Last week, I asked you to take a test to see if you’re a word nerd. This week, I have another test for you. And it’s a doozy.

The concept is “selective attention.” I don’t want to spoil it, so watch the video below. Don’t cheat. You’ll miss the point entirely if you don’t follow directions and see the results for yourself.

Done?

If you followed the directions and tried to count the number of times the people in white shirts passed the basketball, there’s a 50/50 chance you’re amazed right now.

How could you possibly miss the gorilla?

The first time I watched the video, I thought it was a joke. There is no way I could have missed something so obvious. But I watched it again, and sure enough, there it was.

This is the result of selective attention. In law enforcement and military training, they call it tunnel vision. Police officers involved in a physical confrontation, for example, find that their attention is so selective, they can vividly remember certain details, such as the sneakers of a criminal, but miss other details, such as a car accident that happens right in front of them at the same time.

The idea of selective attention is simple: people select to pay attention to some things and not others. That’s because the brain can only take in so much information at once. The more focused a person is on one thing, the less that person pays attention to something else.

Consider how a magician uses this idea to misdirect you. While he’s waving his right hand, you don’t notice what he’s doing with his left.

Selective attention affects advertising messages as well. An obvious example: clever TV ads that seek to entertain you, then throw in few fleeting references or images of the product. Afterward, you may remember the entertaining part of the ad, but not recall the product.

Any time you try to be too clever, inject irrelevant concepts, or take the focus away from the product, you invoke selective attention. Your reader or viewer may miss what may seem painfully obvious to you.

The answer is just as obvious.

Keep your message simple and direct. Focus on the product and its benefits. Avoid overly conceptual or entertaining ideas, clever visuals, or self-indulgent wordplay.

In other words, focus on what’s relevant to assure your prospect sees it.

If you want to learn more about selective attention, visit The Invisible Gorilla.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

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If you want to learn the basics of advertising, you can read books or attend seminars. But really, there are lessons all around you.

Keep your eyes open. Every day you can discover another advertising principle. What works. What doesn’t. How to improve your ads. What to avoid.

One of my favorite sources of selling inspiration is FAIL Blog, a visual library of human nature and communication gone wrong.

Just look at the advertising lessons from the past few weeks …

Niche advertising works.

Tell the story of your business.

Deadlines are good. But don’t get carried away.

Give prospects an easy means to respond.

Sell products people want.

Write your headlines carefully.

Proof your copy one more time.

Never let your designer control the message.

A better offer always wins.

Use the active voice.

What have you learned today?

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1. Wise, witty quotes from the advertising masters

Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

How true. I suppose that’s why I enjoy collecting and sharing quotations about advertising. You can read a hundred books and still not learn as much as you can from one pithy quote.

So I’m going to shut up and let the old masters (and a few extra guests) speak this week.

“Advertising is what you do when you can’t go see somebody. That’s all it is.” –Fairfax Cone

“The simplest definition of advertising, and one that will probably meet the test of critical examination, is that advertising is selling in print.” –Daniel Starch

“Advertising in the final analysis should be news. If it is not news it is worthless.” –Adolph S. Ochs

“The most common trouble with advertising is that it tries too hard to impress people.” –James Randolph Adams

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” –Howard Luck Gossage

“In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.” –Peter Nivio Zarlenga

“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” –David Ogilvy

“The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men – the man he is and the man he wants to be.” –William Feather

“When executing advertising, it’s best to think of yourself as an uninvited guest in the living room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly.” –John O’Toole

“There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules … but there’s one little rub. They forget that advertising is persuasion, and persuasion is not a science, but an art. Advertising is the art of persuasion.” – William Bernbach

“People don’t buy from clowns.” –Claude C. Hopkins

“Let’s say you have $1,000,000 tied up in your little company and suddenly your advertising isn’t working and sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it. Now, what do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?” –Rosser Reeves

“Every time a message seems to grab us, and we think, ‘I just might try it,’ we are at the nexus of choice and persuasion that is advertising.” –Andrew Hacker

“I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.” –Leo Burnett

“A good ad should be like a good sermon: It must not only comfort the afflicted, it also must afflict the comfortable.” –Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

“If an ad campaign is built around a weak idea – or as is so often the case, no idea at all – I don’t give a damn how good the execution is, it’s going to fail.” –Morris Hite

“The product that will not sell without advertising will not sell profitably with advertising.” –Albert Lasker

“Advertising is totally unnecessary. Unless you hope to make money.” –Jef I. Richards

“Asked about the power of advertising in research surveys, most agree that it works, but not on them.” –Eric Clark

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.” –Samuel Johnson

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” –Mark Twain

“If I were starting life over again, I am inclined to think that I would go into the advertising business in preference to almost any other. The general raising of the standards of modern civilization among all groups of people during the past half century would have been impossible without the spreading of the knowledge of higher standards by means of advertising.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Here’s a little secret Madison Avenue doesn’t want anyone to know …

Slogans are losers. They don’t sell.

At least, most of them don’t sell. I ran across an article from USA Today I saved back in 2003 on this topic and it cited a consumer survey on whether people recognized the slogans of some of the biggest marketers in the U.S. The results were depressing.

Out of 22 supposedly “famous” tag lines, “only six were recognized by more than 10% of those surveyed — this for companies spending more than $100 million a year on ads.”

When you dig deeper into the results, it gets worse.

Slogans from three prominent advertisers scored 0% recognition, including Circuit City (We’re with you), Kmart (The stuff of life) and Staples (That was easy).

Billions of dollars spent on advertising, much of it devoted to dreaming up clever slogans, and apparently most of it never registers.

Not all slogans fail. Wal-Mart scored 64% recognition with it’s “Always low prices. Always” tagline. But then, Wal-Mart is in a whole different league than most businesses.

So why do most slogans flop? Some say consumers are too smart to fall for fluff and bull. I agree, considering the emptiness and irrelevance of most taglines. I mean, what the heck does “The stuff of life” mean, anyway?

The bottom line is that writing slogans is the same as writing any copy. A slogan has to say something relevant and meaningful. My guess is that Wal-Mart’s “Always low prices” slogan works because it’s true and descriptive. Most slogans are just nice sounding words from companies who don’t have any distinguishing features, such as low prices or better products.

There may be another reason. Slogans have to be short, but not all ideas can be expressed in three to five words. So maybe some companies just aren’t slogan-worthy.

What do you think?

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They’ve been recording and touring for 35 years. And in all that time they’ve remained an icon of anti-innovation. AC/DC began their career playing three-chord rock songs and they’re still playing three-chord rock songs. Almost nothing has changed.

Has it hurt them? Well, when the band recently released its new album, Black Ice, it went straight to the top of the Billboard charts, selling 784,000 copies in the first week. So I’d say no. Their lack of innovation seems to be working quite nicely, thank you.

We live in a time of endless, often mindless, change. DVDs killed VHS, and now your DVDs face their own mortality. You thought you’d caught up when you got that tiny little cell phone, now big Blackberries with keyboards are the rage. The GPS is cool, but the maps were out of date the moment you got into your car.

Everywhere you turn, something is changing and that out-of-breath feeling you used to get now and then is with you every day. And all you want is to find something that’s stable and familiar.

Thus the success of AC/DC. No, they’re not the best musicians in the world. No, they’re not hip or up-to-date. In fact, I contend that they’re as popular as ever and selling out shows because they’ve made no effort at all to stay current. They aren’t interested in updating their skill set. They refuse to embrace new technology. And no, they aren’t going to revise their corporate mission to better serve their customers.

These aging, stubborn dinosaurs give their fans exactly what they want: the same songs, the same sound, the same show, the same attitude. Why? Because new isn’t always better.

When they recorded their first album (and I do mean album, pure, luscious vinyl), they established their product. It was good. Album after album, they kept producing the same product, over and over and over. After all, why fix it if it ain’t broke?

Okay, so what does this have to do with advertising? A lot, actually. Because while most advertising needs improved or updated over time, sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone. If it works, it works. Change for the sake of change makes no sense.

Take the De Beers “A Diamond is Forever” ad campaign. Copywriter Frances Gerety coined that phrase in 1948. It’s one of the best and most recognized slogans of all time and has remained unchanged for over 60 years.

Should the company meddle with it? Maybe tweak it to say, “Diamonds Last Quite a Long Time” or “Got Diamonds?” or maybe “Don’t Buy a Toaster for Her Anniversary, You Dolt. Get Her a Diamond!”

No, the original phrase and the basic campaign has worked, does work, and will continue to work. No change is required.

Or how about the Maytag repair man? The character of “Ol’ Lonely” was created by copywriter Vincent R. Vassolo and has appeared in countless TV commercials since 1967. It was a simple but brilliant idea: Maytag appliances are so dependable, the repairman is bored out of his mind. The actor playing the role has changed a few times, but not the core idea. Since it still works, the company has wisely kept using it.

What’s the longest running ad ever? That just may be an advertisement for the Jos. Neel Co., a clothing store in Macon, Georgia. They have run their tiny little ad in the upper left corner of the Macon Telegraph every single day since February 22, 1889. That’s 120 years. Innovation? Fuggeddaboudit!

The famous ad man Leo Burnett once said, “I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.”

Absolutely right.

In a world where change is a tiring constant, those few things that remain the same become comfortable and familiar friends. People like to do business with friends.

The next time you’re in a meeting and someone suggests an overhaul to your advertising, ask one simple question: “Why?” If there’s a good answer to that question, call me. If not, end the meeting, pass out the adult beverages, and crank up the AC/DC.

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It was about 11:00 a.m. when we started up the mountain outside of San Pedro Sula in the northwest corner of Honduras. The humid air lay heavy and still in the valley below, causing the fields of sugar cane to shimmer in the hot sun.

We were videotaping b-roll for a few TV spots one of my fundraising clients wanted to test. Our task that day was the same as it had been every day that week: to capture images of the devastating poverty these people suffer.

The camera crew donned their battery belts, cables, and assorted gear and we followed the narrow dirt path toward the shacks above. As we ascended a steep rise and veered to the right, we came across a young boy toting an armload of dry firewood. One of our videographers wanted to shoot this and positioned himself in the middle of the path.

That’s when it happened. And to understand what happened, you must understand the term “wrap-and-throw.”

Many of the people my client helps are so poor they live in makeshift shacks, some of mud or wood, others little more than plastic or cardboard nailed to sticks. These places often have no sanitary facilities. So the residents have developed a practical way to deal with their waste: They wrap it in a small bag and throw it.

Thus, we were walking in a “wrap-and-throw” community. And while the videographer set himself to shoot the kid with the wood, one of our guides trotted ahead to ask the child’s permission. The boy agreed, and the guide came running back toward the cameraman.

A wrap-and-throw lay silently in the path, aged and ripe. A group of unsuspecting, sunblock-smeared gringos stood stupidly smiling three feet away, anticipating nothing but the beautiful picture they were about to record. Our guide’s foot came down hard at ground zero … and the principles of ballistics did the rest.

It gave new meaning to the term “$#!* happens.”

Three people were hit, the brave videographer getting the worst of it, sprayed heel to cheek with the brown, foul-smelling slime. Fortunately, I had been walking ahead of the group, upwind and out of range. But when I heard the ruckus and walked back, it was like a scene in a war movie: Shocked, pale faces. Cries of shock and disbelief. People running in all directions.

The videographer stood stock still, looking down at his body in disbelief, mumbling, “I can’t believe that just happened. I can’t believe that just happened.” Others in the group tried to act concerned as they cautiously inspected their own bodies for damage.

I must admit, I would have been equally disgusted if I had been a casualty of this incident, but I would not have been surprised. In fact, that’s what I found most interesting about it – the utter surprise that this had happened.

Surprise? We had been walking in wrap-and-throw for days. The only surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened before. We knew where we were going and what we were doing. And we knew the risks. In my mind, this was proof that we were out there doing what we had to do to get the job done. That wrap-and-throw was just part of the process.

Which brings me to ad testing. (How’s that for a segue?)

I am forever baffled by the unrealistic attitude so many advertisers have about testing. These delicate souls don’t really want to “test,” they merely want to “confirm.” They expect to rack up victory after victory with little or no effort. Failures are dreaded experiences, not learning experiences. Fear is the reigning emotion, and avoidance is the primary technique.

The first thing I tell everyone who calls me wanting to start a testing program is that the first order of business is to establish a basic “control” ad or direct mail package. Then start methodically testing to improve results. Testing means just that. Testing. Trying things out. Seeing what works and what doesn’t. And by definition, testing means experiencing failures along with successes.

But again and again, otherwise brave business people, who have risked great peril to start businesses, launch products, and develop markets, suddenly quiver in horror at the idea of “failing” in a test. So, what often happens is that good test ideas are talked about but never acted upon. Or new ideas are mauled by committees till they are little more than tweaked versions of previous promotions – safe but ultimately unproductive.

Testing means getting out there – getting your hands dirty and getting the job done. And occasional failures are just part of the process. In fact, the best way to increase your success rate is to increase your failure rate! In other words, the more you test, the more you learn.

The more you learn, the better your results will be in the long run.

And while I’m on a rant about testing, allow me to specifically catalog and comment on some of the most egregious mistakes I’ve seen advertisers make:

Testing haphazardly or running sloppy tests. Testing is a mathematical process. You have to test all the time. You have to test carefully. Otherwise, the numbers just won’t mean anything. If you don’t have the skill or patience for number crunching and analysis, get someone else involved.

Assuming that tests are error-free. Even if you run what you believe are careful, well-conceived tests, never assume that there is no room for error. You should actively seek out mistakes on every level. Whether your test comes out good or bad (but especially if it’s bad), think through the whole process to track down errors.

For a mailing you might ask: Were the mailing list numbers accurate? Were the addresses good? Did all our pieces get mailed? Was the bar code on the reply form correct? Are phone operators and mail handlers carefully tracking every response? Have I made mathematical blunders anywhere? Where else could a mistake be made?

Drawing the wrong conclusions. Too often, people look at test data and jump to a conclusion. “That self-mailer bombed. Self-mailers don’t work,” or “We tested a Christmas appeal, and we lost money. Christmas is a bad time to mail.” This is usually the result of a poorly designed test. Ideally, you should test with the express purpose of measuring one variable. And you must test against a proven control. Otherwise, you may conclude that a particular variable affects the results when it doesn’t.

Making decisions based on insignificant results. Every test must be statistically valid. That means you must reach enough of your audience to assure that you have accurately sampled that audience, and that you get enough responses to accurately calculate your results. When you fall below certain minimums, your results are worthless. Testing is expensive, but you can’t cut corners.

Overlooking an important result. Numbers are data. You only have information once you analyze your numbers and draw conclusions. That’s why it is important to do more than just list your results; you should play around with them. See what might be hiding in all those digits. Is there a trend? Are your results seasonal? How do your results compare with industry averages?

Refusing to repeat a test to confirm results. An accurate test is repeatable. In other words, if your results are accurate, you’ll be able to test again and get similar results. If you don’t, there’s something wrong somewhere.

Filing away results instead of using them. Why test if you just calculate a response rate and throw your report into a filing cabinet? Those numbers are expensive to get, so use them. Analyze every test quantitatively and qualitatively. Show the numbers and write  your thoughts and conclusions. Then share the test data with everyone involved. After every test you should know something useful, like “this 2-page letter works just as well as this 4-page letter” or “this offer increased inquiries from our TV spot by 35%.”

Failing to keep a running record of conclusions. Over time, as you see the results of test after test, you will start to see patterns emerge from the numbers. Organize and list this information as a guideline for future testing. Building on your hard-won knowledge will dramatically increase your success rate.

In all cases, testing is about acquiring knowledge, because you don’t “know” anything until you test. Knowledge is the gold for which you should be panning. And testing is not something you do once and forget. It is not something you do only when you have a little extra in your budget. Testing should be – must be – part of your routine, everyday business.

You should forever be in what I call the Testing Loop:

1. Run a test.

2. Analyze the results.

3. Act based on the results.

4. Repeat.

Remember, testing is not about confirming your savvy or proving your biases. All those little so-called mistakes are not mistakes at all. They are nuggets of precious knowledge. They are your most valuable asset.

Indeed, $#!* happens. But that odor is not failure; it’s the sweet smell of future success.

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I love a good quotation.

Over the years, I’ve collected a few hundred quotes about advertising and selling that are variously inspiring, funny, or instructive. Here are some of my favorites.

“Advertising is totally unnecessary. Unless you hope to make money.”  -Jef I. Richards

“A good ad should be like a good sermon: It must not only comfort the afflicted, it also must afflict the comfortable.”  -Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

“Exuberance is better than taste.”  -Gustave Flaubert

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.”  -Howard Luck Gossage

“Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his prospects face-to-face. But he can’t.”  -Morris Hite

“When executing advertising, it’s best to think of yourself as an uninvited guest in the living room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly.”  -John O’Toole

“Thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help. They look for a royal road through some short cut in the form of a clever scheme or stunt, which they call the obvious thing to do; but calling it doesn’t make it so. They don’t gather all the facts and then analyze them before deciding what is really the obvous thing, and thereby they overlook the first and most obvious of all business principles.”  -Robert R. Updegraff

“You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going ’cause you might not get there.”  -Yogi Berra

“The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.”  -David Ogilvy

“Advertising in the final analysis should be news. If it is not news it is worthless.”  -Adolph S. Ochs

“Let’s say you have $1,000,000 tied up in your little company and suddenly your advertising isn’t working and sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it. Now, what do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?”  -Rosser Reeves

“Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.”  -Edmund Burke

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.”  -Samuel Johnson

“I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.”  -Leo Burnett

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Yes. No. Well, sometimes.

Whether negative advertising works depends on who you ask. Ask a political campaign manager, and the answer is yes. Ask an product advertising manager, and the answer is no. Usually.

I’m thinking about this for two reasons:

One, the current election season is producing some very negative advertising. And if you think national politics gets nasty, watch the local races. That’s where the gloves really come off.

Two, Apple has been running some negative TV advertising for a few years that actually works. While these are not direct response ads, they are instructive.

The rule of thumb is that negative advertising doesn’t work. Why? In Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins said it best:

To attack a rival is never good advertising. Don’t point out others’ faults. It is not permitted in the best mediums. It is never good policy. The selfish purpose is apparent. It looks unfair, not sporty.

If you abhor knockers, always appear a good fellow.

Show a bright side, the happy and attractive side, not the dark and uninviting side of things. Show beauty, not homeliness; health, not sickness. Don’t show the wrinkles you propose to remove, but the face as it will appear. Your customers know all about wrinkles.

In addition to making you look petty, negative advertising puts your prospects in the wrong frame of mind, gets them thinking about your competitor instead of you, and fails to make the positive emotional connection that is the linchpin for any sales pitch.

But what about political advertising? In this arena, negative advertising, while universally disliked, actually works. Why? Because unlike in product sales where people are usually making discretionary purchases and have many product options, those who vote feel they must make a choice, and that choice is usually between just viable two candidates. At least in the U.S., third party candidates seldom have any chance of winning.

In other words, making your competitor look bad won’t necessarily steer them to your product because they don’t have to buy anything and usually have lots of choices. But making the other candidate look bad can steer them to vote for you because voters feel an obligation to vote and usually have only two choices.

Here’s an example of a negative political direct mail piece for a race in Ohio. (I’ve blurred the candidate’s name.)

The cover reads: (Candidate) walked out on his family …

The inside spread reads: and left them with NOTHING. (Candidate) is a deadbeat dad who was found in contempt of court for failing to pay child support. (Candidate) WALKED OUT ON HIS FAMILY. Don’t Let Him Walk Out On Ohio. Don’t vote for (Candidate).

Wow. How’s that for negative advertising? But guess what? That kind of personal attack will affect voters. It works. Because it makes you hate one candidate, and you only have one other candidate for vote for.

So what about those Apple TV ads? Does this sort of thing work with products? Yes, but only when it’s handled in a careful way and when the conditions are right.

Here’s a library of the Apple ads. You’ve seen many of these on TV.

Are they negative? Sure. There’s a nerdy guy representing PC computers (specifically Windows-run computers) and a cool guy representing MACs. Each ad knocks some perceived flaw in the PC and discusses how the MAC is better.

Does it work? Yes. But the ads are lighthearted, not nasty. They poke fun and don’t reach the level of slander. Plus, since most computer users have PCs, they’re familiar with many of the problems the ads talk about, but don’t know much about problems the MACs have.

And here’s the key: The computer market is dominated by PCs and MACs, meaning Windows systems and MAC systems. Just as in politics, you have to make a choice (nearly everyone needs a computer) and you have just two viable systems to choose from. So by making you doubt one system, you are steered to at least consider the other system.

I want to emphasize that while negative advertising works in politics, it seldom works in product sales. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out a lack or flaw in competitors as part of an ad, but building whole ads or entire campaigns around these negatives is usually a bad idea. So the MAC ads are the exception.

But if you can find the right tone, and if you have the proper environment, meaning limited competition, it’s possible to make negative ads work.

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I’ve always been fascinated by print ads of days gone by. Besides their cultural value, they provide a unique insight into advertising tactics.

Duke University’s Ad*Access Project has collected and scanned more than 7,000 ads printed in the United States and Canada between 1911 and 1955. This is not a collection of direct response advertising. From my brief perusal, these appear to be mass market, brand building ads from newspapers and magazines.

The ads represent five product and subject areas: radio, television, transportation, beauty and hygiene, and World War II.

I don’t know if these ads are representative of all advertising during the time period because they’re from a single collection put together by J. Walter Thompson, which could be skewed by whatever interest JWT had when assembling the ads.

Still, there’s a lot to be learned by studying mass market advertising. Ads of the past also tend to be easier to analyze since they are aimed at sensibilities of former generations, allowing a good measure of objectivity that you may not have when looking at ads directed at you today.

This is an excellent collection worthy of a bookmark. If you know of other quality collections online, let me know.

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Many advertisers put a lot of emphasis on the “likability” of their ads. The idea is that if people like the ad, they’ll buy the product. But is that always true?

There’s nothing wrong with people liking your ads, but I’m not so sure that likability is a prerequisite for selling. Consider the infamous “Head On” TV ads.

(If you can’t see the video here in my feed, click on to the blog to watch.)

Likable? Hardly. It’s one of the most hated ads on TV. It’s so disliked, it has become an icon of annoying advertising. The company even acknowledges this in follow-up ads where the commercial is interrupted by “viewers” who say, “Head On, I hate your commercials, but I love your product.”

Personally, I love these ads. Well, I don’t love them exactly. I think they’re annoying, too. But I wish I’d written them. Why? Because they’re pure genius. They do exactly what they’re supposed to do — burn a brand into your brain so when you’re at the store you’ll recognize it and buy it. Can you think of any headache medicine with a commercial this memorable? I sure can’t.

I would love to have sat in on the meeting where the ad team presented this idea to the Head On people. “You want to do what? Say it how many times? You’re joking, right?”

Likability? I don’t put much faith in that. I like what works. Sometimes that means creating an ad people like. Other times it means creating an ad that pisses people off. The question is, do you have the guts to do what it takes no matter what that is?

I touched on this in a popular article I wrote some years ago about a lesson my grandfather taught me with a dead chicken. In that article I quote Charles F. Kettering, inventor of the electric self-starter for cars, who once said, “My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. … You can be sincere and still be stupid.”

I think that’s what I really like about that Head On ad, and it’s what I like about all effective advertising. It does the right thing at the time it has to be done. Unflinchingly. Unapologetically.

Can you think of other ads past or present that were annoying but effective? Have you created annoying ads, mail, or promos of any kind that worked like gangbusters?

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