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Legions of stupid advertising and marketing experts would have you believe that long copy is dead and that today’s communications are all about clever little sound bits.

Bullshit.

These are the same silly people who would like you to believe that an exciting ad, with-out a decent USP or a powerful unfair advantage, can sell your stuff. Think long and hard before you say yes to their groundless, selfserving selling propositions.

Great ads and great articles shine a light on great products (or services). The facts, not supposition or hyperbole, are the source for the insights which lead to great advertising.

Great ads can’t sustain a lousy product or service because you can’t shine shit with cleverly written little sound-bites.

In the 50’s David Ogilvy adapted a copy line from a 1933 Pierce Arrow ad for Rolls Royce and in doing do created one of his most famous campaigns: “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”. His ad was laid out and read like a factual and informative news article of the day. The ad featured not one, but thirteen genuine and unique consumer benefits, the f.o.b. price and the contact information. The ad sold the vehicles and the Ad Agency’s capabilities. The 9th benefit read as follows: "By moving a switch on the steering column, you can adjust the shock-absorbers to suit road conditions."

The other day I was reading an article in Popular Mechanics (by Ezra Dyer) when I tripped over this line: “At sixty miles per hour the Stingray can adjust (the suspension) for each inch of road.”

I’m still trying to process the impact of that statement from a mechanical POV and a communications POV.

It’s staggering. It’s an incredible USP.  It’s a genuine consumer advantage.  It has profound bragging rights - here I am blogging about it.  And it has ties into a rich heritage of superior automotive journalism.

Wow.

Long live well written + relevant long copy!

I was doing some online research when I stumbled upon this gem titled “CNE 1955”. I love photography like this because it can launch so many credible storylines.

And while this shot is 60 years old, put a smart-phone into the hands of the lady sitting in the shadows of this back-stage, and this shot could have been taken yesterday. So it travels through time as well.

Gorgeous.

On December 16, I published a post that advocated the use of “Faith” to achieve your 2015 business objectives.

To some of you that seemed pretty dumb because it suggested that you need faith to get through some of the undefined variables that you’ll encounter as the year progresses.

Yesterday I heard a great interview with a Chaplain employed by a large window and door manufacturer in Calgary. With over 1,200 employees that represent about 50 different cultures and six world religions, it took the Chaplain over three years to establish the trust required to make a difference.
    •    He was hired because the company owner wanted a more cohesive and productive corporate culture.
    •    The Chaplain’s job is to listen an provide support and advice to those who ask for it.
    •    The Chaplain’s job is NOT to convert employees to the company owner’s religion or point of view.
    •    The result is reduced absenteeism as well as greater “presence”. Less employees show up only from the “neck down” because they have someone to turn to with their personal internal strife.
    •    No two days are alike except that all days require the Chaplin to make rounds, looking for those who need a kind word or more support to do their best.

I was struck by a few things:

    1.    The  progressive + innovative nature of the business owner. He understands that a real corporate culture needs to include alignment and support of the  spiritual side of enterprise.
    2.    The commitment to the decision. While hiring one full time minister to support 1,200 employees is not a financial issue since it represents such a small fraction of the company’s total salary and overhead, recognizing and accepting a 3-5 year results horizon is admirable.
    3.    The opportunity the owner is giving each employee to make the most of their day by resolving personal issues that affect them and their families.

As I said in the original post:

Faith provides open-minded leaders with more options and unforeseen opportunities that “arrive” and are “arrived at” in ways and means that need to be believed before they are seen.

 My 1st article on Faith Based Leadership . . .

Let me begin by saying that this article on Faith has more to do with cartography than religion because throughout history a better map and better use of the map have always been fundamental to winning.

It’s also not about “blind faith”: that cancer can be cured with a prayer. The faith I’m referring to is the result of the kind of hard work and hard thought that leaves you convinced that the path you are on is the right path for you and your business for a wide array of tangible and intangible reasons that contribute to a better understanding of reality and a better interpretation of your options.

I’ve been in advertising for a long time now, and along the way I’ve worked with hundreds of clients and developed advertising campaigns for some of the world’s largest, and smallest, organizations in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

When I pour my 40 years of experience into one big pot and boil off all the platitudes, the politics, the process B.S. and all the trendy “me-too” garbage, I end up with one key variable that separates the winners from those who “also ran” and I’m calling that variable FAITH.

Faith is the improbable mixture of tangibles and intangibles that combine to make the impossible a manifest reality in the lives of people and organizations.

Henri Bergson* put it this way: "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

To achieve your goals, popular business theory invites you to (1) start 2015 with a careful review of what went well and what failed in 2014. Show all your work – and explain why! (2) Now compare your 2014 findings to your 2008 – 2013 findings. Use the historical trends you finding in conjunction with your 2015 situation analysis and 2016 market projections to inform and modify your rolling 12 month business plan.

(3) Compare your plan to what others plan to do in 2015 (using competitive research) and infuse your business plan with the “Best Industry Practices” that you can find (splattered across countless websites which suggest they know your business better than you do).

(4) Finally, use steps (1) – (3) above to develop your insightful Marketing + Advertising plans featuring robust strategies and tactics.

The problem with this planning process is that it doesn’t serve most small businesses very well. The large companies I’ve worked with spend upwards of $500,000 a year (in Canada alone) to sort out steps (1) – (3), and then hire an ad agency to sort out and implement step (4). Most small businesses do a review their sales and cursory review of their business terrain and conclude that price is the key variable. So they adjust price and their seasonal or intellectual inventory, and then trudge along the same economic path everyone else is on looking for the same opportunities for growth everyone else is decade in and decade out. These business models do not account for the multitude of variables that they cannot control, but that impact their current and future business plans as much as the known variables.

Faith based plans are inherently more flexible and far more suitable to smaller organizations because faith, when harnessed in order to achieve a clear, unifying mission moves people, moves mountains, joins seas, put us on the moon and has taken Voyageur beyond our solar system.

Business + Thought leaders who possess a deep and abiding faith in their vision and their ethos become an inspiration and a galvanizing force for others.

Faith helps leaders find and then forge alliances with others who have the skills needed to map the various paths between what is now, and what can be.

Faith encourages organizations to embrace a broader array of options because what is impossible today, with the right team, becomes viable tomorrow.

Genuine faith-based business plans thrive on ambiguity. So the more unknowns, the better they fair. Their strategies and tactics are more flexible and are better able to find the path of least resistance for the business to thrive because agendas “compliment” rather than “compete” and the identified paths have fewer competitors.

These plans acknowledge the need to take leaps of faith: and that “to get to the others side you need to loose sight of the near shore”.

Hope and faith, when harnessed properly, conspire in unpredictable ways, to compliment your other “push / pull marketing strategies” and lead the proverbial “camel through the eye of the needle”. Faith based plans provide open-minded leaders with more options and unforeseen opportunities that “arrive” and are “arrived at” in ways and means that need to be believed before they are seen.

I wish you all an open mind, more faith and greater success in 2015.