NEW AIDA

The Secret of Effective

Marketing Communications

Ian Moore

NEW AIDA

Published February 2005:

positive feedback from practitioners in UK, USA,

Australia, Hong Kong

NEW AIDA

Applies a salesman’s approach to marketing communications

Personal experience

• First moved from sales to marketing

• Dismay at lack of method

• Inability of marketers to evaluate

• To explain why something would work, or why it was wrong

• This did not tally with sales experience

• Explanation was the norm

Creativity?

Crazytivity

“The act of being different for its own sake, and thinking it equals creativity”

Edward de Bono

“True creativity…

… must end with a value”

The challenge for marketing…

… to stop crazytivity from killing effectiveness

Crazytivity

Showmanship

Salesmanship

“Never forget that Marketing is just Sales on a stick”

… sales is personal, one-to-one; marketing happens at a distance

from the seller

The customer’s mind works in just the same way

… and it’s the salesman who gets closest to that mind

Salesmanship…

… is quite simply ‘knowing’ how the customer’s mind responds

when it meets marketing

NEW AIDA…

… putting salesmanship back into marketing communications

Copywriters and Salesmen

• Claude Hopkins, 1866-1932

• John Caples, 1900-1990

• David Ogilvy, 1911-1999

• Giants of advertising… began as door-to-door and mail-order salesmen

AIDA

Hierarchy of effects modelAttentionInterestDesireAction

Attention-Interest-Desire-Action

The origins of AIDA

• E.K. Strong, 1925– The Psychology of Selling & Advertising

• E.St Elmo Lewis, 1898– Advertising lecture

• Howard & Sheth, 1967– AIDA the acronym

AIDA today

• Most widely quoted model– American, British, French & Spanish

• Simple– Easy to remember

• Intuitively makes sense– Easy to understand

AIDA

… but it doesn’t really work!