Zimmer’s 12 Causes of Advertising Failures

I just came across an interesting article by Zimmer Creative Services entitled the 12 Causes of Advertising Failures that could be used as a helpful list of guidelines to think about:

1. Desire for instant gratification: Ads promoting urgency and immediate response tend to be forgotten as soon as the offer expires.
2. Attempting to reach more people than the budget will allow: Most media mixes have too much reach and not enough frequency to stick with their audience’s minds. “Will you reach 100% of the people and convince them 10% of the way?  Or will you reach 10% of the people and convince them 100% of the way?”
3. Assuming the business owner knows best: Business owners tend to try to describe themselves from the inside out to people on the outside looking in. In fact, too much product knowledge sometimes results in answering question no one has asked.
4. Unsubstantiated Claims: Claiming to have what the customer wants, but failing to provide evidence. Prove what you say in every ad!
5. Improper use of passive media: such as newspapers and yellow pages often only reach people actively searching for the product.
6. Creating ads instead of campaigns: single ads cannot tell a whole story.
7. Obedience and unwritten rules: like making ads look and sound….like ads!
8. Late week schedules: Making efforts to reach markets on Thursdays and Fridays before they go shopping, instead of less-competitive days like Sundays and Mondays.
9. Overconfidence in qualitative targeting: the importance of qualitative data has been “grossly overestimated.”
10. Event-driven marketing: special events should only be judged by its ability to help define your market position.
11. Great production without great copy: Too many ads today are creative without being persuasive.
12. Confusing ‘response’ with ‘results’: The goal of advertising is to create clear awareness and some advertisers evaluate their ads based on comments they have heard around them.

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