Never Underestimate The Power Of Creative

by Rick Aronhalt

Creative (the noun, not the adjective) is the wonderful product that results when good words meet good visuals and work together to make fine advertising. It is the magic that makes normal people stand on elevators humming the Oscar Mayer bologna jingle. Creative influences popular culture and makes people buy stuff. Lots of stuff. Unfortunately, creative is one of the elements that most small businesses overlook when developing an advertising campaign.

When budgeting for an advertising campaign, many small business owners make the mistake of viewing creative as an extra. Fluff. Something that their business is too small to afford. This mind set, however, causes many small businesses to waste lots of money placing ads that nobody reads.

Ads for small businesses should be the most creative ads in the paper. After all, these businesses have just a limited number of times they can reach their audience. To maximize the budget, these ads need to make an impression every single time they run. Think of how many times you've commented on an ad that you thought was funny. Now think of how many times you've commented on how boring an ad looked. Get the picture?

The key to making your advertising successful is to master that delicate balance of quality and quantity. You want to hit your audience with good advertising as many times as you can. This does not mean that you should blow your entire budget on your agency's creative team and run an ad once. On the other hand, you should not hire your brother-in-law to design an ad so that you can run it 50 times (unless, of course, he is in the business).

So, how much should you spend on creative and how do you know it's good? How much you spend depends a lot on your budget and where you are placing your advertising. If your budget is very limited (small ads in community papers), full-color ads are probably not the smartest use of your money. As a rule, the money you spend on creative should be proportional to the money you spend on advertising. In other words, it's okay to spend $100 to design an ad for a community newspaper, but you'd better think twice before putting that same ad in Newsweek.

As far as judging the quality of the creative, there is no set rule. Nevertheless, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. Do I like what I see in the context of where I will see it? Your ad should be eye-catching, even on a page with other advertising. There are many ads that look wonderful in frames hanging on the wall, but get lost in the newspaper.
2. Will the message of the ad speak to my audience? You know your clients better than anybody. You should feel comfortable that they will respond positively to your ad.
3. Does the entire ad effectively sell my product or service and its benefits? The best creative in the world is worthless if it doesn't sell something. And while it's easy to be dazzled with creativity, you still want to boost sales.

The important lesson here is to remember that your advertising speaks for you. It is your initial communication to your customers and should be scrutinized as such. So, ask yourself how you are being interpreted.

Rick Aronhalt is a copywriter with IMPACT Marketing & Public Relations, Inc., in Ellicott City. He can be reached at 410-461-9398 or impactmktg@connext.net.