Written by Francesca Barber
Copywriter
(Ft. five legends of the industry)
“The [insert marketing discipline] landscape is shifting faster than ever. Brands are moving away from [insert marketing buzzword] and towards [insert new marketing buzzword].”
We’ve all read these trend pieces. We’ve all said something similar in our careers. After all, it’s natural to focus on what’s new.
But sometimes, new concepts are just old rules rebranded. And wrapping simple concepts in complex words only makes them seem difficult.
That’s why we’re revisiting five old rules, from five advertising legends. You’ll see how these simple principles can guide B2B marketing today. Plus, how some of them relate to new marketing buzzwords – from ‘content marketing’ to ‘behavioural science.’
1. Be helpful
David Ogilvy
Ogilvy suggests “giving the reader helpful advice, or service. It hooks about 75 per cent more readers than copy which deals entirely with the product.”¹
Sound familiar? It’s content marketing in a nutshell. But Ogilvy suggested this approach roughly 40 years before the term ‘content marketing’ was so much as a glimmer in John F. Oppedahl’s eye.
(Oppendahl may have coined ‘content marketing’ in 1996. In case you’re asking: “who on earth is Oppendahl?”)²
A lot has changed in the world of B2B marketing. But people like free, helpful things – and they always will. When we think about our gated assets as free gifts, we’re much more likely to entice readers to engage.
2. Your advertising should be about your audience
Claude Hopkins
“Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests.”³
That’s a pearl of wisdom from Scientific Advertising. It was written over a century ago, in 1923. It predates the term ‘customer centric’ by decades. And arguably, it’s still the most-forgotten truth of B2B advertising.
We all love to read things about ourselves. That’s why ‘you’ should appear far more often than ‘we’ in advertising copy. And when we choose to tell a story? Better make our audience the hero.
3. Appealing to everyone is appealing to no one
William Bernbach
“If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you and some against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you, and nobody for you.”4
In other words, having enemies isn’t necessarily a business problem. Having no friends is a business problem.
In B2B, we often forget that you don’t need everyone who holds a job title to like your brand. You will win more contracts if a sub-group of buyers love your brand. Which means you need to create an emotional profile of the ideal prospect – then show enough personality to appeal to that person.
It’s how Bernbach achieved such great creative, time after time. He called for crystal-clear audience targeting long before personalization or digital media.
4. Be interesting, before anything
Leo Burnett
“One of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.”5
We sometimes worry so much about accuracy that we forget to be interesting. And to be interesting, we sometimes need to lighten up a little about accuracy.
Humour, for example, often relies on exaggeration. Done right, the audience never thinks you’re serious. If you want proof, just watch a fisherman fight a bear in this John West advert:
When we get too obsessed with not misleading people, we often bore them. Which is both rude and damaging to the brand.
(For more on how boring advertising can damage trust, check out the research in this article.)
5. Make them nervous
Mary Wells Lawrence
“The best advertising should make you nervous about what you’re not buying.”6
Behavioural science, eat your heart out. Copywriters like Lawrence understood the power of scarcity long before it became a buzzword.
What’s scarcity? If you think a product or service is rare, you want it more. Of the six behavioural science levers mentioned in this article, scarcity was 75% more engaging than any other.
To put it another way: the audience should feel nervous about what they’re not buying. This creates the urgency to act now. Whether you want the audience to click, sign up or buy.
Let’s make change happen, the simple way
Sometimes, the best way to create change is to remember the basics. After all, advertising legends knew a thing or two about moving minds. And today, we can use that power to promote behaviours that are better for our planet.
If you’re a change maker with a big purpose, we’d love to chat. Let’s find ways to make the basics work better for you.
Want to make the complicated simple? Drop us a line.