All You Need Is A Good Idea!

ONCE IS RARELY ENOUGH

This weekend, I made my first ever loaf of bread. It was delicious, crusty, easy and leads me to a marketing point.

As background, I had first seen the recipe for this no-knead bread in 2006. Here is the original video  that Mark Bittman did in his New York Times column in November, 2006.

There have been many updates and versions on various RSS feeds over the years; each time I planned on trying it, but never did. The latest recipe was from November 2008. I came across it recently on LifeHacker. It seemed the easiest yet and I finally made a loaf.

So for all of you who do an ad that runs once, or make one new business phone call and give up, let me emphasize how important repetition is. A good idea will have more impact than an idea that is lackluster or boring, but still you have to keep it going. With the more than 5,000 exposures each of us has every day to some form of advertising message, you can’t hope that your one shot will do the selling job.

It is really tricky to have the perfect confluence of a prospect needing your service and seeing your marketing message at that exact moment. That’s why you need to build a distinctive campaign and to become a brand that will be remembered when the purchasing decision is to be made.

It literally took years from the time I first saw the no-knead recipe to the time I tried it. But it was a good idea, lodged somewhere in my memory, and when I was ready to act, I “bought” the product.

So don’t be discouraged if they don’t bang down your doors immediately the first time you launch your campaign. If it’s a good idea, it will work, later or sooner.

And let me know how your bread turns out.

Who Is this Guy?

I  am an advertising agency veteran. My entire career has been spent working in the creative departments of agencies large and small, creating local, national, consumer, collateral and business-to-business communications.

Currently, as the co-founder and creative director of Porte Advertising, a sixteen-year-old advertising agency in midtown New York, I continue to generate the kind of idea-driven advertising that has built clients’ businesses in the past.

Accounts I've worked on include Skippy Peanut Butter, the Stage Deli, Oxydol detergent, Trix cereal, Cocoa Puffs cereal, The Curaçao Tourist Board, Anacin, Texaco, Drambuie Liqueur, Beechnut Gum, Frigidaire Appliances, Burgie Beer, Total Cereal, Fruit Stripe Gum, Thrill Dishwashing Liquid, Hardee’s, Kangol Hats, Sharp Watches, the American Arbitration Association, Bistro le Steak, ClearVision Optical, Bounty Resorts, Hero Dog Food, Old Spice Deodorant, Rapid Park Garages, The William Kaufman Organization, Dallas BBQ restaurants, Tony’s Di Napoli restaurants, Prevent Blindness NY and Host Apparel.

Honors I've received include the prestigious CLIO and ANDY awards; my commercials are in The Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio of New York).

My creative ability and strategic sense, such as they are, have been honed by a career that has one basic objective: come up with the simple—but unexpected—idea that links the strategic core of the product to the consumer’s needs. I've learned that every client—no matter the size—has the same need for powerful creative marketing ideas. Smaller businesses, however, don’t always have the resources and large staff to develop these ideas. That is why I've written my book and created this blog.

I will try to take the mystery out of using marketing creativity to build your business by providing comments, critiques and countless suggestions to help you create better marketing communications. You will clearly see the path from generating the first fuzzy notion to the final idea, all presented in an informal, conversational manner.

It is not a lecture; it is a dialogue designed to get you involved.

If you agree that it is never the research, rarely the product and seldom the pricing that makes the real marketing difference, then All You Need Is A Good Idea! is the blog for you.