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What I learned on Trade Me

[ADVERTISING]

Can image advertising survive in the Internet era?

The greatest advertising writers of the 20th Century cut their teeth on direct response advertising, learning what worked and what didn’t the hard way. If customers responded in sufficient numbers and actually bought the product, the ad worked. Otherwise, the advertiser went back to the drawing board.

Today’s most effective learning laboratory for Kiwi advertising creators is a website named Trade Me. In just a few days you can test the ultimate effectiveness of communications. With $300 million in annualised sales and more than 20 million auctions a year, Trade Me delivers.

I’ve been studying Trade Me intensively for the last year. Listings that sell effectively on the site require product advertisers to:

Create a compelling headline in just 50 characters and successfully lure prospects to view your auction. Your headline has to feature relevant keywords (most people use the search function to find products of interest) and stand out from all other similar products.

Develop a sizzling description that captures the essence of your product (in cyberspace no-one can actually physically touch the goods); covers all the product details, features and benefits; and gives potential bidders a reason to buy your product, now.

Feature pictures that tell a thousand words. There’s no time for artistic indulgences. If the photos don’t add selling power to your listing, they don’t make the cut.

Fail at these core skills and your product simply won’t sell. This isn’t a new lesson, of course. In a 1903 essay, Walter Dill Scott carried out a sneaky little experiment:

“The following is a quotation in full of an advertisement of the Vose Piano, but with the words ‘sewing machine’ substituted for ‘piano’ … it will be noted that there is nothing in the text which does not apply equally well to a sewing machine.”

“One of the great weaknesses of advertising is found in the fact that the writer of the advertisement fails to appeal indirectly to the senses,” Scott noted. “How many advertisers describe a piano so vividly that the reader can hear it? How many food products are so described that the reader can taste the food? How many advertisements describe a perfume so that the reader can smell it? Many advertisers seem never to have thought of this, and make no attempt at such descriptions.”

Do we really need the advice of a man writing 100 years ago? Sadly yes. Take this example published in a recent issue of a leading Kiwi business weekly. Deleting the logo and sign-off leaves an advertisement that could be for any service category:

We’re a century older, but perhaps no wiser. Despite decades of research into the psychology of advertising, thousands of case studies and a million failures, we remain determined to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Many will scoff at the notion that advertising should actually sell something. Surely it’s all about the brand? Perhaps—but we’ve never met a single client who wouldn’t trade all the high-ranking attitude and awareness scores in the world for the satisfying ka-ching of the till.

So what time does that auction close?

Michael Carney is media strategist with MediaCom in Auckland and author of the book Trade Me Success Secrets

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