Kranz On Copy: Insights and answers on copywriting and writing copy

While thumbing the June 2005 Better Homes and Gardens this morning, two ads struck me for their dramatically different approaches to the consumer.

The first is a full-page, 4-color ad for the Clorox BathWand. Almost the entire page is given to a monochromatic photo of an antiquated museum display case with the label, "Tools of Ancient Man." The case shows a variety of stone-age implements -- and a dirty, modern-day sponge. (It took me awhile to notice the sponge in the case and, therefore, to get "the joke.") A tiny image of the BathWand and its packaging occupies the lower right-hand corner with an accompanying tagline, "The evolution of clean." And that's it.

Maybe this ad will defy my expectations and become a roaring success, but I doubt it. The conceptual leap this ad requires is too strenuous for most people to make at first glance: Museum case means old-fashioned; sponge is in case; sponge is old-fashioned; BathWand is the modern alternative. After the leap is made, the payoff is limp. The Clorox BathWand is the evolution of clean? So what? What the hell does that mean for me?

Then there's the ad for the Reynolds Wrap Release Non-Stick aluminum foil. The foil itself occupies most of the picture frame. On it, a variety of grilled vegetables and meats form the words, "Grilled foods won't stick." The last "c" and "k" are merely grease outlines of food that has obviously been removed with ease. The remaining copy: "Prevent sticking. Line your grill with Release Non-Stick Foil." Beneath this is a $0.50 coupon.

I suspect the Reynolds ad will do very well; the coupon, in addition to being a spur to action, will provide a very accurate assessment of its success. The "grilled letters" concept demonstrates the key benefit -- non-stickiness -- in a flash: no heavy thinking required. (And the designer was smart enough to use green and red foods -- a color combination that pops from the page.) The limited copy reinforces the benefit unambiguously.

I think the superiority of the Reynolds ad to the Clorox ad is too obvious to belabor. What really interests me is the thinking behind the ads, the process that led two consumer product promotions in completely different directions.

If I were to "reverse engineer" these ads in my imagination, I would suspect the Clorox ad was born from its branding. (Well duh, right?) After loads of focus group activity and other research, the brand people decided to make the BathWand distinctive by positioning it as the "evolution of clean." In turn, they charged the creative team with the job of articulating that brand message.

So the creative team focused on "evolution," a difficult idea to illustrate, as the basis for their concepts. Of these, the "museum case" must have seemed the strongest. Since the charter was to "articulate the brand," that's the way the concepts were assessed. No one noticed, or cared to notice, that the resulting work has absolutely nothing meaningful to say to potential customers.

The Reynolds folk began at a different starting point -- the benefit. The creative team must have been told to come up with something that vividly illustrates non-stickiness. Perhaps the "grilled food words" did the best job of communicating the benefit quickly. (While the idea is clever, it's not at all clever for cleverness' sake alone.)

My long-winded point? You end where you begin. The Clorox and Reynolds ads are dramatically different, and will generate different results, because they started with dramatically different objectives: articulating a nebulous "brand" concept versus communicating a benefit.

Computer programmers have a saying, "Garbage in, garbage out." Same is true in advertising. Be careful what you wish for...