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Who are we talking to?” is a question asked in the formulation of literally every ad campaign under the sun –The emphasis is always on the first word.

It’s about targeting. However, the offence is forgetting about the second bit. The bit about talking to.

Traditionally, of course, advertising has “talked at.” That’s supposedly changed in recent years. But today’s marketing jargon about conducting a dialogue with the consumer is mostly just that, Jargon.

Many marketers are trying to personalize their brands, pretending to be like real people and yet not quite making it. It’s like faking sincerity. Glib. Unless you’re real, and real careful, you end up with depersonalized personalization.

Talking to demographic is actually not the same as addressing one person directly. It’s the marketing equivalent of “I hear you” rather than “I am listening to you”.

What’s required is a fundamental change. It has been described as a shift in emphasis from the era of “experts,” to the era of the storyteller.

In communication terms, the human mind has evolved to absorb stories. Our genes have evolved specialized language modules in our brains, and stories inform our shared cultural memory.

If you know who it is that you want to empathies with your brand, then refocus away from telling them what to do and instead focus on what they really need and want.

And what people really want from your brand’s advertising is engagement. They want dreams, memories, passion, and laughter. They want nourishing stories.

Not sales spiels.
Not speeches.
Not lectures.
Not product briefings.

Get used to the idea that no one is interested in learning about product features through advertising, anymore.

There are too many peddlers these days, a wise client once said to me, too many marketers have forgotten their roles.

Marketers should be telling stories. Selling intangibles. That’s how life insurance is sold, with stories – otherwise you’re just offering a bit of colored paper and a cheque when you die.

“Listen as I tell my tale with shameless sincerity,” is how the master Italian filmmaker, Federico Fellini, defined the role.

He said: “Our duty as storytellers is to walk people to the station …” Do this appealingly, and they’ll board your train.

Neil French, creative director of O&M Worldwide, and pioneer of high creativity for the Asian world, knows a thing or two about shameless sincerity.

What follows is an enlightening fireside chat about how to talk to people once you decide “who you’re talking to.”

To me, writing an ad is talking on paper. It’s not really writing at all. It’s just chat. And I know that given a juicy subject, I can hold an audience with an anecdote for just so long – and not a second longer.

The Art of the chat. The art is all about knowing your audience. The comatose drunk is not actually an audience since, to him, my glittering oratory is as the buzzing of a live of wasps.

The nice cop is not an audience as he’s just glad I’m not blowing a feather-on-a curly-thing at him, or singing “My Way.” The audience was the group that seemed spellbound, half a bottle ago, and whom I’ve lost somewhere along the way.

Where did they go? And Why? Well, “Where” Is easy. “Anywhere out of earshot of this pillock” about covers it. But why? I think, again, I know.

I lost them the moment I stopped talking one-on-one, and started pontificating to “the audience.”

It’s why most political speeches, and most sermons, are so bloody boring. The speaker has a message for everyone, and insists on speaking to everyone.

Whereas the trick is to talk to one person in a room, in the knowledge that many others will also think you’re speaking only to them, personally and intimately.

It is widely acknowledged that when Adolf Hitler ranted at the massive Nuremberg rallies, every member of his audience felt he, personally, was being asked to come to the aid of the Fuhrer.

When Churchill spoke on the radio of “fighting on the beaches”, millions of men and women saw themselves as standing nest to Winston on the shingle, staring defiantly out to sea.

Jack Kennedy was talking to the young, the idealistic, the generation that saw him as a younger, sexier version of Dad, when he exhorted them to ask, “What you can do for your country.” You – singular.

And that’s how great ads work. When you read them you feel that this was aimed directly at you. In your heart you know that thousands like you are feeling the same, but that doesn’t spoil it. In a way, it enhances it: you’re a member of a select club.

When you see a long-copy ad, you know that it’s aimed at you, because you’re an avid reader.

So you read it – until, like the slurring old sod, it bores you. When you see a witty visual joke, you feel closer to the brand – largely because you know that so many people won’t “get it.” That’s how yoof-marketing works.

And one day, when it dawns on the brand-owners that the grey-dollar is more numerous and more cynical than any other, that’s how they’ll have to talk to the geezers.

The splendid and indispensable thing that we all have at our disposal, as writers and producers of advertising, is a choice of medium.

Let me lumber you with another of my hobbyhorses: I think all advertising is, to some extent, crass and rude. Let us count the ways:”

The bumph that clogs up your letterbox every day. An irritating pile of paper and a waste of perfectly good trees.

You have to shuffle through it all to get at the bills and the letter from Auntie Maisie. And Most irritating of all are the pieces disguised as bills or letters from Auntie M.

“Spam” in your email. We won’t even deign to discuss.

Television ads. Imagine for a moment that you and your family are watching … I don’t know … Formula One racing, for example.

Just as Eddie Irvine has stuffed his Jag into the old tires again, and shuey is about to carve bits off Coulthard, into your living-loom leaps a man in a suit who stands in front of the screen and tries to sell you a car!

And he’s there legally, and he won’t go away. That is what we do for a living. Personally, I will never, ever buy a Honda-anything, as long as I live, on account of their ill-placed, ill-timed, patronizing Formula One ads. But that’s the point. People take our rudeness personally.

Radio, I suppose, is less rude, as nobody actively listens to radio anyway: and, in any case, the ads are generally so bad they’re impossible to take any note of at all.

If you’re one of the perpetrators of radio ads, please note that a funny voice is not an idea, and a funny voice shouting is even less of one.

Try saying something interesting. But then, you probably don’t know anything interesting.

See? You can insult a radio-ad writer so easily, in the same way that they take such pains to insult your own intelligence. They won’t notice you, any more than you’d notice them.)

Print Media. Magazines, for instance. I’ve never actually been annoyed by magazine ads, except for the mass of them at the beginning of GQ.

They’re annoying merely because they’re all the same, can’t possibly work, and account for half of the weight of the mag.

Nevertheless, they’re not what I bought the thing for, and thus they’re rude for being there at all. On the other hand, they pay most of the cost of the mag, so I’ll put up with them.

Newspapers. Now, I have to admit to being a huge fan of newspapers. With the exception of some appallingly vast tomes in the US, there’s never enough advertising to be an annoyance.

And the best newspaper ads are witty and current, and I’m flattered if someone addresses me as such.

So there it is. Advertising that appears to be talking solely to one individual is a lot less rude than the “Ere, you lot! Listen to this!” school of communication.

Now, let’s go into that in some depth.
Hello.
Hello!
Why are you dribbling on my table? And who is this nice man in blue?

Keywords: advertising, brand, marketers, ad, ads, long-copy ad, yoof-marketing, television ads, radio, print media, radio ads, radio-ad writer, magazine ads,

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