Advertising’s Grand Illusion
Dale Earnhardt, Jr will make 21.4 million dollars this year.
He is the world’s one hundredth most highly paid professional athlete.1
But don’t assume pro athletes make a lot of money. The sad truth is that the top 10 percent – the star athletes – receive more than 90 percent of all the money paid to athletes. If the 80/20 rule held true in sports, the salaries of the bottom 90 percent would more than double while the top 10 percent would get a barely noticeable haircut.
The world’s most highly-paid athlete, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, will skip happily home with 93 million dollars in 2017. (Well, he’ll skip as happily as one can skip while lugging 2,048 pounds of hundred dollar bills. 2 )
93 million is $372,000 a day, more than $46,000 an hour.3
The average professional soccer player makes $80/hr ($160,000/yr) and will play for just 3.2 years.
Advertisers are like pro athletes. Everyone gets to play on game day, but only the best get paid on payday.
Sure, Cristiano Ronaldo is better than the average soccer player. But is he 581 times better? Because that’s how much more money he makes. And keep in mind that the salaries of the other highly-paid soccer stars contribute toward raising that “average” salary up to $160,000.
But my objective isn’t to rail against the injustice of professional sports.
My objective is to draw a few comparisons that I believe you’ll find to be helpful and encouraging.
1: Advertising’s Grand Illusion is that – because you paid for it – people are going to notice your ad.
2: GOOD NEWS! Your ads don’t have to be 581 times as good as the average ad.
3: They just have to be better than your competitors for your company to become the Cristiano Ronaldo of your category.
4: Advertising’s Grand Illusion is perpetuated by three groups of people:
(A.) By advertising salespeople.
“The secret is to target the right people, and we have them for you!”
(B.) By advertising agencies.
“The secret is to target the right people, and we’ve found them for you!”
(C.) By hope-filled advertisers.
“The secret is to reach the right people, and that’s what I’m going to do!”
5: REALITY: Decisions are never made in a vacuum. This is why you must also reach the influencers. The friends and neighbors, co-workers and associates, husbands and wives, hair stylists and golf caddies of your “target.”
6: MORE GOOD NEWS! Unfiltered, untargeted “mass media” is astoundingly cheap when compared to online media.
7: Each of us is assaulted by more than 5,000 selling messages per day.4 and 5
8: We’ve become extremely good at ignoring them.
9: The secret of success in advertising is knowing how to craft subject lines for emails, headlines for banners, and opening lines for TV and radio ads.
10: And after you’ve won the attention of your customer, you’ve got to know how to hold on to it.
11: TIP: Leave out the parts that make your ad feel like an ad.
12: Because those are the moments we turn our attention elsewhere.
Roy H. Williams
Looking for answers that apply specifically to you and your situation?
1 Forbes.com
2 one pound of hundred-dollar bills is $45,400
3 Assuming a 40 hr. workweek, 50 weeks a year.
4 Yankelovich Market Research
5 This number includes “brand exposures” along with “ads.”
The average number of true “ads” we encounter daily, including online: 362