Here’s a great little self-check test you can use to measure the strength of an ad, or any output that marries words and image. I call it the See N’ Say test and I got schooled on it at a very early age by my first official Creative Director from hell.  (He could have made his point without folding the ad sketch idea I had given into a paper airplane, throwing it across the room, and making a loud explosion noise when it hit the window blinds.)

Here’s a great little self-check test you can use to measure the strength of an ad, or any output that marries words and image. I call it the See N’ Say test and I got schooled on it at a very early age by my first official Creative Director from hell.  (He could have made his point without folding the ad sketch idea I had given into a paper airplane, throwing it across the room, and making a loud explosion noise when it hit the window blinds.)
 

 

 

 

 
Here’s what you do. Take any of your ads and see if the headline and visual essentially repeat each other.  When they do, that’s what I call a See N’ Say ad.  Here are a couple of examples. Imagine one of the many car repair shops in your area finds out it has earned a #1 in customer satisfaction rating according to some survey or another. Brimming with pride, they take out an ad to promote this fact. The visual is a service technician holding up his finger in the familiar “we’re number one” pose, and the headline is … wait for it … “#1 in Customer Satisfaction.” Or something to that effect. You get the idea.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Or, in a bizarre twist of irony, from straight out of the 70s Way Back machine, here’s a kind of See N’ Say, See N Say ad I found on the web when pulling together notes for this post. Both ads are okay. You could even say it’s a matter of personal taste, and to my taste both are rather Blah. Missed opportunities. I have certainly come up with my share of  ads like these, and in the process of brainstorming still do; but now, when I catch  myself stumbling toward a See N” Say idea, I  remember to pull back and rethink the execution.
 
I look at the visual. What is it saying that the words don’t have to say? What is it freeing up the writer to say instead? Or maybe you have a killer headline. How can your designers or art directors complement and deepen it visually rather than illustrate it?
 
Often times, beginning writers and art directors will stumble over each other on these points. One works in words, the other in visuals, and in trying to come up with solutions for the same benefit, naturally they might end up with ideas which, when put together, are redundant.
 
The trick is to move past this first round of thinking, to push further and ask, “Is the headline doing more than saying what the visual shows?” and vice versa. Is the visual so strong it doesn’t even need the support of a headline?
 
With See N’ Say ads not only are companies running creative that is typically not very compelling, some agency somewhere produced it, which doesn’t do much to fatten the agency’s portfolio with distinctive work.

Contact me to learn more about how MarketMatch uses proven creative strategies to bring great work to life for credit unions and community banks across the country.

 

 

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