“It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.” – David Ogilvy

I know where Ogilvy is coming from and yet I also know that he would have had another point of view had he been the publisher, ad manager or editor of the magazine. No reputable publisher wants his or her product to suffer through mediocre content. I don’t suppose it matters in top shelf tat but I can imagine quality publications hoping to maintain a certain standard.

 However, it’s not an easy one to call. We are obviously very grateful for the business and whilst I would never be critical of content directly to a customer I have sometimes been inwardly disappointed with some of the efforts that have come our way. However, I can imagine that it is not necessarily the fault of the creative professional. I have been in unenviable positions myself where you are caught between a rock and a hard place.

 For example, you might persuade your client that the best way to advertise his product’s growth in popularity is to illustrate that growth by way of an extending product. However, instead of allowing you to be creative and show a person with extending arms and the headline “Sooooooo Big”, your client wants to fill every available millimetre with technical specifications. From my point of view, it’s not the best use of a brilliant opportunity.

 We like to enjoy our work and we always get a big kick out of it when our customers come up with top class ideas that really combine well with our products – the NHS condom scheme extender card; the SGP Blast Off Sideshooter and the Wiley Bobbing Duck are good examples. As for Ogilvy’s opinion; yes, we agree, it is bad manners to attack a customer’s work and so we adopt another maxim: “the customer is always right – even when he’s wrong”!

“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative”. That’s a quote attributed to advertising guru, David Ogilvy. It might sound somewhat controversial to some but I have to say that I know exactly where he’s coming from. However, what do you do if your product is about as dull as ditchwater?  What if your client was a manufacturer of basement sump pumps? How would you make your client’s sump pump sound sexy? How would you make it more interesting than the sump pump made by your client’s biggest competitor?

 First, let’s decide what a sump pump is and does. A sump or sump pit is a hole in the ground in a basement. It is designed to collect water. They would typically be found in areas that are susceptible to flooding. A sump pump is a submersible water pump that is used to pipe water out of the basement. They look kind of like they sound - not particularly inspiring to advertising and marketing professionals!

 One manufacturer will insist that the marketing agency uses a picture of his sump pump to be the main feature on a leaflet and will also insist that technical specifications fill the sheet. This is not a creative answer to an advertising problem.

 The other manufacturer will ask, how do I get the homeowner to buy my pump? The agency will tell the manufacturer that the homeowner needs to be told what the product can do and how quickly it can do it. The homeowner also needs to be persuaded to actually read the information and so a creative medium must be used. This is where the Whitney Woods range of products comes into its own.

 Let’s use a dissolver and an age-old ad device – “before and after” pictures. The “before” picture shows a flooded cellar and the ”after” picture shows a dry cellar with a smiling housewife on the photo. The headline says, “My flooded cellar was dry in just one hour!” Simple yet persuasive but the creative thinking is in the use of the dissolver. We have three options that could do the trick – a cover operated version, our double dissolver and our original picture dissolver.

Or as David Ogilvy put it “Leaders grasp nettles.”

 Many of our customers are advertising and marketing agencies who are often very keen to use our innovative products to help to sell their clients’ products but no matter how those agencies might promote the use of high-impact direct mail products, there are many client companies who opt for plain leaflets and booklets. “It’s too far out for us.” “We don’t want to create a fuss” – and so on. Luckily for us there are other clients who immediately see the massive advantages of opting for a product with impact and high recall – they are the ones who “grasp nettles” according to David Ogilvy. They are the leaders.

 At Whitney Woods we always feel it is better to create a fuss, we believe creating a fuss is precisely what advertising is all about, it’s how to get noticed and how to make your promotion a success.

 Some of our best selling lines such as the Jumpinjax and Springbox are those which create the biggest fuss of all, these high impact products are perfect for the type of brave, trail blazing campaign Ogilvy was referring to. Jumpinjax is extremely popular for its high energy in your face impact and has been used with great effect and huge success as both a direct mail piece and event or promotions hand out.

Over the next few blog posts we have decided to look at quotes from the advertising and marketing industry for inspiration. Our first featured industry guru is David Ogilvy. Known by some as “The Father of Advertising”, Ogilvy was at the top of the advertising tree for some 40 years or so. He died in 1999 at the age of 88 but in his time offered many a wise word and here we’ve hand picked our top ten quotes to share with you.

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals. - David Ogilvy

A lot of research has been done to quantify the success of interactive and dimensional direct mail compared to regular direct mail consisting of, say, letters and leaflets. You can search for yourself on Google – “Response rates Interactive and dimensional mail”. We find it quite incredible that a direct mail client will opt for a scatter gun approach and select an A5 leaflet as the mailer. You might as well burn money. Research show response rates to be significantly higher using specifically targeted lists and using direct mail tools that are designed to grab attention. 

 So to make your direct mail campaign most effective it’s clearly important you do your homework and take a more focused approach.  First off hone down exactly who your target audience are, work out precisely who you should be addressing and get together your refined list of contacts.  Then once this is done you need to select the right vehicle which will carry and deliver your message in the right way so that the message gets heard and more importantly is listened to. 

 Direct mail products like our interactive and pop up mailers are exactly the type of direct mail tools you should be using to grab your audiences’ attention, each recipient will have no choice but to sit up, take notice and engage with your promotional campaign.  The pop up mailers which come in various shapes and sizes such as cubes, houses, and even pyramids each have a rubber band mechanism within which allows them to compress down inside their own bespoke mailing wrap for cost effective mailing.  More importantly and most impressively, this mechanism means that on delivery the mailers automatically jump back in to 3D form when released from their wrap. This fun and surprise action instantly commands attention and definitely gets your promotional print noticed.

 As well as the pop up products there are also interactive items such as the picture dissolve and flicker card.  These items have a different kind of intriguing action which are manually operated making them incredibly tactile products that will really engage your customer and entice them to take in your marketing message.  Whether you go pop-up or interactive the outcome is the same, a stand out direct marketing product offers the best chance of success for a truly outstanding marketing campaign.

At your next exhibition or event employ promotional material that makes your marketing message fun and easy to take in.   Opt for a funky event giveaway such as the mini double star burst and the interesting starburst action will engage your customer from the off, intriguing them to find out just what your campaign is all about giving your marketing maximum effect.  The mini double starburst opens to reveal two large print areas within that can fold back down in an instant to a neat pocketsize pack so it can easily be taken away and kept at hand for quick reference.

Another promotional keepsake that will stand out form the other exhibition hand outs they’ll receive that day is the Two Pop Box.  The fun and surprising pop up action is a real ice breaker that with invite interest to your stand giving you opportunity to strike up a rapport with potential customers and clients.  A compact pocket size product Two Pop Box is easy to take away but will undoubtedly be pulled back out again back at the office to wow fellow workmates making your marketing even more effective.