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Book Review: About Face: The Secrets of Emotionally Effective Advertising by Dan Hill

I am an avid reader of design and advertising books. As geeky as it sounds, I read those types of books as my pleasure reading. I always want to know more about how to excel at my craft.

Every so often there comes along a book that completely changes the way that I think about advertising and marketing and About Face is one of them.

Dan goes into great detail about how we truly react to advertising and it’s not in the cognitive areas in the brain. In fact, the cognitive area (where language resides) may actually lie to us to protect our self-image…you know the people who say they watch public television to sound smart, but they really can’t stand it?

There is a part of our brains that has no language but controls our emotions. Dan and his team have found a way to learn what we’re really thinking about ads by examining our facial expressions. We all do it. There are micro-expressions that last a fraction of a second that show our true feelings about what we are viewing. An example that Dan uses in the book helped lead to the Dove “Real Beauty” commercials, that showed women of varying shapes celebrated by the skin care company. When the original video was shown to the target market, they scowled at the skinny models in their undies. “I don’t look like that, so this product can’t be for me” they thought and their expressions belied those sentiments.

Through his research, Dan Hill and his team can tell us which type of advertising resonates most with people, how the same types of advertising win awards, and just how easily influenced we can be by our environment. The photo below is a passage about how changing the music in a wine store influences our purchases and how brands can engage senses other than sight to influence our behavior. Have you noticed how Hilton Hotels offer freshly-baked cookies when you check in? There’s a science to that.

Without getting too long-winded, this is a must-have reference for anyone who is serious about making advertising that motivates and memorized.

Check it out and I’d love to hear your thoughts about the book and what Dan has to say. Get the Kindle version:

App Review: IFTTT

So I am spending Saturday watching SNL and browsing the App Store when I came across the IFTTT app. It is AMAZING for people who generate content across many social media platforms. IFTTT stands for If This, Then That and it allows you to create conditional statements called “recipes” that help you manage aspects of… More

Comcast Direct Response Television is here

Check out this article: It’s about Comcast Direct Response TV. Direct Response TV allows the viewer to use their remote control to interact with or take an action suggested by the content and I just saw a DRTV ad for the Ford Focus this evening. DRTV is in the Philly/Wilmington media market! I am familiar… More

I’m givin’ it all she’s got, Cap’n!

You remember when Scotty, the engineer on the Enterprise always came up with a solution to catastrophic damage to the ship in a third the time he told Kirk it would take? Or that he was “givin’ it all she’s got” when Kirk asked for more power and found just enough to save the day?… More

Let’s Dance

New client meeting tonight in Bear, and it is a dance of peacocks, preening, spitting and strutting their accomplishments. Each person trying to one-up the other and demonstrate their knowledge of the best way to promote the business in question. Enter the owner, who has spent months or years in the trenches. Enter the marketer,… More

strike up a conversation

I saw this article that may be of interest to you: it’s premise is that user like it when companies answer their questions on Twitter. This is also a great opportunity to demonstrate your expertise in your field and make the person who asked the question feel heard. Here’s the crux of their research: “Eight… More

rose

You know, we humans have a peculiar habit: we like to name things. They give us a sense of order in a chaotic world. Look at the title of this post…it brings an image to mind. A smell. A memory. A Golden Girl. A connection. It’s the same with naming products. Companies have spent millions… More

Shock and aww

So I was engaged in a conversation earlier today about User Experience, UX for short. This, along with User Interface (UI) design, are the hot button topics of web design now. Suddenly, companies care about their users now that the web has evolved and flattened so that users have a say in how they interact… More

Location marketing on location (Me gusta “lo-sos”)

One of my favorite neighborhood restaurants is taking advantage of location marketing. For those of you that don’t know, location marketing takes advantage of smart phones equipped with GPS. On location-based social sites, also known as “lo-so”s, like Facebook, Yelp! and Loopt, a user can “check in” to establishments near him/her and the savvy business… More

Spring Cleaning

I took a personal day to literally clean out the cobwebs. Spring cleaning! Actually, it was more of a seasonal purge. I got rid of clothing, shoes, papers, boxes; all those things that just weren’t working. I dug around in closets, cabinets, and under even low furniture to rid myself of things that were weighing… More

rules of the road

You know what’s fun? Brand guidelines. Seriously. It’s cool to take a design and develop a system around it. Right now, I am working on brand guidelines for a client that is undergoing a complete rebrand. It started innocently enough…”Hey, can you whip up a sales video for us?” “We need a new white paper… More

The mee goreng principle

A lot has been said about User Experience and how critical it is to the success of any web site. I couldn’t agree more. Here is an example of what I mean: I’m in an Asian restaurant for the first time today. I’ve been past it, looked at the menu in the window but never… More

Understanding culture

Part of my goings-on about the user experience include knowing your audience and understanding what makes them tick. A huge part of the behavioral information that you can glean about a particular audience segment is culture. I came across an article on Business Insider that represents visually how cultures around the world negotiate. Why should… More

be brief, be bright, be gone

Check out this article on the length of emails: (It’ll open in a new window) I check most of my emails to get information about the state of the medium. I have found that emails are getting longer and longer and LONGER. They present so much material that my eyes glaze by the first scroll.… More

(free) information is power 2

Responded to an email that came through the site last week (I know, that was a little too long to wait) and a request for marketing assistance for $1000 per year. That’s a very low number, and I told them so. But instead of telling them to get lost, here’s what I did. I gave… More

Help me help you

I had a fascinating kick-off conversation with a new client today, Jim Israel formerly of Culinary Concepts in Philadelphia, PA. He is starting a new consulting company aimed at the hospitality industry. Usually, my clients struggle with their identities, their mission and their unique selling points. Jim had all of that in spades. I was… More

Another gem of an article. http://lnkd.in/dgHftfK

a little something interesting I found: http://lnkd.in/dgHftfK from LinkedIn via IFTTT

The most important conversation you’ll ever have

Sitting here late at night working on a name for a new product for a small business client, which got me to thinking about the meeting that led to this late night activity… I call it the kickoff and it is the most important meeting I have with a client. Just like in football, the… More