Better Advertising

Better Advertising

Ten Tips for Advertisers

March 22, 2021 Rod Schwartz
Bad ads waddle like a porcupine and make lots of little points. Good ads charge like a rhinoceros and make a single point powerfully. This is true regardless of your choice of media. Ad budgets are like that, too. When universities ask me to address their Advertising & Marketing majors […]
Better Advertising

Remembering Rush Limbaugh

February 23, 2021 Rod Schwartz
So much has been written and said about Rush Limbaugh this past week in the wake of his death at age 70. Much more will be said in the weeks and months ahead, as his millions of listeners and fans mourn his passing and recall the impact he had on […]
Better Advertising

Rodney Dangerfield, Bank of Pullman, and Me

October 14, 2019 Rod Schwartz
Celebrities are paid handsomely for endorsing products and services; the bigger the celebrity, the heftier the fee. Whether a celebrity endorsement is worth the sizable extra investment is debatable. It’s one thing to have a spokesman who is intimately if not inseparably associated with a brand. For example, Tom Bodett’s […]
Better Advertising

“How Often Should My Message Be Repeated?”

July 28, 2018 Rod Schwartz
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – entrepreneur and marketer John Wanamaker (1838-1922) Wanamaker’s quote on advertising has been widely disseminated over the past century. For some, it’s inspired bold risk-taking and marketing breakthroughs—”nothing ventured, nothing gained.” For others, […]
Better Advertising

Message Before Money

June 24, 2018 Rod Schwartz
A sometimes controversial, unabashedly conservative first-term state senator is consistently vilified by the press throughout his first term in office. In the next election cycle, he faces a challenger from within his own party. The challenger is a popular local figure whose decades of public service include two terms as […]
Better Advertising

Advertising Lessons from 1923 and 1927

April 24, 2018 Rod Schwartz
He is “…hopelessly out of date, and amazingly current. He was the outstanding copywriter and strategist of his time; he made $100,000 a year and more writing advertising when that kind of money was important even to the U.S. Treasury.” The writer was talking about Claude C. Hopkins (1866-1932), a pioneer of […]
Better Advertising

How to Amplify Your Word-of-Mouth, Guaranteed.

March 28, 2018 Rod Schwartz
You prize good word-of-mouth don’t you? We all do. Word-of-mouth may not create business, but it helps create a preference for your business or brand in the heart of the hearer. Good radio advertising can have the same effect, only multiplied and amplified. Radio is word-of-mouth on steroids. Individual word-of-mouth travels slowly and unpredictably. […]