An ad that brings in enquiries is factual and explicit. It says what you offer, what it costs and how to get it, and it does so fast, in about a quarter of a second.
Much advertising does something else. It puts its effort into design and wording, and it leaves out the information a reader needs in order to act.
An ad has to be factual
The source opens with a short rule: an ad must be factual and explicit. Then it lists seven questions that every ad should answer, and closes with a warning: “It is costly to omit them.”
The questions themselves are simple, yet most advertising answers only a few of them.
Suppose a consultant whose whole page says that he offers business consulting services for small companies. The reader roughly knows what it is and knows nothing else: not the price, not how easy it is, not how to begin.
Now suppose he writes a single line instead: a diagnostic call of half an hour, no charge, send a message and he replies the same day. That line answers most of the questions at once, and the reader knows what to do.
The opposite case is a handsome ad that ends by inviting people to message for details. The question of where to get the thing has been deleted, and everything else went with it.
The second version of the consultant's ad simply holds more facts, arranged so that the reader can act on them.
A quarter of a second
How long does an ad have? According to the source, about a quarter of a second, which is the time a person needs to go through the reflex of throwing away whatever they are holding.
The source frames the test for ad copy as a question: does the ad register during the moment someone picks it up and decides to bin it?
That changes the order of the work: ask what registers in a quarter of a second before you ask what you want to say. Usually the answer is one thing, and whatever comes after it is read only if that one thing stopped the reader.
Suppose a headline of eight words that says what the thing is and who it is for. It registers, because it answers two questions at once.
Against it, an opening paragraph on the vision of the business, which nobody reads past the first line.
In practice the headline does most of the work. If it does not say what and for whom, the reader probably never reaches the rest of the ad.
The mistake that sinks most advertising is the assumption that if people read all of it, they will understand. Most people will not read all of it.
Content comes before design
The source has little time for the aesthetic side of advertising. The beautiful artwork in magazines, it says, is an effort to keep people from throwing the piece away because it looks good. That artwork buys the quarter of a second, and it communicates nothing inside it.
The source also warns that you can waste a great deal of money on ads that do not contain enough data to sell anything. Its two examples are easy to recognise: a restaurant advertised without saying when it serves, what it charges or what kind of food it offers, and a car advertised without fuel consumption, speed or weight. The source sums it up as “Heavy sales talks but no data.”
Suppose a garage owner who put a price range and a turnaround time into his ad. He received fewer enquiries, of higher quality.
Next to him, a photographer whose beautifully designed ad shows no price, no timing and no location, so each enquiry he receives begins from zero.
What design does and what information does
Design and information do two different jobs. Design keeps the reader looking instead of throwing the ad away, and information makes the reader act. You need both, and only the information sells.
When information is missing, the reader has to find it out, and every enquiry starts from zero. Someone who spends the whole budget on the attractive side pays for attention and leaves the reader with nothing to do with it.
The booklet gives this chapter two exercises, one to test an ad and one to build one, followed by a self-check. It also holds the seven questions in full, and shows which two of them get left out most often.
Before you pay for more design, read your ad as someone who sees it for a quarter of a second, and check whether that person knows what to do next.