Every year around this time, millions of American’s gather ’round for the big game. It’s an American past time and tradition. The Super Bowl is America’s World Cup. Everyone loves Super Bowl ads as much as they love the game itself.
Here is some cool information and notable ads from the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl typically has over 90 million viewers.

In 2007, a 30 second spot cost $2.6 million.

The first famous Super Bowl ad featured Joe Namath for Noxema in 1973.

Super Bowl ’76 brought us this great Xeorx ad.

In 1983, Apple ran it’s most renowned Super Bowl ad, the Macintosh 1984.
In 1993, Micheal Jordan and Larry Bird played a game of HORSE for a Big Mac and fries.

One of the most famous Super Bowl ad campaigns has been the “I’m Going to Disney World!” ads for the past 20 years.

1995 marked the year of Bud. Wei. Ser.

Monster.com had this funny ad in the 1999 Super Bowl.

And the best ads from Super Bowl 2007.

For more info on Super Bowl ads check out Super Bowl-Ads.com, they even have a preview of this years ads!

The 5-Step POWER Copywriting Method

When I was asked to teach a copywriting class for a special program at The Ohio State University, I discovered that teaching writing is far more difficult than the writing itself. Many of the things I did naturally from experience or instinct were a complete mystery to my students.So, in order to make the copywriting process a logical and painless operation, I devised a simple method for writing ad copy for novice writers. I called it POWER Copywriting, an acronym for the five steps in the copywriting process: Prepare, Organize, Write, Edit, and Review.

This represents years of copywriting experience boiled down to the basics. I won’t promise that this will help you create a masterpiece of copywriting brilliance. But it can help guide you toward better and more effective sales writing.

Step 1: PREPARE

Good ad copy begins with good information. And the best way to gather the information you need is with a thorough Q&A. Here are some basic questions that will help you prepare for just about any ad writing project.

Don’t try to wordsmith at this point. Just collect as much information as you can. Feel free to add additional information as needed. (See the more complete questionnaire I use here).

• Description. Briefly, what is the product or service you are selling?
• Purpose. What does this product or service do for the customer? How does it work?
• Price. What is the suggested cost? What are you asking for it?
• Features. What are the most important facts and specifications about this product or service?
• Benefits. What do the features mean for the customer? What problems are solved? What needs are filled? Of all the benefits, which is the most important?
• Competition. From the customer’s point of view, why is this product or service better than what the competition is offering?
• Your Business. Do you have a special history, unique owner, awards?
• Guarantee. How strongly do you believe in the product or service? How will you back up your belief? 30 days free trial? Money back guarantee?
• Prospect. Who do you visualize as the ideal buyer? Male or female? Income? Job title? Interests? Concerns? Fears?
• Objections. Why would someone NOT want this product?
• Testimonials & Endorsements. Letters from happy users? Media coverage? Celebrity endorsements?
• Objective. What do you want prospects to do when they see this ad? Ask for more information? Buy immediately? Come to your Web site? Request a demo?
• Offer. What is the deal you are offering to prospects? Lower price for a limited time? Free information? Gift with an immediate order?
• Deadline. When does the offer expire?
• Required Copy Points. What information or legal copy must be included?
• Taboos. What can never be said or promised?
• Method of Payment. Credit card? PayPal? Installment Billing?
• Method of Ordering. How should a buyer place an order? Phone? E-mail? Web form?

Step 2: ORGANIZE

After you’ve answered these questions, you next need to organize your information. This is simply a matter of writing the essential points concisely. These are still just notes for reference, but your copy is now starting to take shape.

Don’t take shortcuts. The best selling ideas come from this research and note taking. And I’ve found that writing and rewriting notes is a great way to focus the mind and shape ideas.

Here are the essential items you will need to write your copy:

• Description
• Purpose
• Price
• Features
• Benefits / Prime Benefit
• Guarantee
• Prospect
• Objective
• Offer
• Deadline
• Method of Payment
• Method of Ordering

You’ll notice that this list doesn’t include everything from the first step. Some of the information you collect in Step 1 is for background only. The items in Step 2 are those most likely to be used directly in your copy.

Step 3: WRITE

Now that you’ve collected and organized your information, it’s time to start writing your copy.

Write your headline.

1. Review your Prime Benefit, Offer, Deadline, Price, Prospect, Method of Ordering, Description, and Guarantee.
2. Choose the information you want to emphasize.
3. Select a basic headline type that best conveys your information.* See below.
4. Write several headlines and choose the best.

* 7 Simple Headlines that Work

Direct—A direct headline comes right out and states your main idea. (”7 step online business plan generates cash instantly”)

News—People are interested by news. Words such as “new,” “introducing,” “announcing,” “now,” and “at last” indicate something newsworthy. (”Now program your VCR by simply speaking to the revolutionary VCR Voice Programmer”)

How-To—This headline promises a solution to a problem or information of interest. (”How to stop smoking in 30 days”)

Question—When related to a benefit or the reader’s concerns, the question headline is a powerful attention grabber. (”How do I know which mutual fund is right for me?”)

Command—A command can kick your headline into high gear and start selling immediately. (”Call today and reserve your Star Trek collectible”)

Information—People make buying decisions with the information you provide. By educating people, you gain their attention and trust. (”Two things you won’t get on your average tread mill”)

Testimonial—Nothing is more convincing than a customer endorsement. (”This diet program worked for me. It can work for you, too!”)

Write your subheads.

1. Review your Description, Benefits, Features, Offer, Deadline, Guarantee, etc.
2. Choose the information that best expands on your headline.
3. Write your subheads in order of importance. Use the active voice and make every subhead a benefit statement.

Write your body copy.

Expand on each subhead. List features. Explain each benefit. It may seem that this is the hardest part since the body copy will probably require the most number of words. However, body copy is relatively easy to write once you have your headlines and subheads.

Most good copywriters spend from 50 percent to 80 percent of their time on headlines. If your reader takes the time to read body copy, they’re already interested in what you’re selling. All you need to do is provide clear details and support your headlines and subheads. No need to get fancy.

Write your call to action.

1. Review your Method of Ordering, Offer, Price, Deadline, and Guarantee.
2. Write your call to action including all the above information that applies. Use the active voice and be straightforward and clear. (“Try the all-new Gizmotron 5000 for 30 days risk free. Your satisfaction is guaranteed or your money back. Order within the next 10 days and get 3 bonus Gizmo attachments FREE! Click here to place your order now!”)
3. Look at similar ads to see how other writers have structured the call to action.

Step 4: EDIT

For some, editing is the hardest part of copywriting. But it’s essential to get the clean, crisp results you’re looking for. You must be ruthless. Don’t fall in love with your own writing. Every word must add to the message. If anything is unclear or wordy, cut it out. Long copy is fine. Just make sure that every word is pulling its own weight.

As you review your work, ask yourself a few questions:

• Does my headline get attention, select an audience, deliver a complete message, and draw the reader into the body copy?
• Does my headline exploit human motivators such as fear, exclusivity, guilt, greed, or envy?
• Is my headline clear and to the point? Does it relate to the product or service?
• Do my subheads logically expand on the headline in order of importance?
• Is my body copy full of facts or empty clichés?
• Do I ask for the order? Have I made it clear what I want the reader to do?

Step 5: REVIEW

Put your copy aside for a few days and read it later when you’re fresh. Try these techniques to review your ad.

• Use the “5 Second Test.” Show the ad to a few objective people. If they don’t understand it at a glance — in about 5 seconds — it isn’t going to work. Don’t play with body copy. Revise the big things. Make your headline more clear and direct. Clarify your offer. Give direct ordering instructions.
• List all the negatives. What’s wrong with the headline? The call to action? The tone? Be brutal and honest. Don’t get attached to particular pet words or phrases. This isn’t art, after all. It’s business. So if something needs to be changed, change it.
• Consider one other way to write the ad. Even if you have a successful formula, there are always other approaches that will work. If you keep an open mind, you just might find a better way. Or you may discover improvements you can incorporate.
• Try the “Stop or Go Test.” You should generally speak in the second person, using words such as “you” and “your.” And you should avoid speaking about yourself too much, with words such as “I,” “we,” and “our.” So, with a green pen, circle all words referring to your reader. Then, with a red pen, circle all words referring to you. If you see a lot of green, your copy is a go. If you see a lot of red, stop and edit.

This post is by Dean Reick

Ad Age just ran an article by Danny Sullivan on Yahoo! – Should Yahoo! cede search? He says no and I agree. Yahoo! is one of the oldest search vehicles around, has great brand awareness, a loyal following and is still well known for its search engine and its directory. We have been working with Yahoo! since 1997 when it was primarily a directory. Through the years Yahoo! has grown in its services and offerings and has kept up (and often led) changes in the search marketing field.
I think we can all learn from and benefit from Google – who is consistently at the forefront of generating ideas on how to do things better, smarter and more integrated. Yahoo! teaches us how to be different. They were one of the first to embrace PPC, shopping search, sponsored search and they were the first directory. They explore different ways to market to their users and provide a better user experience. They are strong in their own right and have a loyal following of users looking for certain types of information.

Yahoo! gives Google a run for their money. I would be sorry to lose them as I feel they push Google to get better and to give the user a better experience and better results. In so doing, they get better and provide new and useful tools to their users.

I personally use Yahoo and Google for different things and often compare the results to find what I am looking for. So, I say Keep it up, Yahoo! and thanks, Danny, for the thought-provoking column.

Marie Digby is a young singer songwriter who is best know for her cover of Rihanna’s Umbrella which she posted on youtube

this video appears to be shot in her living room with her voice, her guitar, and a camera. The video took off. It has been viewed 4.5 million times in roughly a year. Her version has been played on numerous radio stations across the country and was the featured song for the 3rd season premier of “The Hills” on MTV. Sounds like a pretty amazing way for a 24 year old musician to get discovered right? Well, sort of. There is backlash to the success of Marie Digby through youtube because she was singed by Hollywood Records when she made this video (and others below the post). People believe this was a grassroots marketing plan by Hollywood Records to create an online buzz. Maire Digby chimed back that she never lied about being signed to the record label and made the videos due to lack of support from Hollywood Records (this has been talked about in the industry for months but her talent has created viral magic and I feel the need to share it to a few more people).
Either way, Marie Digby or Hollywood Records has fully tapped into the power of youtube. This was brilliant marketing in a virtually free venue. One could only begin to hope that an unknown artist could get 4.5 million people to watch their video, let alone search it out (not to mention the countless other covers she has done that are on youtube). YouTube has helped put this girl on the map. Marie Digby’s first album is due to hit stores in April and is called “Unfold.”

Until then enjoy some of her great covers courtesy of youtube.

Since I’m working on Ad groups today; I though it would be nice to share a little insight into this complicated/not-so-complicated world of SEM Ad groups. What is an Ad Group? In Google Adwords text and image search keywords are arranged by up to 25 campaigns, 100 ad groups per campaign, then hundreds or thousands of keywords.

Ad group names should express the idea of a group of keywords a user maybe searching for. An idea is generally expressed in the form of a set of nouns that make up key phrases. An idea key phrase is when a set of keywords can be accurately encompass a variety of similar keywords. In this case the term keywords would be inside that key idea to target industry jargon relating to a key phrase. Now in case your completely confused I’ll use a simple analogy to explain. Pretend that I am a librarian and need to arrange lots of books (or keywords) and all the books need to be in categories like fiction or history (this would be my campaigns). Now all of the books in their categories also need to be alphabetized to be filed properly and easy for users to find (this would be the ad groups).

Bottom line is be granular in your online sem campaigns by breaking things up logically into groups and have your copywriters make ads that match closely to keywords in each group. If you do it properly it is a lot of work, but an unstoppable super machine for attracting and targeting customers. In the end it will require less maintenance than a lazy campaign. So this is a perfect job for all of you type A’s who love to be super organized with sensible labels on everything!

So what about overlap? You can add the same keywords or phrases into different ad groups or campaigns (which is nice since different groups have different text ads). On the other hand if you sell eight different products that are all relevant to the same keywords, you can’t have eight of your ads showing up on the same page of the search results. It’s called double serving, and is against AdWords terms of service. So, in the case of overlap (same keywords in different ad groups/campaigns) AdWords will choose to show a single ad from your account corresponding to only one of the keywords or phrases. This can cause problems when you want to lower specific campaigns daily spending (and then another campaign still runs it at a higher price). Which is why it’s not an exact science and is generally best avoided if you want to be in control of your advertising (because you never know which ad would be showing up). If you already made this mistake (on a large scale especially) best advice is — pause multiple campaigns until you can determine what is working the best. In short– keep your campaigns clean.

Next step to ad groups? Determining which text/image ad works best with your newly defined keywords. Targeting your copy to closely relate to those ad groups will ensure better click through rates, but that is for another blog post and another day at Risdall.

Every Week Lycos compiles a list of the top 50 search terms of the week, they are filtered in a specific way in that some terms such as countries, pornography, automated or mechanized queries, and categorical terms such as weather, news, and music, are not included on the list.

1. Poker

2. Golf

3. Fashion

4. Disney

5. YouTube

6. Britney Spears

7. Clay Aiken

8. South Beach Diet

9. Paris Hilton

10. Apple

Tragically, number 11 was Heath Ledger. (It was the first time he had made the top 15)

Twitter Is an innovative blogging/networking type social interface that poses the question “what are you doing?” Similar to facebook’s profile header (which can also be directly connected to your twitter posts). You can email, im, or text message your status and it will automatically post it both to the twitter site and to your friends.

As those of you who’ve been in the business a while know all too well, creative people CONSTANTLY complain about two things:
1. Not enough time to come up with a brilliant idea.
and 2. Not enough money to execute that idea properly.

My experience has shown, however, that 85% of the time, the first ideas a creative team comes up with are the best. The rest of the concepting time usually just validates how good the original ideas are. Why is this true? Because the first solutions are THE SIMPLEST. They are the most direct way to get from point A to point B. And in today’s world where we are bombarded by more print, TV, online and viral messages than ever before, SIMPLICITY SELLS.
Take look at these two TV spots for Apple. The entire campaign is just two guys against a white seamless…and each spot makes one single point. Memorably. The only prop in the first ad is a Kleenex! Pretty darn inexpensive.

The second spot is a little more elaborate, adding a third actor and another prop: a pair of sunglasses.
(They don’t even look like RayBans..a further cost saving.)

The entire campaign shows that you don’t need a lot of production dollars to make an impact, sell product and, yes, even win some creative awards!

This next spot, however, is the ultimate in simplicity. It has NO on-camera talent, not even a voice-over. It doesn’t even show the product! And my jaw dropped when I saw it over the weekend.
It’s unbelievably good!! Take a look.

No elaborate production. Just a writer that sat down and stubbornly and persistently worked a bunch of words until a truly brilliant piece of advertising emerged.

So the next time you get a project with a tight timeline and a tighter budget, I hope you’ll remember how powerful a simple, uncomplicated idea can be. Go to it!

Len

nike

The graphic designer credited with creating Nike’s famous Swoosh logo was a young design student with limited experience. The story shows that you don’t necessarily need to have years of design experience to come up with an enduring logo.

As a graphic design student, you might sometimes feel that your hard work won’t create a major global impact. Many graphic design courses use the Nike Swoosh as an example of an effective, well-known, corporate icon. In fact, the Swoosh was created by Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student at Portland State University.