Creativity is Not Enough

The March 28, 2010 edition of the New York Times featured an article entitled, In a Test of Sales Savvy, Selling a Red Brick on YouTube, leading me to the following thoughts over a series of eight tweets:

As usual, Madison Avenue misses the point entirely. If you need to sell it, it may not be worth buying. You don’t need to sell the iPad. You just need to show or demo it (In other words, it sells itself). This is totally different than hard selling. You need to produce desire, not creative hot air.

In fact, Madison Avenue has had it wrong w/the desire production strategy for over thirty years, with their abstract brand messaging campaigns. Advertising is not the way to sell a product. Instead, focus your dollars on the product, service and/or experience — not its ads.

Advertising people need to focus their creative talents on helping product, service and/or experience manufacturers make more meaningful, engaging and desirable products, services and/or experiences.

Sure, you can sell a brick. But when the good vibes are gone (and so are you) the buyer is left with…a brick. That is not a sustainable long-term strategy. Madison Avenue may not be lacking creativity but it sure is lacking Design Strategy & some smack’em’w/some’sense Design Management.

Sadly, a campaign to discover the best brick salesperson is actually reinforcing all of the negative stereotypes associated w/consumer perceptions of sleazy advertising.