The incredible power of a brand

Have you ever heard of Glyphosate? I hadn’t until I went to the hardware shop looking for something to kill weeds. I knew Roundup would do the trick. I’d heard the name and used it occasionally over the years. I can remember ads for Roundup where weeds ‘push up daisies’ (Get it?). The Roundup brand has almost become a verb in the landscaping industry. To ‘Roundup’ is to clear grass off a patch of ground.

I was about to reach for the Roundup when I paused and read the active ingredient. It’s Glyphosate. Just below the Roundup was another brand of weed killer called Pestmaster. Pestmaster’s active ingredient is also Glyphosate. Well, I thought as long as they are both the same I’ll take the cheaper of the two.

Working in advertising and marketing I expected the branded product to be more expensive. What I didn’t expect was that the difference would be 550%!!! That’s right. One litre of Pestmaster was $8 and one litre of Roundup was $44.

Not only can the makers of Roundup charge a 550% premium for their Glyphosate, they can and do have the worlds most popular weed killer. Farmers, Landscapers and Gardeners would rather pay $44 a litre than $8 a litre to have a well known and trusted brand do the job.

So next time someone suggests your brand is strong enough to have its marketing or advertising budget cut back shout, “Glyphosate!”

If you have a creative advertising problem call Tony Richardson on (02) 9929 0588 or visit Tony Richardson Advertising or TacticalTV.com.au

You are welcome to reprint any AdNotes article on your website and in your e-newsletters for FREE. All I ask is that you attribute me, Tony Richardson and include a link to http://www.TonyRichardson.com.au

Worn out words

A few months ago I railed against clichés (the story was picked up by the marketing section of The Australian newspaper. Mention in the ‘real’ media! Quite a proud moment for AdNotes).

Little did I know a federal election was around the corner (oops a cliché!) It’s been an opportunity for both sides of politics to join up lots of clichés and call it a campaign.

But more irritating, to me anyway, are individual words that just get used too often. These are not strictly speaking Cliches, just words that suddenly seem to appear in every sentence or conversation.

There’s one that seems to be everywhere at the moment.

This little word has seen active service for centuries and used to evoke images of knights in armour battling dragons.

But recently it has evolved into a monster itself: a kind of irradiated moth from a sixties Japanese movie.

News-readers use it. Politicians use it. My 14 year old uses it. I try not to use it but it comes out anyway.

This overworked word is … challenge.

It can stand for anything from an ‘almost impossible task’ like plugging an oil leak in the US, to a ‘chore’ like peeling a potato on Masterchef.

But, I knew 'challenge' had lost all value when I picked up a flyer at St George Bank. The flyer invited me to ‘Challenge us for a better home loan deal.”

Poor ‘challenge’ now means nothing more than 'to ask’.

Like printing too many Zimbabwean dollars, overusing a word devalues it to the point where it has no worth or particular meaning.

If you have a creative advertising problem call Tony Richardson on (02) 9929 0588 or visit Tony Richardson Advertising or TacticalTV.com.au

You are welcome to reprint any AdNotes article on your website and in your e-newsletters for FREE. All I ask is that you attribute me, Tony Richardson and include a link to http://www.TonyRichardson.com.au

What are words worth?

The right words can earn your company millions of dollars.

That’s a big claim. Can I back it up? Yes. Let’s look at LG. LG is a quality Korean consumer electrical company. Prior to 1997 they were called Lucky Goldstar. Their products were as yuck as their name: all black plastic and gold foil. Really quite horrible and down market.

They wanted to rebrand and be considered amongst the big names in fridges, TVs, washing machines etc. So the name changed from Lucky Goldstar to LG. But they needed a slogan.

My good friend and creative Geoff Fischer took the brand name and extended LG to Life’s Good.

This line had three benefits. First, the brand name reminded you of the slogan and vice versa. Second the slogan summed up the improvement LG would bring to the consumer. Third it could work on any product line AND the company as a whole. ‘Life’s Good’ just seemed right.

LG launched in Australia in 1997 on the platform of Life’s Good. The actual products were cleaned up too. They now looked like their competition: an important factor in consumer electronics.

To say that Life’s Good helped LG become a major brand is a massive understatement. The slogan is now used worldwide by LG and LG is one of the worlds best regarded domestic electrical brands.

So what would you pay for such a line?

A1. By the word. I was once asked to write similar sales lines for a large news company. They paid for advertising copy in the same way they paid for editorial – by the word. So Life’s Good would have cost them about $2.

A2. By the hour. Creative is often charged by the hour depending on who works on the job. I charge $100. If I was contracted to a large multinational agency the same work would be charged at $300 - $400 per hour. So by this scale Life’s Good could be worth between $100 and $400. Still ridiculously cheap.

A3. By the improvement it makes to your business. We didn’t know it at the time but those two little words have played a huge role in LG’s success. I believe the line is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in increased sales and brand building to LG. But I’m fairly sure LG didn’t pay that.

So what’s the answer? I think marketers should set a price that reflects the importance to their brand and business. If you need a quick short-term answer, budget accordingly. If the project is a complete brand re-focus, as with LG, make a big deal of it. Get your creative suppliers excited. Get lots of ideas.

Spend the money.

If you have a creative advertising problem call Tony Richardson on (02) 9929 0588 or visit Tony Richardson Advertising or TacticalTV.com.au

You are welcome to reprint any AdNotes article on your website and in your e-newsletters for FREE. All I ask is that you attribute me, Tony Richardson and include a link to http://www.TonyRichardson.com.au

What can copywriters learn from Thomas Jefferson?

All American school children know that Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence in 1776.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” This most famous quote demonstrates Jefferson’s genius as a writer and an original thinker.

Or does it?

I hate to disappoint American school children and students of history, but Jefferson was not the sole genius behind the writing the declaration, and ‘self-evident truths’ was borrowed from another document altogether.

Admittedly Jefferson wrote the initial draft. But it was heavily amended by the rest of the committee he was part of, and then vigorously debated in full congress.

Jefferson’s original document was mercilessly altered. It lost about a quarter of his original text and 146 new words were added. Like most writers, Jefferson felt his work had been significantly weakened by the help of others.

And the ‘pursuit of happiness’ passage? That was very close to the Virginia Declaration of Independence written some time earlier by a George Mason. With a few changes it was appropriated by Jefferson.

Do these inconvenient truths lessen the power of the declaration? Or do they make Jefferson any less of a brilliant man? Not at all.

But they do bust the myth of the lone genius. And they highlight a few key realities in writing compelling copy of any kind.

1) Jefferson and his colleagues were aiming for clarity, rather than sounding important. In a time when sentences could run for pages they remained brief and to the point.

2) The project was owned by Jefferson but he had help. It was neither an orphan raised by a committee nor was it the sole preserve of one man.

3) Jefferson felt free to borrow ideas that worked for his cause -“all men are created equal”. He and his colleagues felt no need to reinvent wheels when it came to capturing a vital sentiment.

So, if one of the best-known documents in history had to be drastically edited by two committees and used recycled material, then maybe our advertising and communication copy can stand some scrutiny too.

And maybe we copywriters should consider constructive criticism a moment longer, before we automatically reject it.

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