Don’t Try To Be Creative Or Original
July 3rd, 2011 
Posted in Approaching, Business Monitoring and Reporting, Case Studies, General, Making Sale, Offline Marketing, PresentingDon’t Try To Be
Creative Or Original
Pretty ads don’t sell products. The most appealing (to look at) and artistic
ads seldom make people buy the products they are supposed to be selling. The
ads that win awards for the advertising agencies who create them rarely win sales
awards for the clients!
During a survey of ads that won a “Clio” award (the advertising industry’s
highest recognition), it was found that 4 of the award-winning agencies lost their
clients’ business, another client refused to run his ad, and of 80 TV classics
picked by Clio, 36 of the businesses involved had either sacked the agency or had
gone broke. Not a real good record, is it?
As the owner of one of the biggest direct response ad agencies once said to a
client . . . “Do you want creativity and originality? Or do you want to see the
darned sales graph going up? Because you sure as heck ain’t going to get them
both!”
I guess the point I am making is don’t be creative for the sake of being
creative. Finding a new twist for a proven sales approach is fine, but only as long
as it works better than the previous one.
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