Greetings. Marketing Wizard Jim Ackerman here with your latest episode of Good Bad and Ugly ads. The program where we show you an ad specimen and you critique it. Tell us whether it's good, bad, or ugly from a marketing effectiveness point of view. Another way to say that I suppose would be from a sales point of view. And then in the next episode I'll tell you what I thought of that ad and then give you another specimen to work on in the coming week. Well, our last ad specimen was not just one specimen but two. I showed you two ads both for my own product, my own workshop, and asked you to critique them for their effectiveness. Let's review by taking a look at those ads right now. This was the first. This was the second. Now I realize when you first got a chance to look at these ads that they might be a little bit hard to read and you scroll down and had to stop and those kinds of things. But let me ask you something. Right about now, what about the headline to this ad? Would that make you want to read more of the ad if you were in the target market? What about the overall layout, the skinny columns, the drop caps, the bullet points and using the fingers to point out those bullet points? What about the crossheads, the use of the testimonials, the pictures? What about the guarantee? Is that compelling? Would it keep you reading? What about this ad by comparison? Notice the slight change in the headline, the addition of some good benefits right there in the sub headline. Does that make it more compelling? Does the open letter to business people drive you further into copy? What about the use of color in this particular version? You'll notice that this version has more color to it. You'll also notice that the layout is a little bit different. There's more use of graphics in it. And in particular, the call to action section at the end is a lot larger and probably better to understand. Personally, I like this version a lot better. I think the layout is much more compelling, easier to read, a lot more airiness to it and will pull people through the copy. A lot better than the first version. Although the first version isn't bad, a lot of the principles of good layout are at work in these ads. That doesn't mean they worked. Here's the dirty little secret. I have to give both of those ads a bad because they didn't work. We did not sell enough workshops to even hold the event. And that was with nearly half a million dollars worth of advertising that went into it at full rate card. Let me give you this much background on the story. The local newspapers agreed to sponsor the event. And by doing so, they agreed to advertise it aggressively over a two month period of time prior to the event itself. They did so with these full page ads almost on a daily basis and neither one of them pulled hardly at all. So few registrations came in in fact that we went ahead and canceled the event. Now, I don't think that's entirely the ads fault, but it's instructive from the perspective that there's only two or three things that could go wrong. Because it was heavily advertised in print, you have to look at the media and say, hmmm, is print dead? At least newspapers. Is it now to the point where so few people are reading the newspapers on a daily basis that you question whether you should even use the newspapers? And I think there's some validity to that. The second question is, are the ads just terrible? Frankly, I don't think so. I think it's a very strong headline. I think the second ad in particular is broken up enough that visually you have plenty of targets to pull the eye through the ad. And so I think the ad was really okay. The question is, will people come to full day workshops anymore? The entire industry is not as successful as it once was at getting people into events. They may give up a half a day, giving up a full day's difficult, so our proposition might have been wrong. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, for whatever reason, they didn't work, I can't give them goods obviously. Well, you can't win them all. So the best thing we can do is move on to our next specimen. Or should I say, specimen, because there's actually two, once again. Both direct mail packages, in fact, we have a rare opportunity to look at a test in action. Got two pieces of mail from American Express. Here they are. As you can see, this first piece is a postcard. It's multiple panels, and I'll show you all the panels later on. The second version is an envelope package, came in a number 10 envelope, window envelope, pre-addressed. And I'll show you the rest of that as well. Back to the postcard, you'll notice a feature oriented headline is all that's there besides the address. And look what they're trying to do. Just drive you to the website. The headline on the message side of this folded card is a little bit more emotional, but they still try to drive you to the website, even if you never take the time to open the card to see the inside message. Finally, when you open the card, here's the inside message. And I encourage you to stop the video as often as you need to to get a feel for this message. Notice they're called to action, does give you an opportunity to telephone in this particular instance. But there's some layout problems. All that reverse type, difficult to read. So there's the postcard version, fair enough. Now let's take a closer look at that envelope package. Once again, the front of the envelope, which I think is particularly interesting because they kind of treat it like a postcard, giving you the call to action, driving you to that website. Again, like the back of the postcard, they treat this envelope the same way, driving you to the website, even if you don't open the envelope. And finally, the interior letter itself. Strangely, very similar to the postcard. In fact, I'd like you to stop it as often as you need to, compare the messages, postcard to letter, see what you think, as well as the call to action. And this is the only piece in the package. What do you think is most effective? My guess is they have even more versions of this proposition out there, but only two came to my house. It's really rare when that kind of a frankly mistake happens. But at any rate, I want you to take a look at these, evaluate them in the coming week, and I'll be back in our next episode as we continue to genetically engineer your marketing for ever increasing success. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel, leave your comments below, and share this channel with your friends. And don't forget, I also need you to send me Yozad specimens, so we have something some common ground that we can work on together. Also, I'd love for you to comment on my new hairdo. Hey, what do you think? And I'll see you next time in the next episode of Good Bad and Ugly Ads.