By Jim Rhodes

Not too long ago, I presented a B2B advertising plan we had prepared for a client’s review. The plan included print, online, direct email and social media, augmented by PR. We had put many hours into researching and putting together a plan that addressed what we knew to be the company’s sales and marketing goals for breaking into a new market segment.

At the end of my presentation, I paused in hopeful anticipation of praise for our sterling efforts. The room was silent for 30 seconds or so.

Then our client cleared his throat. "I don’t get it,” he said. “Tell me why I need to spend so much money on advertising. Wouldn’t I be better off spending the money on direct sales, putting our sales force out on the road calling on prospects?”

“Let me send you something,” I said. “Then we can talk again.”

I returned to my office and sent him a link to the Man in the Chair ad.

The next day he called me back. “I get it now,” he said.

The iconic Man in the Chair ad is a timeless classic. It first appeared in 1958 in Business Week. It was created by Fuller & Smith & Ross, a New York ad agency for McGraw-Hill, then the world’s number one publisher of business magazines. It was an immediate hit. Advertising Age named it one of the top 10 ads for the year. 

The full-page ad features a man seated in an old-fashioned wooden chair on a stark white background. He is wearing a poorly fitted business suit and bow tie. He stares directly at the camera through horn-rimmed glasses. His hands are folded in his lap. His lips are tightly squeezed into an expression that is neither a frown nor a smile. 

The copy is simple, direct and elegant in its clarity:

“I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s product.
I don’t know what your company stands for.
I don’t know your company’s customers.
I don’t know your company’s record.
I don’t know your company’s reputation.
Now what was it you wanted to sell me?”
MORAL: Sales start before your salesman calls – with business publication advertising.

Legend has it the man who appeared in the ad was an account supervisor named Gil Morris.The creative director asked him to sit in the chair for Polaroids while composing the shot, as a stand-in for the paid model they had hired for the job. He looked the part so perfectly, they decided to use him for the shoot and sent the professional model packing.

The campaign has been revived and updated several times over the last 40+ years with newer chairs and newer faces, including a woman executive in one of them, but always with the identical copy. Some things are so perfect you don’t dare mess with them. According to an article in Advertising Age, the ad copy has been translated into French, Russian, German Italian and Chinese. It was named the best ad of the 20^th century by Business Marketing in 1999. 

Interestingly, the Business Marketing Association produced a modernized video version of the ad for its 2009 conference, introducing a hyperactive tuned-in and thoroughly wired business executive alongside the man in the chair. You can judge for yourself, but to my mind it was less effective than the original print version’s stark and forceful presentation.

So why does the Man in the Chair ad still resonate more than four decades later? Partly it’s because of the creative genius behind it. The image and copy work perfectly together to deliver a powerful message in a spectacularly effective way. More than that, even in our time of explosive growth in online and social media, the message is just as valid as it was at a time when print magazines dominated the B2B marketplace.

The truth is that people still want to do business with brands they trust.

I rest my case.

Note: If this subject interests you, may I suggest you also read my blog post on branding? 

One of our clients, DeLorme, has released a new video that highlights the features and benefits of the new inReach™ personal satellite tracking, locating, messaging and SOS alerting device.

We have a limited supply of loaner products for journalists to test and review, so please let us know if you are interested.

DeLorme inReach™ - Reliable 2-way satellite communication in remote or high-risk environments, anywhere in the world.

By Jim Rhodes

I love maps. Cartography is an endless source of fascination to me. You can learn so many interesting things studying maps. A case in point…

The other day I was poring over a road map of Ohio and couldn’t help taking notice of the remarkable range of place names that adorn the state’s cities, towns, counties and hamlets.

Ohioans, I think, must be a happy and hopeful people, judging by places called Joy, Amity, Tranquility, Friendship, Harmony, Unity, Socialville, Felicityville, Arcadia, Utopia, Welcome, Pleasant Home, Pleasant Hill, Mt. Pleasant, Mt. Joy, Mt. Hope, New Hope, Good Hope, Hopedale and Fairhope.

On the other hand, there may be a darker side to the Ohioan psyche. There are also places named Revenge, Gore, Defiance, Brokensword, River Styx, Chagrin Falls and Rattlesnake Knob (two of them, actually, within sight of each other).

And what a cosmopolitan place Ohio must be with towns like Geneva, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Calais, Marseilles, Versailles, Lisbon, Canton, Calcutta, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Ghent, Warsaw, Bremen, Hamburg, Dresden, Florence, Rome, Genoa, Cadiz, Malaga, London, Plymouth, Brighton, Cambridge, Greenwich, Yorkshire, Dublin, Limerick, Sparta, Athens, Moscow, Antioch, Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Mecca and Londonderry (two of them).

In many of Ohio’s towns, you wouldn’t have much trouble figuring out the chief occupation of the early inhabitants. What do you suppose the people did for a living in Miner, Minerton, Minersville, Farmer, Farmerstown, Farmers, Farmingtown, Farmersville, Mechanicstown and Mechanicsville (two of them)?

Interestingly, Rattlesnake Knob, Mechanicsville and Londonderry aren’t the only duplications. There are several other places in Ohio bearing the same name. It must be very confusing to be a mail sorter when you have two Unionvilles, two Limas, two Buena Vistas, two Lebanons and two Springfields.

Closer inspection of the map shows that Ohio has a town named Alpha and another named Omega.

My own personal favorites, though, are the “Bottoms”:

Long Bottom,

Big Bottom,

and...

Round Bottom.

Whew, I’m worn out. Can somebody bring me a cold beer?

By Jim Rhodes

As you may know, our company has been deeply involved in the world maritime industry for more than 25 years. I first went to sea as a ship navigator in 1970, so I take a personal interest in the subject. The recent media feeding frenzy over the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia has given me cause for reflection.

It’s sad but true that the news media are just not interested in the world of ships and shipping. The exceptions seem to be (1) when there is a whiff of scandal, as when the master recklessly drives a massive cruise ship with 4,000+ passengers onto a charted reef and is later found bobbing in a lifeboat with his senior deck officers while the passengers struggle desperately to find their way to safety in the dark, (2) when oil is spilt on the waters, polluting public beaches and fouling populations of sea birds, or (3) when a team of U.S. Navy SEALS mount a dramatic rescue of hostages held by pirates.

Costa Concordia.  Photo Credit: CruiseLaw News.

The media are rapidly losing their enthusiasm for the Costa Concordia story. The journalists are packing up their satellite dishes and heading back to chase tomorrow’s news. The passengers have been repatriated, their pockets stuffed with business cards from members of the ambulance-chasing profession, and now the dreary work is left to be done by the teams of investigators searching for clues and salvagers who will pump out the ship’s bunker tanks and refloat the wreck to be towed to a drydock for repairs. 

I hasten to say that the trade media are an exception, and the leading maritime trade journals have done a good job of presenting the story in a thorough, fair and balanced way. One of the best sources is the excellent website www.gCaptain.com, where you will find expert commentary by people who know what they’re talking about, unlike the talking heads trotted out for 15-second sound bites by the news broadcasters as fillers between the latest unsubstantiated rumors.

Returning to my original premise, while the news media were falling over each other to cover the Costa Concordia, other ship casualties were going virtually unnoticed. Last Thursday, February 2, 2012, the passenger ferry Rabaul Queen sank in heavy weather with 350 people on board off Papua New Guinea. Rescue operations were underway the following day but more than 100 are still listed as missing. Also that Thursday, a cargo ship carrying scrap metal from Russia sank off the coast of Turkey in stormy seas. So far only three of the crew have been rescued. Turkish authorities are searching for the remaining 10 with little hope of success.

And where were the media when the bulk carrier Vinalines Queen plunged to the bottom of the sea off Luzon in the Philippines with 22 Vietnamese seafarers on Christmas Day? 

You would have a hard time finding these stories in any western newspaper or news broadcast.

And while the media were breathlessly reporting the exciting story of the rescue of two hostages in Somalia by a U.S. special warfare team, how many of them took advantage of the opportunity to cover the bigger story – that according to the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Centre, 13 ships were attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia during the month of January? At this writing, pirate gangs are holding 10 ships and 159 seafarers hostage in Somalia pending ransom negotiations. There are reports of escalating violence and even torture of hostages by their captors. It’s a scandal, and the indifference of the western media to their plight is appalling.

To a large extent, the maritime industry has no one to blame but itself. People who own and operate ships inhabit a murky and shadowy world, and they seem to like it that way. Take the ship that just sank off Turkey, for example. The ship was likely owned by Russian interests (who knows?), flew the Cambodian flag and carried a crew of mostly Ukrainians. In years gone by, many major newspapers had an expert writer or two covering the maritime beat. Nowadays, if you try to explain a concept like flags of convenience to journalists, you’re likely to get nothing but blank stares of incomprehension with the implied message, “Our readers don’t care about this stuff, and neither do we.”

By Jim Rhodes

I have written on this question before, but it keeps coming up in meetings with clients, so I hope you won’t mind if I revisit the subject. The department store magnate John Wannamaker (1838-1922) is reported to have said: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”

So what makes an effective ad campaign? There are two components: (a) the media in which the ad appears, and (b) the ad itself. In this post, I’ll focus on the latter.  Why is one particular ad better or worse than another?

For a good many years, the late lamented trade magazine Business Marketing (in recent years reincarnated as BtoB Marketing) ran a popular column called “Copy Chasers,” in which an anonymous team of experienced creative types critiqued ads submitted by readers.  I still have a yellowed clipping from the magazine listing the Copy Chaser’s 10 criteria, and I refer to it often when we are creating ads for our clients. While these rules come from an earlier time when print magazines were the primary media for business-to-business (B2B) advertising, I believe that they mostly translate to other online media as well.

 Photo Credit:  Echo-Factory.

Here are the rules:

1. Use high visual magnetism. On average, only a small number of ads in an issue of a magazine will capture the attention of any one reader. Some ads will be passed by because the subject matter is of no concern. But others, even though they may have something to offer, fail the very first test of stopping the reader scanning the pages. Ads perish right at the start because, at one extreme they just lie there on the page, flat and gray, and at the other extreme, they are cluttered, noisy and hard to read. An ad should be constructed so a single component dominates the area – a picture, the headline or the text – but not the company name or the logo. Obviously, the more pertinent the picture, the more arresting the headline, the more informative the copy appears to be, the better.

2. Select the right audience. Often, an ad is the first meeting place of two parties looking for each other. So there should be something in the ad that at first glance will enable readers to identify it as a source of information relating to their job interests – a problem they have or an opportunity they will welcome. This is done with either a picture or a headline – preferably both. The ad should say immediately to the reader, “Hey, this is for you.”

3. Invite the reader into the scene. Within the framework of the layout, the graphic designer’s job is to visualize, illuminate and dramatize the selling proposition. The graphic designer must consider that the type of job a reader has dictates the selection of the illustrative material. Design engineers work with drawings. Construction engineers like to see products at work. Chemical engineers are comfortable with flow charts. Managers relate to pictures of people, and so on.

4. Promise a reward. An ad will survive the qualifying round only if readers are given reason to expect they will learn something of value. A brag-and-boast headline, a generalization, or advertising platitude will turn readers off before they get to the message. The reward can be explicit or implicit and can even be stated negatively, in the form of a warning of a possible loss. The promise should be specific.

5. Back up the promise. To make the promise believable, the ad must provide hard evidence that the claim is valid. Sometimes, a description of the product’s design or operating characteristics will be enough to support the claim. Comparison with competition can be convincing. Case histories make the reward appear attainable. Best of all are testimonials. “They-say” advertising carries more weight than “We-say” advertising.

6. Present sequence logically. The job of the graphic designer is to organize the parts of an ad so that there is an unmistakable entry point (the single dominant component referred to earlier) and the reader is guided through the material in a sequence consistent with the logical development of the selling proposition.

7. Talk person-to-person. Copy is more persuasive when it speaks to the reader as an individual – as if it were one friend telling another friend about a good thing. Terms should be the terms of the reader’s business, not the advertiser’s business. But more than that, the writing style should be simple: short words, short sentences, short paragraph, active rather than passive voice, no clichés, frequent use of the personal pronoun “you.”

8. Be easy to read. Font should be no smaller than 9points. It should appear black on white. It should stand clear of interference from any other part of the ad. Column width should not be more than half of the width of the ad.

9. Emphasize the service. Many B2B advertisers insist that the company name or logo be the biggest thing in the ad, that the company name appear in the headline, that it be set in boldface wherever it appears in the copy. That’s too much. An ad should make readers want to buy – or at least consider buying – before telling them where to buy.

10. Reflect company character. A company’s advertising represents its best opportunity (better than the sales force) to portray the company’s personality – the things that will make the company liked, respected, admired. Messy ads tend to indicate a messy company. Brag-and-boast ads suggest the company is maker-oriented, not user-oriented. Whatever it is, personality should be consistent over time and across the spectrum of corporate structure and product lines.

On the next post, I'll touch on the first component of an effective ad campaign, the media which the ad appears in.

By Jim Rhodes

There is a considerable body of research documenting the startling conclusion that a down economy is the best time to capture market share. Don’t believe me? Take it from the chief executive of Procter & Gamble, who was quoted in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago as saying, “We have a philosophy and a strategy. When times are tough, you build share.”

At first glance, this seems counter-intuitive. After all, the prime directive in an economic downturn is to survive, and cash flow is king. And the marketing and advertising budget is an attractive and seemingly easy target when expenses have to be curtailed to match the falloff in revenue. So it’s logical to pull back on marketing costs and wait for the turnaround.

That could be a strategic blunder. Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes, “It is well-documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.”

A Cahners Advertising Research report found companies that increased their media advertising during the recession of the 1980s gained an average of 1.5 points of market share. I’ll concede that as a major publishing house Cahners may have a vested interest in persuading its advertisers not to cut back on their media budgets, but there are plenty of other sources corroborating these findings.

In 1980, the Harvard Business Review reported, “The company courageous enough to stay in the fight when everyone else is playing safe can bring about a dramatic change in market position.” In a study of the 1990-92 recession, Management Review polled American Management Association member firms and concluded, “Firms that increased their budgets and took on new people were twice as likely to pick up market share.”

Seeing Beyond the Recession
The Profit Impact of Market Strategy Program conducted a detailed analysis of data from more than 3,500 strategic business units that are divisions, product lines or other profit centers of some 200 companies. The data revealed that companies that trimmed marketing spending during recessions enjoyed a superior return on capital employed during the recession, but performed more poorly during the recovery than companies maintaining or increasing their spending. The “spenders,” it was reported, had significantly higher return on capital employed (ROCE) and gained an average of 1.3 percentage points in market share. Because recessions typically last 6 to 15 months, the short-term gain in ROCE was temporary.

In other words, increasing your market share during the downturn will produce a much higher return when the economic curve turns upward. You will be riding the crest of the wave of recovery rather than struggling to catch up with a wave that has passed you by.

In researching this column, I came across an interesting case study from Mercedes-Benz in Taiwan. The recession hit the Taiwanese luxury car segment hard, with sales dropping 30 percent from 2007 to 2008. Some luxury car manufacturers responded with aggressive price promotions, creating market confusion.

Instead of joining the price war, Mercedes-Benz decided to hold its brand value with a surge of television ads that contained a creative strategy emphasizing the emotional connection with a luxury brand. The results were astounding. During the campaign, calls to the Mercedes sales hotline were up sevenfold and website visits tripled.

The Taiwanese luxury car segment declined by 28 percent, but Mercedes increased its market share from 26 percent to 28 percent without cutting prices. In fact, Mercedes had the highest selling price among its luxury car competitors. The marketing director was reported as saying, “The campaign cleverly removed us from a blood competition, allowing us to stand out and win both in terms of business and branding. Moreover, it proved again that branding is a crucial and worthy investment, especially in a recession.”

Can’t Spend More? Spend Wisely
Of course, not every company has Procter & Gamble’s or Mercedes-Benz’s deep pockets. For many, especially thinly capitalized small businesses, surviving the recession means cutting everything to the bone, hunkering down and hoping they can claw their way back when the economy turns upward. Increasing the advertising budget is just not an option. But I would suggest that lean times provide unique opportunities for entrepreneurial marketing departments to promote their brands and win market share from their competitors.

In other words, even if you can’t spend more money, you can spend it more wisely. Let me give you a few examples from my own experience. I knew a company that during the 1980's recession closed its communications department and sent everyone out on the road, calling on customers as direct salesmen. It kept them on the payroll and beefed up customer service. They also learned a lot about how to sell and market their products by listening to what their customers told them. When they returned to their jobs in the communications department, you can bet they brought a new point of view to the company’s advertising, PR and marketing programs.

During the downturn of the early 1990's one of our clients — an OEM supplier to the boatbuilding industry — discerned a major opportunity. Its largest competitor was visibly cutting back on customer service to save money. Our client assigned one of its best salesmen to the competitor’s biggest account. He practically took up residence in a motel near the boatbuilder’s plant and gave the company his undivided attention. When the economy recovered, guess who ended up with the account — and a substantial increase in market share?

I have seen reports from companies that withdrew all of their media ads and spent the money on direct mail and direct sales instead. It brought them closer to their customers and gave them an edge on their competitors, resulting in a higher market share in the end.

Happily, there are now many options for promoting your brand beyond traditional print and broadcast media. Innovative companies are leveraging the power of the Internet, social media and smart phones to connect with their customers. I know of one company that has developed a clever suite of iPad apps for boat dealers to engage on a personal level with prospects and customers. (Full disclosure: I will not name the company because it is a client of ours, but I’ll be happy to tell you about it if you give me a call.)

Although some positive indicators are starting to appear in the boating business, the economy is still sputtering. There is nearly no job growth. Family debt levels remain high. Credit is tight for businesses and consumers. The stock market has a case of the jitters. The baby-boomer generation, which should be driving a healthy boating business, is hoarding for retirement in anticipation of a collapse in the value of their investments and pension funds. High entry-level pricing shuts out many first-time boat buyers.

Sooner or later, the recession will ease and the economy will improve. There will be winners and losers, and the companies that emerge as winners will be the ones that used the downturn to their advantage by building their brand and customer loyalty.

Editor's Note:
This article has also appeared in Soundings Trade Only Today  magazine.

Editor's Note:

Below is the November 24^th issue of Fairplay, where our company president, Jim Rhodes was featured:

By Jim Rhodes 

This is for people who, like me, get their kicks playing with numbers.

As I write this, the date is 11/1/11 (American style). Of course, if you subscribe to the convention of placing the day before the month, it’s 1/11/11. Either way, it’s a rare event – five identical digits in a row.

So here are your questions for the day:

• When is the next time there will be a date with five of the same digits in a row? 
• When is the last time it occurred?
• How many times will it happen in this century? 
• In this millennium?

Hint, there are surprisingly few.
Ten days from now, the date will be 11/11/11, either way you write it.

So how often does that happen – all six digits the same?

By Jim Rhodes

Last week, I was invited to be a panelist at a joint meeting of Marine Marketers of America and Boating Writers International (BWI) at the Ft. Lauderdale International Boat Show. The question for debate was, “Can A Writer Serve Two Masters?” The subject is timely. Many freelancers are being driven to seek PR and advertising work to supplement the dwindling income from journalistic assignments. Here are excerpts from my comments:

There are actually two questions here. First, can a writer serve two masters as a journalist-for-hire and a PR writer? And second, how do you do it?

The answer to the first question, to my mind, is a guarded “Yes,” but the devil’s in the details.

A number of years ago, I was one of the Gang of Three (or maybe it was Four – it’s hard to remember these days – I’m finding that the gray cells seem to decay in direct proportion to the increase of hairs of the same color). Anyway, we formed a small committee to draft a set of ethical guidelines for BWI members.

The subject of writers crossing over between journalism and PR did not figure prominently in our deliberations. Back then, the major boating magazines had staff editors and staff writers, plus a chain of contributors who got regular substantial assignments from the publications – enough to make a decent living without having to supplement their income from PR work. So, while we didn’t address this issue specifically, we did include certain broad-brushed provisions concerning conflict of interest.

“Writers and editors should avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived, whenever possible. To that end, any potential conflict of interest, which might affect editorial content, must be disclosed prior to publication. Writers must notify editors, and the editor in turn must disclose this information to the readers. Editors and writers should not accept substantial gifts, services or merchandise from organizations or individuals that may be affected by editorial content.”

I would suggest that the last sentence could be construed to include accepting payments from PR clients for articles you are also selling to a publisher.

A lot has changed in our industry since then. Some boating magazines have disappeared entirely while others have converted into online journals. Editorial staffs have been savaged, and staff writers are – if not extinct – at least an endangered species. Freelancers are being squeezed by lower fees and late payments. I don’t need to tell you that it’s pretty damn hard to making a living as a boating writer these days. It’s only natural that you should look to PR work.

For this discussion, I will take the position that working as a PR writer and a journalist is not inherently unethical, but as I said, the devil’s in the details.

To be sure, some things are clear violations. On these we can probably agree. For instance, suppose I, as a PR guy, sell a story to a magazine that affects one of my clients and I don’t disclose that information to the editor. That’s double dipping, and it’s unethical.

That’s easy enough, but let’s consider a more complicated scenario. Let’s say you are listed as a “contributing editor” on the masthead of a boating magazine. You take a second job writing press materials, brochures and web copy for a manufacturer of VHF radios. The reason they hired you to do this job was because of your well-known expertise in the field. So far, you’re in the clear. You write the stuff, and they do whatever they want with it. But now suppose your editor assigns you to write a review of the latest VHF radios on the market. Now where is your loyalty? Your client certainly has the expectation that his product will get a favorable review, maybe even preferential treatment over the others. Your editor expects an objective and balanced article. Now you’re definitely skating onto thin ice. Now let’s say you’re invited to a press conference by one of your client’s competitors to unveil their brand-new VHF radio technology. When you see their new product you can see it’s clearly superior to your own client’s radios. Now what do you do?

I personally don’t see how you can escape from these sorts of ethical dilemmas when you try to serve both masters in a narrow vertical market like the boating industry.

The best you can do, I believe, is follow the “full disclosure” rule, and try your best to create a wall of separation between the two. It won’t be easy.

Let me just say that I wrestled with this early in my career. I was a young writer trying to produce income for a growing family. I took whatever writing jobs I could get. And at the same time I was growing my PR client base. I have to confess I was guilty of crossing over the line between the two more than once. Eventually my conscience kicked in, and I realized I couldn’t keep doing it. So I did the arithmetic, worked the sums, and realized that if I wanted a steady paycheck I’d better stick to the PR business.

By Jim Rhodes

Every now and then I put my hand to writing Haikus. It’s a useful discipline for a writer to condense big thoughts into a very short and structured composition.

The Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry dating back some 300 years. A Haiku poem consists of 17 syllables written in three lines – the first consisting of 5 syllables, the second 7 and the third 5. Together, they give expression to a vivid impression, thought, theme or image. Often Haikus express human responses to nature in a strongly sensual way, capturing the essence of a moment in time.

The Haiku is in many ways an interactive art form. The nature of the Haiku is such that much meaning is hidden, to be filled in by the reader. Each word must pull a lot of weight, and the impact of the whole is greater than just the sum of its parts. An effective Haiku, engages all the human senses – sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Mind you, working in an appeal to all five senses in 17 syllables is a challenge, so as a writer you just do the best you can.

The Haiku has become a popular art form in English, as well as other languages. Note, however, that Haikus composed in English differ greatly from the traditional Japanese, largely because Japanese words are more polysyllabic, so that a given line may contain only one or two words. Actually, the English language is more pliable and flexible with many more very short words, offering a lot more options for filling the 5-7-5 syllable format. Here are a few famous Japanese Haikus by the poet Basho, as translated into English:

Lightning -
Heron’s cry
Stabs the darkness

Waterjar cracks
I lie awake
This icy night

Ancient pond
Frog leaps
Splash!

 So, for what it’s worth, here is my own little seasonal Haiku composed as a tribute to the beginning of Autumn:

           The wind backs northwest
           Shadows sharpen suddenly
           Sweet September comes.