Attention grabbers: make sure there’s a payoff

The other day, I was reading through the employment ads in The Economist, which I often do. If you’ve never seen them before, they’re up front, generally quarter or half page B&W ads. Serious stuff, and wildly interesting professional jobs - often in far a way places (Head of the Railroad Authority in Swaziland), and often do-gooder-ish (The Blaggery Foundation is dedicated to eradicating world hunger….). And the ads are typically in elegant, stiff-upper-British prose -no more so than an ad I saw last year for the Secretary to the Queen. (Yes, that Queen.)

In any event, the one that caught my eye the other day was headed "abcdefg".

Beneath that trickle of alphabet was the word: Economist.

I read the ad because a) I always read The Economist ads when I have nothing better to do; and b) my husband is an Economist, and if flashed through my mind that he might actually be willing to come out of semi-retirement from a career as a solo consultant to take a job in an interesting place for a while. (That was, of course, just a flash, as I know it will never happen.)

The job was for a bank in Switzerland, and I read it, looking to see just what an "abcdefg" economist was or to see how they were going to tie "abcdefg" into the job or what they were looking for in an applicant.

Alas, I never found it.

No, "We’re looking for an economist who knows the alphabet…" Or "our bank goes beyond the ABC’s of banking…."

Nothing to tie what was a somewhat attention grabbing header to the body of the text.

Note to copywriter: if you’re going to use "abcdefg" in the headline, there has to be some payoff.

I hate when that happens, yet you see it all the time.

What do wild horses running through the surf have to do with database management tools? You can make the connection for me ("wild horses can’t stop us from managing your data"), or you can leave me up to my own imagination. ("Your tools leave hoof marks and piles of manure on the beach.") But, puh-leeze. There really should be a connection between your headline and your illustrations and what it is you’re trying to convey. When there’s a disconnect, it always leaves me wondering about what else it is you’re not so clear on.

Most ads/websites/brochures, of course, do have a pretty straightforward connection between headers and/or illustrations and the text/theme of the piece.Just thumbing through The Economist shows me that:

Cartier ad: picture of Cartier watch. Oh, I get it. A watch.

Goldman Sachs ad, showing spools of thread and needles: ‘With more choice it’s easier to tailor your portfolio." Needle. Thread. Portfolio. I get it - although they could have done a slightly better job of, ahem, threading their theme through the text on Asset Allocation Portfolios. Just a word or two, nothing too cute.

Salesforce.com. Word "software" in the red, diagonally slashed "verboten" circle. Ah, software as a service. I get it - although, it’s really not "no software", it’s "no software to worry about. But I’ll forgive them.  It’s clever. It’s catchy. It grabs my attention.

But will I forgive them for the rest of this ad?

I wish I could find the rest of it to show, but I couldn’t, so I’ll you’ll just have to trust 1,000 words (metaphorically speaking - I’ll use a lot fewer) to explain one picture.

The top of the ad shows a yellow Post-it note, with a Venn diagram sketched on it. In one of the circles, it says "Salesforce Apps," in the other it says "Google Apps", and there’s an arrow pointing to the intersection that has the words "pinch me" written under it. Very nice, I tell myself. A clever way to illustrate that Salesforce is in league with Google, and they’ve integrated a nice set of business apps. Lookout, Redmond! But when I read through the text, there’s nary a mention of the Google-Salesforce integration. Just some info on what software-as-a-service is. If ever there were an opportunity to mention that Salesforce CRM/SFA’s apps are now combined with Google’s office apps, this would be it. But there’s nothing. Maybe everyone in the world - or at least everyone who reads The Economist - knows what Salesforce.com is and does. Maybe everyone in the world - or at least everyone who reads The Economist - knows that Google is more than a search engine. But a couple of words that explain the benefits of their getting together would have made more sense than just focusing on the benefits of SaaS.

Kudos to any advertiser who grabs my attention with a catchy headline and/or arresting image.

I’m one of those rare souls who’ll actually go read the full ad once you’ve grabbed me.

At least you could make sure there was some pay-off for me, rather than leave me scratching my head and asking, "What?"

 

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