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Issue 2 > The mysterious relationship between powerful advertising & eating prunes.

The mysterious relationship between powerful advertising & eating prunes.

Drew Whitman with a piece about advertising—much of which you'll quickly forget.

'Trash! Trash! Trash!' That's how I describe 99% of all advertising today. It's stupid. Boring. Weak. Not worth the paper it's printed on. Am I angry? No. Realistic? Yes.

But don't just take my word for it. Look in your trash can!

• How much of the nonsense that you get in the mail winds up in the garbage before you open it?
• How much of what you do open winds up in the same place before you finish reading the first few lines of it?
• How much of the mail that you read all of persuades you enough to buy whatever it's selling?

I rest my case.

The bottom-line: the goal of advertising is to get people to act! Whether you want people to send in a request for more information, or a nice hefty check, it's action that makes the advertising pay off. You see, advertising is not journalism. Advertising is not news reporting. In journalism, your goal is to simply report what happened. You don't necessarily need people to respond to make your article a success. Sure, you want them to respond intellectually and emotionally. In other words, you want to move and maybe shake them up a bit. But your primary interest is that they are well informed.

When you write advertising, on the other hand, you want people to do more than just read what you write. You want them to do more than simply say, 'Hmmm… hell of an ad! A fine writer this Drew Whitman!' And then dump the sucker into the kitchen trash on top of the cabbage scraps.

You're not writing to entertain—you want people to do something about it! …place an order or inquire for more information which is designed to persuade them to place an order. Hey, let's not kid each other. We advertise for one reason: to make money—period.

Do know why most advertising today is so lousy? I'll tell you. It's because most people in advertising today don't know a damned thing about what makes people buy! Believe it or not—it's true. They like to be cutesy and clever. They like to win awards for creativity that do nothing more than boost their egos and waste thousands of dollars for their clients.

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