Zantay: Social Marketing Consultant

What a book! I’m only 54 pages in and already I recognize that I’m under-worked, under-challenged, under-payed and that I want to build my own worldwide agency (If only it was that easy). I didn’t realize that David Ogilvy coined so many terms and “old sayings” that we use every today. “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys” Here are the best bits of the book so far. (Well 54 pages)

“Search all City parks and you won’t find a statue of a committee”

This is the best by far. Committee’s get nothing done, except waste time, people set up committee’s when they can’t be bothered fixing the problems themselves.

“Never set copy in reverse”

(White text on Black background) The advertising industry completed research on this in 1963 and found it doesn’t work, why are people still doing it?

One from Lord Rutherford

“If you can’t explain your physics to a barmaid, that’s bad physics”

Talking about using industry related “fluff” words like paradigms, demassification and so on, this is one I really agree with.

“The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife, don’t insult her intelligence.”

“We sell - or else”

I personally live by this sword and sometimes it gets in the way of trying to increase brand awareness for clients. I always look for a bottom line, the sale, and then build a plan that will deliver people to the path that leads them to the sale. You can measure sales, you can’t measure brand penetration.

“The temptation the entertain instead of selling is contagious.”

This is very true of my friends in the web design industry. Most graphic artists don’t consider themselves to be marketers. What they don’t realize is that their design of a website is the first thing a visitor to a website sees before they read any copy or interact with any other element of the website. It really brings it back to “first impressions count” and maybe it changes “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” to “It’s not what you say, it’s what you see.”

As I’m only 54 pages into this book I better cap this blog post for the time being or else I’ll have written more on this post than is actually in the 54 pages I have read. So here’s the last one.

“Don’t let men write advertising for products which are bought by women”

I’m not sure if this transfers over to the online world but I’d hedge a bet on the safe side and say it does. All the online copy writers I know are men, they’ve taken on the copy writing as it’s now seen as being part of on-site SEO, making websites rank higher on search engines etc. Most of the clients I’ve been deeply involved with are in the travel industry which has well publicized research that the women in our families decide where we go on holiday and who we book with. Up to now this copy has been written by men, maybe if it was written by women on-site conversation rates would go up. This can only mean more business for the SEO Chicks or maybe a change in the recruitment plans of most online marketing agencies.

When I’ve completed this book I’m sure I’ll be so inspired that I’ll be booking a one way ticket to Madison Ave, New York and off to build my online marketing agency just like David Ogilvy did.

More from this great book, I got to the end not long after writing the first section of this post.

“Sales are a function of product-value and adverting”

It’s surprising how many people don’t look at it this way. For a while I was a convert of the “stack’em high, sell’em cheap” brigade. But I certainly believe that promotions and price cuts don’t bring in true sales or increase brand awareness. And over a longer period can damage the importance of a product or brand.

“They copied all they could follow,

but they couldn’t copy my mind.

And I left’em sweating and stealing,

a year and a half behind”

Never a truer word spoken!