Name Article #15As you read, show your thinking by:

1. Highlighting anything that sticks out to you2. Use symbols to show your thinking ( ? ! NL)3. Write comments explaining your symbols

HOW ADVERTISERS PERSUADE

by Catherine GourleyWRITING! Sept. 1999, pp. 6-9

You May Never Work in an Ad Agency--But You Can Learn a Lot About Persuasive Writing by Noticing How Advertisers Sell Their Products.

     True or false?  A typical 30-second television commercial has no more than 65 words.

     The statement is true. Most print advertisements in newspapers and magazines also have a limited word count. So--writing an ad must be pretty easy, right?

     Wrong. A team of creative copywriters and art directors may take months to develop a concept for a successful advertising campaign. That's because writing an ad is not about counting words. It's about identifying a specific audience, and then creating a persuasive message to motivate that audience to take some action--usually to spend money.

     So even though a TV commercial might have only 65, or 35, or even five words, those words have to work hard to get the message across to the audience. Copywriters use four basic persuasive tactics to help their words do just that: testimonial, slice-of-life, lifestyle, and demonstration. Let's explore these strategies one at a time.

     PERSUASIVE TACTIC #1:  TESTIMONIAL

     Milk sales had soured. In fact, milk consumption had been declining for more than 25 years all across America. Then along came Amy Heinemann and her team of creative thinkers at the International Dairy Foods Association. Their advertising mission was to get more people to drink more milk.

     Before they wrote a word, they researched what their target audience did and did not know about milk. In the "Did Know" column was this: Milk was white, came in cartons, and was healthy. Just WHY milk was healthy was in the "Did Not Know" column. The team also discovered this: Teens and people in their 20s and 30s thought drinking milk was "stodgy and dull”…To increase milk sales, Heinemann first had to convince the target audience that drinking milk was "cool."

     The team developed this creative concept: Photographs of celebrities wearing milk mustaches that carried this tag line: MILK! WHAT A SURPRISE!

     That was 1994. After just one year of milk mustaches in magazines, newspapers, and billboards--success! Milk consumption began rising for the first time since 1969!

     The milk mustache campaign is an example of a persuasive advertising technique called the TESTIMONIAL. Testimonials feature an authority who recommends a product or service. The authority may be a professional, such as a doctor, a celebrity or a sports star; or even an ordinary person who vouches for the product's value. The testimonial's power of persuasion comes from the person selected to be the authority…one milk mustache advertisement from a couple of years ago, featuring teen actor Jonathan

Taylor Thomas [a very popular teen actor at the time], reads like this:

  

  "Sure I'm young. But I know a lot about girls. Stuff they don't even know. Like, 8 out of 10 don't get enough calcium. Big mistake, but easy to fix. Just get at least 3 glasses of milk a day. It has lots of calcium to help bones grow strong. Of course, milk helps me too. I look older with a mustache.” (66 words)

But there's more. All advertisements have a second, underlying message called a SUBTEXT [like an inference]. The subtext is never stated directly. Instead it is suggested through the use of the symbols--images, music, and/or special effects--used to construct the ad. The creative team selects these symbols as carefully as they select the ad's words. Thomas's casual clothing, relaxed and playful posture (sitting on a tire), and winsome expression create a subtext that suggests this: IF YOU WANT TO BE CUTE AND COOL LIKE ME, YOU'VE GOT TO DRINK MILK. Most copywriters will agree that the subtext, not the written message, is the real persuader.

     PERSUASIVE TACTIC #2: SLICE OF LIFE     

Jeff Manning [worked for] the California Milk Processing Board. His audience research revealed that people usually don't pay attention to milk until they run out of it. It also uncovered this interesting bit of trivia: People prefer drinking milk rather than other beverages when eating chocolate chip cookies. That got Manning's creative team thinking.

     The copywriters used both pieces of information about their target audience to develop an advertising concept that is very different from the milk mustache. They created mini-dramas that showed people running out of milk at inconvenient times. The team came up with a list: a man in a full-body cast; a man being interrogated in a closed room by police; a man in the afterlife ("the bad place") with plenty of chocolate chip cookies--but no milk.

     Manning's group also chose a different persuasive advertising technique to get the message across: SLICE OF LIFE. Slice-of-life ads tell a story, complete with characters, a setting, and a conflict.

     Here's one mini-drama developed by Manning's team:

     "A kindly old lady who shares her home with a dozen or more cats discovers that she is out of milk. She quickly mixes a batch of a powdered milk look-alike with water and pours it into the cat dishes. The felines

aren't fooled. One flips the dish. Another locks the door. The old lady says, "Ok-Oh!" just as the house lights go out. The tag line: GOT MILK?"

     In slice-of-life ads the written message is more than just the words the characters speak. It is also the plotline, or action, that occurs within the ad: here, the woman's actions, the behavior of the cats, the lights suddenly going black. All of this is written into a script for filming. And then again there is the subtext: RUNNING OUT OF MILK CAN MEAN REAL TROUBLE.

          The GOT MILK? campaign was a solid success. Milk sales in California began to increase, and "Got milk?" became a catch phrase in American pop culture.

PERSUASIVE TACTIC #3:  LIFESTYLE

     Had enough milk? OK, let's get khakis.

     In 1996, sales for Gap, Inc., were stagnant…So, the Gap advertising team went to work on a new campaign. First came audience research. The team learned that members of its target audience--people in their 20s and 30s--dressed more conservatively than the young man with the pierced lip. Also, they desired inexpensive but well-made clothing and were "color conscious." In response, Gap clothing designers came up with a new line of T-shirts and shorts in bright whites, muted grays, and blacks. Gap decided to showcase new styles of khaki pants instead of blue jeans.

     Next came the concept. "I see dance and music," said creative director Lisa Prisco during one brainstorming meeting. "But very cool stuff. Like stuff you wouldn't expect to see in a khakis campaign." Prisco's vision eventually translated into this concept for selling khakis: short musical performances featuring young men and women wearing khakis while skateboarding, break dancing, and jitterbugging.

     One of the first 30-second TV spots that aired was "Khakis Rock." The spot featured the music of Crystal Method and an in-line skating performance. It ended with the slogan FALL INTO THE GAP.

     This type of advertisement is called LIFESTYLE. Lifestyle ads do not use a celebrity spokesperson and do not tell a story. They don't even focus on the product. Instead, the ads focus on an image, one that will appeal to the target audience. In "Khakis Rock," the image is attractive people having fun. The persuasive power of the ad lies in the depiction of the desired image.

     The Gap made additional ads using the same concept: "Khakis Swing" featured big band music and swing dancers; "Khakis a Go-Go" featured '60s rock 'n' roll and dancers…The written message changed with each new musical spot, but the subtext did not: IF YOU LIKE TO HAVE FUN AND ENJOY LIFE, WEAR GAP CLOTHING. In one year, Gap sales soared by 28 percent. Another advertising success story.

    

 PERSUASIVE TACTIC #4:  DEMONSTRATION

     OK, you've got milk and you've got khakis. Imagine that you spill your milk on your khakis. You'll have to wash them. Which detergent should you use? In recent years a popular TV spot urged consumers to try "all-temperature All." The advertisement went something like this:

     "A man looks into the camera, then purposely soils an article of clothing. He stuffs the article into a small container, adds a cup of water and a capful of detergent, and shakes the mixture. Then he withdraws the article of clothing and holds it up to the camera. The stain is gone.

     This advertising technique is called DEMONSTRATION. Demonstration ads focus on the product, showing how it works. In the "all-temperature All” commercial, the written message is the step-by-step process involved in the demonstration. Print ads, too, can use the demonstration technique. One way is to show before-and-after photographs or illustrations. The subtext of most demonstration ads is simply this: OUR PRODUCT WORKS. The power of persuasion comes not from a celebrity's personality or a humorous story or even a wished-for lifestyle. It comes from showing a product's benefits.

     NOT BY WORDS ALONE

Writing an advertisement is a little like climbing a ladder…The first step is identifying and learning about the target audience. The second step is developing a concept that the target audience will understand and appreciate. The third step is deciding which persuasive tactic--testimonial, slice-of-life, lifestyle, or demonstration--will best communicate the [product] to the audience and motivate them to buy, and buy again, and buy some more.

Choose three questions to answer on a separate paper. Be sure to use key words, explain your answers, and read your sentences aloud to check that they make sense.

1. Why is research important to writers who are creating an ad campaign and how did the “Did Know” and “Did Not Know” research help develop the Milk ads?

2. What is subtext? Why do advertisers create a subtext for their ads? Choose one of the ads: milk, khakis, or detergent and explain the subtext the ads created.

3. Restate the quote “People do not buy products—they buy images,” and explain it.

4. Why is identifying and learning about a target audience the first step—and not the middle or last step—in the process of creating an advertising campaign?

5. Both “Testimonial” and “Slice-of-Life” techniques use people or characters to sell a product. How then, does the “Slice-of-Life” technique differ from “Testimonial”?