การหาไอเดียสินค้าเพื่อมาเขียนโฆษณา (How to find ideas to write for a product)

An ad-writer, to have a chance at success, must gain full information on his subject. The library of an ad agency should have books on every line that calls for research. A painstaking advertising man will often read for weeks on some problem which comes up. Perhaps in many volumes he will find few facts to use. But some one fact may be the keystone of success.

… Before advertising a food product, 130 men were employed for weeks to interview all classes of consumers. On another line, letters were sent to 12,000 physicians. Questionnaires are often mailed to tens of thousands of men and women to get the viewpoint of consumers. A $25,000-a-year man, before advertising outfits for acetylene gas, spent weeks in going from farm to farm.

… Competition is measured up. Every advertiser of a similar product is written for his literature and claims. Thus we start with exact information on all that our rivals are doing.

… The ad seems so simple, and it must be simple to appeal to simple people. But back of that ad may lie reams of data, volumes of information, months of research. So this is
no lazy mans field.

You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework. I have always found this extremely tedious, but there is no substitute for it.

First, study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it.

Your next chore is to find out what kind of advertising your competitors have been doing for similar products, and with what success. This will give you your bearings.

Now come research among consumers. Find out how they think about your kind of product, what language they use when they discuss the subject, what attributes are important to them, and what promise would be most likely to make them buy your brand.

If you cannot afford the services of professionals to do this research, do it yourself Informal conversation with half-a-dozen housewives can sometimes help a copywriter more than formal surveys in which he does not participate.

Study the client’s direct mail advertising in addition to his space advertising. Read his booklets, leaflets, circulars, sales letters, broadsides, and brochures. Here you will find long copy and therefore lots of ideas to choose from. Perhaps in small print in some old booklet you will find an idea that can be modernized and used right now.

Study the product itself and the package and everything printed on the package and any literature enclosed inside the package. Perhaps you will find a hook on which to hang a campaign. Some products are so similar to competitive products that you have to sell the beauty or the convenience of the package.

Talk with sales people who are selling the product or service. Talk with people who use the product. Take notes on what they say. If note taking causes them to talk less freely, you can wait until you are alone and then write down everything you can remember. The basic theme of an effective campaign came from a salesman who had found that this this theme was a good sales getter.

… There are three ways you can use ideas you see in other ads, as follows:

1. Copy the idea as it is.
2. Improve the idea.
3. Adapt the idea in a new and different form.

You may say at this point: “But I don’t want to copy anybody else’s ideas. I want to invent my own ideas. I want to be an original thinker. Original thinkers never copy.”

There are three answers to that:

1. Go ahead and originate all you want. That is part of your job. However, unless you also grab good ideas from whatever source, you will be handicapped in your battle with competitors. Because competitors will grab your good ideas as fast as they appear.

2. Your client is not paying you to be solely original thinker. He is paying you to make money for him --- to help keep his factory going.

3. It is not true that original thinker never copy good ideas. Shakespeare copied from old ballads the ideas for many of his plays. Benjamin Franklin not only copied many ideas but boast about it in his autobiography.