The Writers Coin

When I first started this site, it was hosted by WordPress and I didn’t have the option to put ads on it. And to be honest, I never really thought about it. I started the blog thinking I would help others go through the financial awakening that I went through, and I hoped to learn more and more about personal finance, investing, writing, and blogging.

Now, as you can plainly see, I have ads on my site. I’m not making a ton of money just yet—I just broke through the dollar mark this week. But a lot of bloggers are making some serious dough. Not quit-your-day-job type money but really-nice-side-income type money. Hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars a month.

But there is somewhat of a controversy out there about whether or not ads should go on sites purportedly out there to “help” others. “How do ads help others?” they demand.

Let’s get two things straight before I go any further:

1. Running a blog like this one takes up a lot of time. It’s the equivalent of a part-time job. Other bloggers are more prolific and dedicate even more of their time to it.
2. One of the basic tenets that personal-finance bloggers repeat over and over is the idea of diversifying your income.

So do the math.

It makes absolute sense for bloggers to put ads on their site and try to make some money off all the work they’re doing, don’t you think?

I think so. Before I put ads on my site and taught myself all about how they work and the best ways of incorporating them, I couldn’t of told you which blogs I read had ads in them and which ones didn’t. As is the case with most proficient web users, we are blind to ads.

The thing is, most other people aren’t. They see a link that says something like what they want and they click on it. They have no idea they’re going away from the page they were on. Is that wrong? Is it deceitful? No, it’s advertising, and people do it in the real world all the time.

It’s not like they are being scammed or spammed or having their identity stolen. All that’s happening is that people who are reading about savings accounts are (unknowingly?) clicking on an ad for ING Direct.

That is advertising, not cheating. Deal with it.

You may or may not have seen this ad before, but it’s a famous one from the folks over at Coca Cola. In case you didn’t know, they have a much longer version (almost a making of/documentary sort of spoof) that they show down at Coke World in Atlanta (which is actually a lot more fun that you’d think).

Anyway, the reason I want you to see it is because I suck at drawing and this is as close as I can come to the concept I’m after:

Product: Bank of America (multiple services)
Medium: TV
Campaign: Done and Done

A man/woman sitting at a cubicle, can’t wait to get out. There is a buzz in the air, it’s Friday. A coworker gets a paycheck but our protagonist (P) doesn’t, simply starts walking out towards the elevator. Coworker in background is squinting and furrowing a brow at her own paycheck.

[Music: something with tic tocs in it, like a fast-paced clock]

In a flash of light we see P’s paycheck being wired at light speed to . . . Bank of America. Once it gets there it turns into hundreds of dollar bills and explodes all over a round room with tubes going in every direction. It looks like the inside of an octopus and a cheery looking thing with several limbs (thinking octopus again) is picking at the bills, double checking P’s info on a screen and putting the different tentacle-fulls of bills in the different tubes.

One bundle of bills shoots (again, in a flash) over to what looks like a trading floor populated by little blobs dressed in trader vests. [Music here goes to the intro of The Apprentice: Money money money muhhhhh-ney] The little blobs are shouting and screaming, numbers crawling all over. It’s crazy but these little blobs are getting it done. This money is being invested.

Another of the bundles of money (again in a flash, and all very quickly) is being shot over to a round, fat, squat looking creature standing in front of a huge vault door (which has a digital reader on it showing “1,400 at 4.1% APY”). He has a little police badge on. He takes the bundle, slowly opens the vault, and tosses the bundle in, several other bundles are already in there). He closes it and gives the camera a look like “I will die before anyone comes in here.”

We follow another bundle through the tubes as it lands on what looks like a field. Think agriculture. There is a creature with a huge hat on protecting him from the sun, we can’t see his face but a stem of grass is sticking out from beneath it (we assume his mouth). He’s got a hoe in his hands. The bundle falls into a pile (it looks like hay almost) and he picks at it and starts to spread it into the rows on the ground, like he’s farming the money. As we pull out we see the farm’s name is 401(k) or Retirement.

In another burst we see several bundles going out to gangster looking creatures who seem to be “paying off” several businesses (cable, electricity, internet). The bills are being taken care of.

Then the whole loud, fast production stops and we here the ding of the elevator. The doors open and out walks P, not a care in the world. His money is doing it’s thing, just like that.

RECAP:

The whole recap/feeling here (compared to the Coke ad) isn’t one of cutesiness (I’m considering using real people or animated people, at least, instead of “creatures or blobs”). The idea here is that, without actively doing anything, the money is being handled and distributed the way it should be: responsibly and in a timely fashion. Fast and with no input needed from the user.

It sets Bank of America up not only as a jack of all trades but as a place that makes it super easy for clients to set up whatever system they want and then forget it.

“Set it and forget it.”

Does this work? Would it be better with non-blobs/creatures? Is this too much like the Coke ad?

As I wrote last week, it’s very rare that I come across a piece of news or an article that is relevant to all the topics this blog pretends to cover: advertising, writing, and personal finance.

So when I came across this article on Morningstar.com, I was like “Okay, maybe it’s not so rare.”

The article takes a look at how certain companies advertise their mutual funds and the strategies they use to try to differentiate their products from the competition.

Their overall consensus? That these ads are confusing to the point of dishonesty. It’s something I’ve written about before—when people don’t know a lot about something (and this happens a lot in personal finance), it’s easy talk down to them and get them confused.

If you’re going to get into investing, you need to realize that the very companies you look to for help are built to feed off of your lack of knowledge to make money. This may just be a general advertising principle, but it seems especially harmful when it comes to a product that you are actually expecting will make you money.

One last thing: most of the approaches mentioned were all very similarly confusing, except for one—Vanguard. From the article:

Vanguard took a completely different approach than the others. Its ad didn’t rely on returns, star ratings, or any other measures of past success. It simply showed a drawer full of ties and a paragraph of text discussing how choosing an investment can be easier than getting dressed.

This is what’s called branding in the ad industry. It’s what makes people think of safety when they think of Volvo, luxury when they think of Mercedes, durability when they think of Ford, and so on. When your product doesn’t have something that makes it different that the competition, you have to create an idea or thought in the consumers head that will separate you from the competition.

Are all hot sauces the same? Pretty much. Except for Tabasco. Nobody asks for Hot Sauce when they want Tabasco—they ask for Tabasco.

Even in the context of the article, Vanguard has managed to separate itself because of the strategy they use in their advertising. That is branding and that is what makes Vanguard different than other financial-services companies.

[sidenote: I'm not a customer of Vanguard's, though I hope to be very soon]

Here are a couple articles that bring up an interesting way of generating ideas.

They both come down to the same thing: for every idea you’re ultimately trying to come up with, create a list that is 100 concepts long.

So you want to create a hip Netflix ad? Come up with 100 and then go back and pick one of them. How about an edgy ad for the only “Tequila” made in the USA? Again, 100 concepts before you pick one.

Why this masochism?

According to the site, the first 30 entries or so are simply to get all the crap out of your system. Some people call it pre-writing. The next 40 are where you start to stretch your creativity a bit, and the last 30 are “where the gems are.”

I don’t know about that breakdown—it seems kind of specific for something as fuzzy as creativity, but I think it’s a good point. When coming up with ads, I’m constantly telling myself to push myself further. Take an idea and run with it. Be more creative.

Sure, one way to do this is to just sit there and see what your mind comes up with. And then you hit upon the idea you like best, you get a little excited, and boom! You’re done. I haven’t put down 100 ideas for any concept yet, but I agree that coming up with that much quality will inevitably yield good results. It’s something I/we do already, kind of unconsciously and quickly in our minds.