Welcome to Pondering Creative

I’ve done a ton of technical advertising over the years, industrial, aircraft, software, you name it. I enjoy engineering-based products because nowhere does the art of creative persuasion call for greater talent than in the task of translating a technical feature into an attention-getting concept.

But nowhere is the value of high-concept advertising more difficult to convey than to an engineering-based client. Engineers, technicians and other data-driven people are usually so enamored of the technical facts surrounding their products that it’s difficult for them to step outside their own knowledge-sets and imagine what it’s like not to know what they know. Their intimate knowledge of the product is often their worst enemy from a marketing standpoint because they can’t imagine a target audience not being instantly fascinated by its technical elegance.

The truth is that, no matter how perfect a product or service is for a given target audience, you still have to pull them out of the hypnotic reverie called “real life,” in order to tell your story.

The formula is the same every time: 1) get attention, 2) identify a need, 3) fill the need and 4) ask for the order. The natural tendency of technical-minded people is to jump to step 3 because the manner in which their product can fill the need is where their brains live, day-in and day-out.

It’s our job as marketing professionals to help them understand the technical process of advertising. Just as a computer motherboard can’t be overhauled until you’ve disconnected the power and removed the access panel, so the human mind can’t be influenced until you’ve opened it with a provocative thought (the headline and visual) that demands further exploration (reading the copy). Only then can you “fill the need” in a way that will be mentally allowed by the target.