#UNIGNORABLE

Once a man was telling a story, it was a very good story too, and it made him very happy, but he told it so fast that nobody understood it.

Content

One of the greatest challenges in advertising is to ensure that the story you want to tell is told in a way that resonates with your intended audience. There’s a lot of millennial advice on the web that encourages writers to post “authentic”,  “genuine”, “value added” information. I suppose they’re all coming of age and rediscovering that the advice their parents (and grandparents) gave them years ago, about making your message relevant (to your audience), is sage advice that's as relevant now as it was "then".      

Pace

Pace relates to the message and the selected medium since one impacts the other. Think brief billboard message versus long direct mail letter or brochure. 

A great idea needs to be presented in a medium that enables you to get the idea across - and into the consumer's head - where it needs to take root. If it doesn’t, you’ve just wasted your best, and maybe your only good shot.

I found this unattributed quote in the Women’s Art Museum in Washington D.C. If it doesn’t make sense to you now, mull it over for a few weeks or months because it's the kind of advice that pays dividends for life. 

Johann Gutenberg (ca. 1400 – 1468) introduced movable type to Western Europe and revolutionized printing, books and communications. In 1455 in Mainz, Germany he published 180 copies of the Biblia Sacra, St. Jerome’s 4th century Latin Bible. Out of this printing revolution emerged the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Scientific Revolutions. In the 50 years that followed its publication, hundreds of presses emerged across Europe, printing millions of books.

• The Gutenberg Bible was printed using black ink. The colour illuminations were added by hand after each page had been printed.  
• To produce 180 copies of the 1,282 page bible 230,760 passes of the press were required; about two years work.
• The average scribe produced one Bible every three years.
• Gutenberg’s typeface mimicked the formal book hand used by scribes of the period.

Of the 180 copies printed, about 50 are known to survive and 21 are complete. This copy of the Gutenberg Bible, printed on velum, was purchased by the Library of Congress in 1930.

This is a testimonial ad by Lewis Miller, a carpenter in Pennsylvania around 1850. At the time homes were built using a technique called post+beam construction which demanded the work of skilled craftsmen. In this ad Lewis Miller four core testimonial advertising elements:

• an illustration of himself
• an illustration of some of his home building tools
• a bit about himself; 30 years of experience at the same business address, and . . . 
• a list of over one hundred satisfied clients.

Now jump forward 169 years + here we are in 2019.

Today we still use the same four core elements to build compelling testimonial ads, newspaper + magazine advertorials, business case studies as well as B2B and B2Cwebsites for one important reason:

While times have changed, people’s fundamental natures, their hierarchy of needs and their reasons for buying have not.

Where there’s turmoil, there’s opportunity . . .

In the mid-1960's, the positive outcomes of an American nuclear war were promoted with propaganda like this.

At the same time fall-out shelters were repositioned and sold as an advanced underground lifestyle option.

Maybe, information like this needs to understood better. Check this out;

In 1962 Jay Swayze built a 3,400 square foot - four bedroom, three bath home inside a steel reinforced concrete shell, 13 feet underground. The first bomb shelter residence of its kind. The creation was named "The Atomitat", derived from the words atomic habitat. It was a futuristic concept designed as a shelter for the nuclear age.

 The project started during a hot period in the Cold War, and was a concept that was completely ahead of its time. It was the first underground home in the U.S. that met civil defense specifications. From above the earth's surface, it doesn't look like much of a home, but while walking down the giant staircase in between the two above ground single car garages, you realize that this is a very unique home. "You close the steel radiation proof doors at night," said the owner who bought the underground house 50 years ago, and lived there for over 30 years.

"We’d look out the kitchen window and see beautiful murals. There are windows everywhere and there is also an outside patio”. Windows throughout the house give you a false sense of being above ground. Murals on the concrete shell enclosing the house were given careful attention. Each could be lit to mimic daytime, dusk, nighttime or dawn. Cleaning and dusting the house is rarely needed because you don't have the deterioration that you do above ground. Real plants grow under artificial lights on the porch and patios, and the days and nights are always calm, despite what the weather might be doing 13 feet above ground. It's easy to maintain and energy efficient. It is also storm proof, burglar proof, disaster proof.

While this scenario may describe how the first martian or lunar billionaires will live, do you really want to live like this on earth?