Nothing kills a good ad, email, TV spot, or whatever as quickly and as assuredly as the word “and.”
Sadly, the most common place to find the dreaded “and” is on the creative brief. It lives right there in the “What one key thing are we trying to communicate?” line. One key thing. And.
One.
And.
These two things have about as much to do with each other as apples and thermonuclear war.
If you’re trying to communicate with a prospective customer, no matter the medium, you can effectively communicate one thing. Not this and that. Just this. Do so and you’ve got a customer. Try to communicate more than one thing and all you’ve done is made a page turn, a channel change, a close button click.
“But Greg, we only have the money to run one ad. We have to put everything in it.” Sure. That’s perfectly understandable. Except that it’s stupid. The more you tell someone, the less he remembers.
Think about a great TV commercial. Got one? Great. Now deconstruct it and write down how many messages were communicated in that 30-second spot. Volkswagen Passats have remote start. Mini Coopers are fun to drive. Apple is the cure to IBM’s “Big Brother.” Three great spots, zero “ands.”
Simple messages. Amazing solutions.
Need more proof? Think about email marketing. The one job of the subject line is to get the prospect to open the email. The one job of the headline is to get the prospect to read the body copy. The one job of the body copy is to get the prospect to click the buy/read more/etc. button. That’s it. Try to do more than one thing at any point in that process and you’ve lost.
Every email should lead to a landing page. If you want to bore the prospect, bore him there.
Simple sells. And “And” is anything but simple.
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