hen I was younger and shyer than I am now, I went on a trip
to Ne
w York. While I was there, I intended to buy a pair of
Leica binoculars, as I’d heard they were much cheaper than in
the UK. I walked into an optical equipment store on Fifth Avenue, but the
staff were surly and seemed too busy to speak to me. This was a surprise,
as I’d heard all about excellent American service. After five minutes hang-
ing around being ignored, I left. In the next shop, the same thing hap-
pened. And the next. I gave up and never did get my Leicas.
A few years later I recounted the tale to a colleague, a seasoned New
Yo
rk shopper. He just laughed at me and said, no wonder — you need to
grab a shop assistant, put your face in theirs and say forcefully: “Hey
buddy, I wanna buy a pair of Leicas — what’s the deal?” I hadn’t known
what to do, so I’d gone away.
The tear-off reply card
In 1989, while I worked for the agency Clarke-Hooper, I developed a mail-
ing for a division of the utility company that is now known as
ScottishPower.
1
My idea was to make this look like a Christmas card and it
was intended to get small, independent retailers to contact the organiza-
tion with a view to buying heating equipment for their shops. Not an easy
task (confessed our client).
I figured out how I wanted the message to fit together and “scamped” a
draft for my designer, Colin, so he could make me a mock-up to show to
the client. Colin wasn’t at his desk that day, and I was due to be away the
next, so I had to leave my scrawls for him to interpret as best he could. But
to make sure he understood that I wanted a tear-off reply card attached to
the side of the main Christmas card, I wrote “tear-off reply card” with a red
marker and circled it with an arrow. (The finished version is shown in
Figure 1.)
Figure 1
A section of the ScottishPower mailing showing the prominent “tear-
off reply card” message — a quick and clear indication to your cus-
tomer of what is expected of them. Reproduced by kind permission of
ScottishPower plc.
As you can see, when I returned I found that Colin had taken me rather lit-
erally. There on the mock-up were emblazoned the words “tear-off reply
card” surrounded by a big red arrow! It wasn’t particularly pretty... but
actually I liked it.
So did the client. And so did the recipients. Against a breakeven sales
target we achieved a 300 percent response — pleasing for us, as we were
being paid in part by results.
And the lesson? I wasn’t sure at the time, but I had a feeling about it and
ke
pt a copy of the mailing safe in my archive. Some years later, when it
DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
10
came to writing the Blue-Chip training module, it was this mailing that
helped me to realize just what was wrong with the old AIDA.
The main reason the ScottishPower Christmas card mailing worked
so well was because you could see
instantly
what to do.
What happens when you know what to do? Answer: You relax. What hap-
pens when you
can’t
wo
rk out what to do? Answer: You panic (or at least
become frustrated and impatient). If you can, you flee (like I did in New
Yo
rk). If it’s a mailing, you probably bin it. If it’s an ad, you turn the page
or switch the channel.
So while AIDA might be the process your customer theoretically has to
go through in order to respond to your communication, it isn’t how their
mind works in practice. As a marketer, you must first show them what to
do — help them to
navigate
. If your customer is remotely interested in your
product, they’ll want to know
first
what’s expected of them.
Your customer is busy
The single most important reason you should think navigation is because
your customer has
already
got enough to do. You’re unlikely to find them
loitering by their front door waiting for so-called junk mail to drop through
the letterbox. Nor doubling their concentration when the commercials are
screened during their favorite television program. Nor at their desk metic-
ulously perusing the ads in trade journals (unless they’re looking for a new
job, perhaps).
There’s one monthly magazine I subscribe to that regularly contains 60
full-page ads for financial products.
2
I reckon the average ad takes two
minutes to read. Yet I rarely seem to have a couple of minutes spare to
read the editorial, let alone the couple of hours it would require to digest
all the ads.
Just how long is the typical customer going to hang around trying to
wo
rk out what’s going on in an ad? Answer: not long. If you’re lucky, the
time it takes them to turn the page. You’d think that this point would be
STEP 1: NAVIGATION
11
obvious, but — as you can see in Figure 2 — while some advertisers make
this their first priority, others barely give it a second thought.
Invariably, when your customer meets your marketing, they’re busy and
distracted. So it’s vital to show them what you expect of them. Until they
know that, they can’t relax and concentrate on the benefits of your product,
service, or offer. The bare minimum for this is at least to announce your sub-
ject, as Scottish Widows sensibly does in the example I have shown.
Figure 2
Tw
o of over 60 ads placed in a
single edition of a consumer money mag-
azine. (The ad with the chameleon is a
mock-up based on a real example.)
Compare their speed of navigation
against the time it takes a busy customer
to turn the page. Pensions ad reproduced
by kind permission of Scottish Widows.
In Blue-Chip we used what we
called the “two-second test” to make
sure we dealt with this issue. (Will
the customer understand within
two seconds?) In fact “one-missis-
sippi, two-mississippi” is probably a
little generous, going by the rate I’ve
watched many people browse maga-
zines (and supermarket shelves),
but it’s a good stock principle on
which to judge effective navigation.
DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
12
Good manners
One of the first things a salesman is taught to do when he goes in to make
a presentation to a panel of customers is to ask the audience how long
they’ve got. Then he tells them what he’s going to tell them. (He doesn’t
give away his exciting “reveal,” but he orientates them within a framework
so that they know what to think about and what is expected of them.) It’s
exactly the same principle in printed marketing communication.
The pivotal question your customer asks is not “What’s in it for
me?” but actually “What’s this about?” They also want to know
“How much time and effort do I have to invest here? And where am
I going?”
NEW AIDA thinking is a simple piece of good salesmanship. By forcing
yourself to think this way you will get a better result than if you
start
by
asking “How will I get their attention?” or “What will I say to make them
want my product?” (These are perfectly valid questions, but not the ones
you should ask yourself
first
as you sit down to design your ad or
mailing.)
For direct marketing in particular, this point cannot be overstated. It’s
make or break. If your customer has to spend more than a few seconds try-
ing to work out what to do and what they’re supposed to be sending off
for, your response rate will suffer badly.
In Figure 3 overleaf is an example from the consumer magazine
Which?.
Wi
th no prevarication, the navigation task is tackled head on. Right away,
your customer can see and understand what is expected of them. They
know that this is
Which?
talking, what the magazine wants from them (to
subscribe), what it’s all about (cars), and what they’ll get in return (the
chance to win a valuable prize).
An important characteristic of many successful mailings is that this
approach is then carried across all of the separate components. So
whichever piece the recipient chooses to study first — the letter, the
brochure, the order form, even the reply envelope — there is a potted nav-
igation message ready and waiting
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