career, we had a client whose business model was formed in the stone age. Their client base was women 18+. They relied on an unreliable call center, whose primary purpose was to undo the brand promise and goodwill our creative provided.
Women 18+ are pretty savvy. They know if they call an 800 number, some jerk is going to jack their arm behind their collective backs and “sell them something.”
In more than one instance, when some poor soul did call, a lot of the times the call-center bully tried to “sell” them something they weren’t interested in. This amounted to getting a bigger hammer and hitting the nail harder.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone into a retail environment and been asked if I needed any help, and saying, “No thanks. But if I find something, I’ll be sure to have you help me.” And then got followed—no stalked—by said “salesperson” blathering on about something they wanted to “sell” me.
I have turned on them, depending on how bothersome they were, and said, “What part of ‘no thanks’ got lost on you?” Try asking what brought me into the store. Or just leave me the hell alone.
The most egregious of these confrontations usually occurred in the sportswear department of a well-known brand. It finally got to the point where I would go find the lovely woman I did business with in the shoe department and use her as a human shield. And, if I did find something, she got the sale.
So, do not say the phone number three times. Give them a website to visit in privacy.
And don’t make the logo bigger. Make the idea bigger.
If consumers like and trust your client’s brand, you’ve done your job as an advertising professional.
Below are three great books to have in your library. And they’re really helpful if you actually read them.