Close the Door
It might save your life or next campaign.
This weeks sponsor: Letterdrop
Letterdrop helps B2B marketers create quality content 32% faster. Prioritize the right ideas, manage stakeholders, optimize for SEO, and automate distribution across channels like Webflow, LinkedIn, and your sales team.
“What’s the most important thing people should remember in a house fire?” asked Tony.
The fireman looked up and said “To shut the door!”
Usually when a fire breaks out most people’s natural reaction is to get out of the house as quickly as possible, leaving doors wide open behind them.
Open doors allows more oxygen to flow to the fire. The more oxygen a fire gets the faster it can spread and grow. With the doors closed, a house fire won't have unlimited oxygen to burn.
Simply closing the doors helps limit a fire from spreading quickly, giving you and anyone else in the house more time to get out.
So with that knowledge Tony Schwartz created one of the most memorable ads ever created - Close the Door. Have a listen below:
In case you weren’t counting - the answer is 18. He says “door” 18 times.
Tony created more than 20,000 radio and television spots for products, political candidates and non-profit public interest groups. So he clearly knows what he is doing - so what made this ad so effective?
He leveraged 3 key tactics every marketer should think about in their own campaigns:
Repetition:
As I mentioned, in just 60 seconds “door” is heard 18 times. One almost every 3 seconds. The ad has a point to make and is going to make sure that isn’t missed. Repetition makes sure the listener can recall the most important thing from the ad. While it may seem like a simple concept, repetition can be an incredibly powerful tool when used correctly and this is a great example of that.
Paint a picture:
The ad also gives you multiple real examples of fires. It doesn’t dance around the devastation and impact a fire can have. Instead it gives examples of the damage can do, which helps paint the importance of the one thing the ad is trying to get you to remember. Which brings me to the final thing…
The one thing:
The ad is hyper focused on one thing. This is one of the areas I see so many companies struggle. Don’t believe me - go visit any homepage of a SaaS company today… Take a Demo, Start a Trial, Chat with Sales, Accept our Cookies, Subscribe to our newsletter, etc, etc etc. There is a clarity to your campaign, copy and message when you focus in on the one thing you want your audience to do. This is true in a radio ad like this just as much as it is for a social post, facebook ad or any other campaign you are running.
Ask yourself - “What’s the most important thing people should remember in a house fire campaign?”
Thanks for reading!
This weeks sponsor: Letterdrop
Letterdrop helps B2B marketers create quality content 32% faster. Prioritize the right ideas, manage stakeholders, optimize for SEO, and automate distribution across channels like Webflow, LinkedIn, and your sales team.