Okay, so we caught your attention with a little zany "creativity"
in the subject line of this email.
 
But what use is that if it doesn't persuade you to do anything?
 
In a glutted advertising world, grabbing attention is your first
priority. 
 
The challenge is this: Grabbing attention is relatively easy. The
hard part is actually persuading.
 
The great advertiser Leo Burnett, named by Time magazine as one of
the most influential people of the 20th century, once said:

    "We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead
of, 'That's a hell of an ad.'"

Unfortunately, this simple lesson has largely been lost in
marketing.
 
For example, consider the following classified ad for a mountain
bike that circulated widely online. In fact, people loved it so
much they posted it on their social media profiles (which is how we
found it).
 
After you read it, we'll tell you what happened.
 
 
Mountain Man's Bike for Sale
 

    I am a mountain man. You are probably not a mountain man, but,
you wish you were. This bike is your ticket to two things: 1-
Mountains and 2- Being a man.

    I ride this bike everyday. Not for fun or sport like the
spandex boys, but to hunt and kill food. I know for a fact that
this bike will jump over canyons, climb trees, kill bears, and
forge rivers. The bike has ridden every part of the Wasatch from
top to bottom.

    This bike won't break. It's half carbon fiber and half bad-ass.
Some guy told me this bike is a piece of history. I thought it was
new this year, but I also thought it was still 1998. Apparently it
is 2010 and time flies when you live in a cave.

    The bike says K2 pro-flex 4000 on the side of it. I don't know
what that means. It probably means it can kill an elephant. The
bike is red, so the blood won't show on it.

    The tires are knobby so you can pedal straight up a cliff. It
has shocks on the front and the back for when you jump off the
cliff. The stuff on it all says "Shimano XT". I'm pretty sure that
is because it was cursed once by an indian medicine man named
Shimano. The guy was a jack-ass. He tried to steal some of my stuff
so I bit off his left ear.

    The bike has a chain that I use to kill rattle snakes
sometimes. It also has a seat. I don't use it, but you probably
will for the first few years until you build up the muscle. I also
installed a shotgun holder on the bike that conveniently fits a
water bottle.

    If you have questions about the bike, don't bother calling me.
If you don't understand how tough the bike is, I probably won't be
able to help you.

    If you want to buy the bike, then I will take american cash. I
need to send some money to a very important man who emailed me from
nigeria so I need the cash quick.

 
Great ad, right? Wrong.
 
Out of curiosity, Stephen called the owner of the bike a couple
weeks after he had posted it and asked him how the ad was
performing. 
 
"Well," he said, "I've received about 50 emails from people telling
me this was the best ad they'd ever read."
 
"But have you sold the bike?" Stephen asked. 
 
"Not yet," he revealed.
 
Ah. 

    "What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases
you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most?
They are seldom the same." -David Ogilvy

Never confuse good, fun, creative writing with persuasive writing.
 
In this case, the guy was selling a beat-up, 12-year-old bike for
which he was asking too much. He caught people's attention, but he
failed to persuade.
 
He had two possible audiences he was writing for: experienced and
inexperienced mountain bikers.
 
His ad automatically eliminated the possibility of selling
experienced riders because 1) he wrote directly to the
inexperienced, and 2) experienced riders would know that he was
asking too much for a 12-year-old, hard-ridden bike. And he turned
off inexperienced riders by talking down to them.
 
He would have been better off to just state the facts and price the
bike right.
 
That would have been a lot more "boring," but is the job of an ad
to entertain or to persuade?
 
Creativity is meaningless until clarity is achieved. Only when
clarity is achieved do you invest in creativity.
 
Consider a few more examples:
 
Did you know the "Yo quiero Taco Bell" chihuahua commercials didn't
increase sales a penny? 
 
This Burger King ad features the King mascot sneaking into
McDonald's headquarters and stealing the Sausage McMuffin recipe.
Seriously? What's the message? We suck, so we just steal ideas. Oh,
and we're cheap, too. 
 
A billboard in Austin, Texas features Salt Lick Barbecue, a local
restaurant that cooks in seasoned barbecue pits. The message? "You
can smell our pits from miles away."
 
Oh, brilliant. Nice double entendre. That's so creative. Way to
associate smelly armpits with your food and forever brand that
image into my mind. Hold me back.
 
Relevance and credibility trump creativity. Anyone can catch
attention with creativity, but few know how to actually sell.
 
We may not know the best way to lubricate a chicken, but we do know
the difference between creativity and persuasion. And we know how
to blow the lid off your business.