Bet that got you attention! Most people who read this will feel that their objectives are completely different from those of commercial advertising. Wrong!  COKE and other successful companies spend billions of dollars every year on advertising, because it works.

 The techniques employed are based on additional millions spent testing campaign results - on a global scale. Techniques that work are perpetuated. Those that don’t are dropped like hot potatoes. The reason Coke advertises is to convince more people to spend their money drinking Coke. Is that so different from getting people to buy your ideas so they may enjoy healthier happier lives?

 Many problems faced by communicators stem from this rejection of advertising. Think about it. We employ exactly the same media and share many of the same objectives as commercial advertisers, yet most development workers consistently reject the proven techniques of advertising as inappropriate.

 I’m lazy. I hate the idea of reinventing the wheel for every new assignment. After all, people employ me to get results - not waste time. More time is wasted every year trying to reinvent the wheel than will ever be applied productively to direct communications.

 The trick is to be smart and use what has already been proven to work. Never be ashamed to borrow from other successful campaigns, listen to the people who are producing your materials, and never make changes unless you are absolutely certain they will improve communication. Those are real life keys to success. Use them!

 In the language of advertising the competition’s efforts are called “background noise”. That description is quite appropriate. Imagine a busy market place where every stall has a hawker touting his wares. The background noise is tremendous. That noise is made up of hundreds of people shouting as loudly as they can. All are trying to get their message across to the public. What the public hears is noise.

 Now imagine that you must also set up a stall in that market and sell your information. How can you make your message stand out from all the rest? Understand that and you will have a very good idea what the world of advertising is all about.

 When I use that analogy some bright person always perks up suggesting that a megaphone would cut through the noise and get the message across more efficiently. Bravo! At least someone was still awake. The problem is that if you employ a megaphone, and it works, by next week the market will be full of the same touts all yelling the same messages, all employing megaphones.

 The end result is a radical increase in the noise level, with little or no increase in the efficiency of communicating with the public. In fact, the louder we yell the less the public listens. That effect even has a name. It’s called target fatigue.

 I once attended a training session in marketing given by a retired COKE executive. His observations and antidotes were enlightening. One story was about a competition run by COKE among its employees and advertising agencies. They were looking for the single most effective way to promote COKE worldwide. The prize, a load of cash, was won by a minimum wage employee who working as a forklift driver.

 All the judges admitted that his idea was the single most impressive way to promote coke on a global basis. It was agreed that by using his single sign every person in the world would, at one time or another, see the COKE logo almost daily. The brilliance was that one sign would be seen by the whole world!

 The problem was that to paint that sign would require 57.4 million liters of red paint, a load of man-years of work painting it, and endless space shuttle flights to deliver the paint to the moon. Then again having the moon painted as a COKE logo would have been effective. 

 The key point is that try as we will we never seem to find a new method of reaching our target audience. Every single idea has been tried before: usually by our old friend the soft drink manufacturer. So relax and use the techniques they have so kindly pioneered and tested for you.