The average person is so assaulted by different messages that they need to tune out everything that isn’t relevant, or they’d go crazy. Filtering stuff out has become a way of life. If your messages are fractured or inconsistent, you don’t stand a chance of making an impact.

It’s surprisingly common for an advertising channel to drive someone to a website, only to have the prospect encounter visual styling so inconsistent with the previous messaging that he thinks this must be a different brand and clicks out. With many companies putting their websites completely in the hands of an IT department, with little or no influence from the marketing team, this happens all too often.

In fact, so few companies are good at brand consistency that those willing and able to widen their brand gain greater influence than ever before. They look larger, more influential. They stand out simply because their consistency draws attention.

Imagine a delivery company with a fleet of trucks, every one painted a different color. They travel throughout a city, day after day, while each individual truck has no chance of gaining attention on its own. Paint them all the same — a relatively small investment — and suddenly it seems that one company dominates the city’s trucking industry. This is the essence of brandwidth, but it goes much deeper than just visual styling. It includes knowing what you want to say and sticking to the plan. The great brands haven’t changed their messaging for years, even decades. Even how the phones are answered can contribute to the consistency of messaging.

Think of the great brands. They all have the same thing in common: consistent brand messaging for decades. That’s the power of brand width. How wide is your brand?

Versus TV trailer

Versus Television ran this nice trailer during the 2010 Tour de France, highlighting the power of sports and competition as a vital element of human life. It makes its point well.

You can see a full length (2:16) version here

Nike World Cup

In a similar vein, Nike ran this outstanding ad just ahead of the 2010 World Cup. The storytelling is superb, and I can only imagine what kind of a budget was behind this effort:

Apple Facetime

Apple created this powerful ad to highlight the new Facetime feature in the iPhone 4. I really like how it feels. It makes me want to use the feature, which is the mark of a great commercial.

Livestrong/Nike “Engine”

Lance Armstrong’s new ad for Livestrong Foundation and Nike does an excellent job of creating emotion with what would normally be just a jumble of background noise. Works beautifully in this context.

Apple Think Different ad

When Steve Jobs regained the helm of Apple, he introduced this new message to remind people of what Apple represented. Great way to apply the emotion of a brand. Not everyone “gets” this message, and that’s the way it should be. Only those who get it will connect with the brand, and they will be loyal.

McDonald’s Larry Bird vs. Michael Jordan

Okay, it doesn’t have quite the same emotional power, and falls short of some of the great McDonald’s commercials from the 80′s, but not a bad effort to help the brand ward off its negative perception as a junk food provider and attempt to relate to the world of athletics.

FourSquare uses a concept of having people check into places they visit, and the one who visits most often is declared the “Mayor” of that facility. The Cactus Club clearly understands the power of talking directly with the people who use that social media environment, sending me the message simply because I was within walking distance of a Cactus Club location. Perfect! I had long been advocating that restaurants use the power of Mayorship for marketing, so I was thrilled to see that the Cactus Club was doing something with this.

The most common argument I hear about using social media is that the audience is relatively small, compared to such things as flyer drops into the community or running an ad. Yes, it’s true that there’s only one Mayor per establishment, and there may only be a few thousand FourSquare members in your city, with only a few hundred potentially in your community. So what? These are highly targeted people. They fight over becoming Mayor! When you lose a Mayorship because someone else passes you in visits, it’s a big deal for FourSquare users. Any business can gain repeat visits, and by definition, additional sales, by using this strategy. I believe that because of the nature of foodservice, restaurants can gain more than most other retail services.

The Cactus Club was offering a free gift card for whoever was mayor on a particular day, at a particular time. That’s extremely powerful, and a brilliant example of using social media marketing. I hope this is only the start of better use of social media.

Other restaurants are also starting to “get it” when it comes to the power of social media.

Morton’s gets it, too

Roger Drake, senior VP of the Morton’s steakhouse chain, explained that they make significant use of social media. One strategy they’ve applied with great success is bringing in celebrity servers for fund raising, then using Twitter to tweet their appearance. Followers on Twitter receive “inside” information that an NBA star or other celebrity will be at Morton’s, creating a buzz about the event.

Morton’s also offers Twitter followers bar bites in the bar. They encourage people to tweet from the event, to create powerful word of mouth awareness. They hold special events called “Burgers for Bloggers” where they serve mini Prime Cheeseburgers. This is great stuff!

They also use Facebook effectively. For Valentine’s Day, they asked guests on Facebook to send photos of their Valentine’s Day experience at Morton’s. “We got more than 50 photos,” said Roger. One couple got engaged in the restaurant, and this was mentioned on their Facebook page, providing powerful emotional appeal and creating a strong connection with fans. For Mother’s Day, they will have people go to the Morton’s Facebook page to post their favorite Mother’s Day Morton’s dinner photos.

It’s about relationships

When using social media, don’t spam people. Don’t think of it as a way to stream out one-way promotional messages. Use it to create relationships. Seek out the people who post frequently on your Facebook page, and offer them special incentives. You can even make them administrators of your page, an unpaid task that can have huge rewards because these are among your most faithful guests and their voice can serve more effectively than anything you say. With Twitter you can announce special spur-of-the-moment offers, perhaps a discounted appetizer or beverage special. Have your guests mention a phrase you use in a Tweet to get special treatment, and they’ll love you for it, because you’ll be making them feel special and creating that dynamic two-way relationship.

Starbucks applied a FourSquare strategy in which they offered the mayor of any location $1 off any of their new anyway-you-like-it Frappuccino. It was a reasonable strategy in some ways, but the $1 wasn’t a big enough draw, in my view, to be significant. There’s only one mayor of any location at any given time, so it’s not like you’re giving away the keys to the store by making the offer more meaningful. A screen shot of the coupon is shown at right.

Yes, Facebook and Twitter require an ongoing, consistent effort to be successful. That’s another thing often mentioned as a negative. Why would that be that any different from any other daily task, assigned just as you assign a day chef to start your food preparation? Approached with the mindset that this is a long-term process, a consistent effort to connect with people around you, social media will have a strong impact on your sales.

Advertising has gone through many transitions during the four decades since the ground breaking creative headline of the “Lemon” ad changed marketing communications forever. There were periods when many ads had no headline at all, and times when headlines were so long they took up more space than the rest of the ad. In an effort to move away from what might be seen as ‘too traditional,’ it seems that many copywriters have forgotten the value of the headline.

Research has found that the headline represents 84% of the effectiveness of any communication. 84 out of every 100 people who read an ad, web page or E-mail message will do so only if the headline or subject line does its job. No doubt some people will say, “But what about [insert dramatic exception here]?” Of course there are exceptions. There are no hard rules in advertising. But there are patterns and realities of human behavior. Research is useful for finding out what is most likely to be effective.

I’ve seen many A/B tests where one headline would pull far better than another, when everything else about the message was the same. In one dramatic case, changing a single word in the headline drew four times as many responses. Headlines matter.

So, if the headline is as important as all that, it makes sense that copywriters should spend time on it. Far too many don’t give it enough thought. And far too many clients don’t think they should. In fact, you should actually spend four times as long writing the headline as the rest of the copy!

A great headline is short, concise, and powerful. But it rarely starts that way. It takes time to cut away and edit and painstakingly reshape until you have something that can’t be reduced any further without changing the message.

Carmine Gallo, in his excellent book “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs,” writes that the best headlines need to be short enough to fit into the 140-character limit of a Twitter post (known as a “Tweet”). It’s good advice. Twitter is an excellent tool for copywriters. It forces you to think in short sentences, compelling you to write copy that does the most with the least.

Gallo goes on to illustrate his point with real examples from Apple:

• MacBook Air. The world’s thinnest laptop. (42 characters)
• The iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket. (37 characters)
• Apple reinvents the phone. (26 characters)
• The industry’s greenest notebooks. (34 characters)
• iPhone 3G. Twice as fast at half the price. (43 characters)

You might think that these apply well to Powerpoint, but won’t prove as creative or effective as the headline of an ad or E-mail message. Not so. Apple actually ran these same headlines in all their communication channels, and even used them in interviews. They appeared on their website as the feature headlines found on the home page, in the subject lines of their E-mail promotions, in press releases and in their magazine ads.

The media found they couldn’t write more effective versions. This meant that editorial coverage on these product announcements ran with exactly the same headlines. When Apple introduced the iPod, the Associated Press ran their story with the headline, “Apple’s new iPod player puts 1,000 songs in your pocket.” When the iPhone was launched, PC World ran the headline that Apple would “Reinvent the Phone,” using language provided by Apple. It doesn’t get any better than that.

In his book, Gallo points out that this rule is equally important in other presentation settings. For example, your pitch about a business concept given to potential investors also needs to meet the “Twitter” rule or it won’t go anywhere. Google pitched its concept using the following headline: “Google provides access to the world’s information in one click.” Gallo mentions that one investor told him, “If you cannot describe what you do in ten words or less, I’m not investing, I’m not buying, I’m not interested. Period.”

If you write copy, create a Twitter account and start using it. You’ll be amazed at how it could improve your headline writing skills.

Since most headlines are short enough to fit within the limits of a Tweet, ask yourself if the headline will actually mean anything if that’s all you saw. When you strip away the graphics and other parts of the message, is it still compelling? How well do your headlines meet the Twitter rule? Will they stand out in the ever-changing stream of a Twitter feed? If not, they won’t stand out in the stream of consciousness that impacts all media.

I came across this interesting example of how moving simple punctuation around can totally change the context of a story. It’s pretty funny.

The first letter:

Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy — will you let me be yours? Gloria.

The second letter:

Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Gloria.

Alfred Korzybski, who developed the concept of general semantics, explained it this way: Insane people try to make the world of reality fit what is inside their heads.

Someone who thinks he’s Napoleon makes the outside world fit that notion. He filters and interprets the events and signals around him to fit that belief. There’s no room at all for facts.

But the sane person is exactly the opposite. She constantly analyzes the world of reality and adjusts what is in her head to fit the facts. In other words, while the insane person has only opinions, the sane person never has opinions or feelings. She would be totally unaffected by colors, shapes, other people’s viewpoints and so on — using only cold, hard facts to make every decision. She would buy a mustard-colored sports car called the Slug on the same emotionless basis as a bright red Viper because issues of color or semantics have nothing to do with actual performance. What friends think wouldn’t even be an issue. Indeed, a completely sane person would be like a computer, and in many situations would be unable to make any decision at all! If you were truly making your decision on logic alone, you would often be unable to make a decision for lack of sufficient input.

Most people are somewhere in between. You make up your mind about something you like based on input from many sources, including visual appearance and emotion. A lot of it comes from your gut reaction, how you feel about it overall. You might like the color of the red car, causing you to prefer it over the brown one, even if other aspects of the car are less favorable. Once you start to form your opinion, you look for additional pieces of information proving that you are making the right decision, despite the fact that many aspects of your decision are not based on fact. You may even find the nearest expert (or non-expert) and accept his or her opinion. That way you don’t have to bother with too many facts. In the advertising business, that’s called “word of mouth.” So how did the ‘expert’ you went to get his or her opinion? The same ‘unsane’ way you did!

A good marketing or advertising strategy makes use of this psychological process. A good strategy must be simple, fitting easily into the mind of the prospect. It must be memorable. It must provide just enough facts to be believable. And it must strike an emotional chord to satisfy “unsane” people.

So how does this actually work in the real world?

Strategies and brand positioning are used to appeal to the emotional part of our decision-making process. Very rarely, if ever, are these designed to appeal to logic.

When Apple computer said, “Here’s to the crazy ones,” it was talking about all of us. That “think different” campaign was entirely pointed at our emotional response to being seen as leaders and innovators in a world of followers. This claim had nothing directly to do with whether the computer was better than the competition, because those arguments would have had no impact. People don’t want to hear that they made a bad choice. They want to be inspired by their association with one brand because it is cool, or thoughtful, or daring, or whatever.

Here are a few other historical examples of unsane marketing at work:

Pepsi: The Choice of a New Generation

This campaign used emotion to trigger existing feelings of rebellion in young people, giving them an option to drink something different from what their parents were used to. Does this have anything to do with taste? No. But it worked wonders with an unsane audience.

Coke: The Real Thing

This campaign stood on Coca Cola’s position as the “original” soft drink. The factual side of this strategy combined with the implied perception that any product that has been a leader for so long must taste good. Personally, I think it’s a weak campaign (there’s no product definition), but it served the need Coke had to re-establish its position as the “original” cola.

BMW: The Ultimate Driving Machine

Despite the fact that this car doesn’t look anything like a true sports car, this campaign effectively positioned the BMW as a driving enthusiast’s automobile. A certain amount of factual information had to be used to make the statement believable, but I wonder how many people make a sports-car buying decision without ever trying a Porsche.

United: Fly the Friendly Skies

This campaign ran for many years, and was very effective. Yet while it ran, I flew many different airlines and found staff at most of them equally friendly and courteous. This ad campaign worked because people want to believe that there’s a difference. Of course, success with this type of approach means you better be as good or better than others in the area you’re talking about, or you could crash and burn (it won’t be pretty).

Budweiser: King of Beers

Now, Bud may be a great beer, but exactly what makes one beer a “king” compared to another? Nothing, except the image of that bottle cap turned upside down. A brilliant campaign, directly targeted at the “unsane” nature of how and why we make buying decisions. It has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotion. Long live the king (of beers)!

Good copy interrupts whatever thought process you were involved in and holds you spellbound.

Good copy anticipates questions and objections, raising and answering them before you even thought of them.

Good copy sells.

Good copy is hard to write.

Who reads copy? I often hear people say they never read copy. Sometimes they’ll say this while holding a newspaper or magazine! They read books, don’t they? You’re reading this. One of the world’s greatest advertising gurus, David Ogilvy, liked to point out that anyone will read an entire page of copy if it matters to them. If your name is Jane Doe and you saw the headline, “This Ad is All About Jane Doe” you would likely read every word.

What matters is not how much copy there is, but how relevant it is to you and how well it’s written.

If you recently bought a car, you probably won’t notice most car ads. But if you’re trying to decide between two models, chances are you can’t find enough information to help you make the final decision. Ogilvy says, “you can’t bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.”

So how do you create interesting copy? Here are a few tips.

Present a powerful headline or audio/visual impact

84% of the effectiveness of any ad is that initial two-second impression that keeps people on the page or channel. Remember to mix a bent headline with a straight picture, or a bent picture with a straight headline. Never use both a bent picture and a bent headline together.

Try framing your copy as a story

Some people think this approach is no longer fashionable. Nonsense. People always have and always will respond to stories. There’s something in how we’re built that makes us love storytelling.

Make your ad communicate to one person at a time

The word “you” is so important in advertising. You can’t appeal to a group. People read ads one person at a time. In television or video you can communicate to each individual by showing that you understand their unique feelings about a subject. Write your copy as if you are talking to one person, with nobody else around.

Forget comparisons with other products

Comparing your product or service with something else that the reader or viewer understands is fine, but don’t compare against a competing product. This will only confuse people and may end up elevating the competitor instead of your client. And be very careful with silly metaphors. We’ve grown past that and they rarely work anymore.

Be careful who represents you

Testimonials are great, but they work best if they come from the person next door, not some celebrity. Especially if that celebrity does something unseemly. We’ve all seen plenty of examples of that lately, haven’t we?

Don’t be clever for the sake of being clever

Most attempts to write clever ads are embarrassing failures. Clever or funny ads are very difficult to write in a way that makes them effective.

Try not to make your ad look like an ad

That seems obvious, but way too many people don’t get this. The reason a person is reading a newspaper or magazine or online article is because of the content they paid for (even if they didn’t pay for it). The more your ad fits in with that content the more effective it’s likely to be. And don’t apologize for being an ad, either. If your ad is relevant and meaningful, what’s there to apologize for?

We try too hard. Far too often, marketing professionals use brute strength in an attempt to force ideas and products onto consumers instead of relating to the core needs and attitudes of their target audience. The greatest marketing successes tapped into emotional realities that already existed: Volkswagen. Apple. Nike. Molson. They saw what people were already thinking and touched it. Cultural sensitivity has never been more important for marketing than it is today when we’re at the leading edge of a whole new era of change.

One of the best ways to understand tomorrow’s consumer is to study today’s teenager. Fortunately, I have three teens at home to observe and talk with daily. Each one has been using computers since the age of two. They’re comfortable with technology. All three are building Web sites and one manages a busy online forum. I view them as a focus group for culture. It’s been enlightening and a bit scary. They’ve taught me that marketing isn’t really more difficult than before, just more intimate. Let me share some observations.

Watch a teen use communication tools and you begin to grasp one obvious reality — tools are not converging. Observing teens has convinced me that convergence isn’t a driving passion in their lives. They use the telephone when it makes sense to use the phone, they use e-mail for specific kinds of messages, and they use the Web to get facts and to place orders. All three tools are used to interact with brands, but each one has a unique role to play and teens instinctively know what that role is.

Teens recognize the telephone as a medium ideal for communicating emotion. Where previous generations used it as their primary messaging tool, tomorrow’s consumers use it for emotional impact. They laugh on the phone. They use it to communicate feelings in ways no other technology can match. Smart marketers can tap into this reality with “conference call” focus groups or live announcements where participants can express themselves freely.

While older generations are still trying to figure out how e-mail works, young adults know exactly when and why to use it. Forget about unsolicited sales messages. This is an unwelcome intrusion into their personal space, and they hate it. They crave e-mail, but only when it comes from sources they agreed to, from brands they have already granted permission to build a relationship. E-mail is used most often to communicate information-rich messages.

A cool new URL to look at gets sent to a whole group of friends in a second. News about a team, band or favourite brand is hot, and gets passed along quickly. Once they’ve “opted in” to receive mail from your brand, they welcome your messages as long as they aren’t self-serving. Marketers who involve their subscribers as a genuine community and recognize the value of these brand loyalists will win big, while those afraid of tapping into this dialogue process will lose ground. Yes, it’s scary to allow open public discussion of your brand. What teens seem to understand better than most executives is that this dialogue is already taking place anyway.

The Web is used for brand information. Smart marketers will respond to the way tomorrow’s consumers use the Web today. Offer up relevant content on every page. Make it fast and meaningful, or they change brand loyalty. Make it easy. Promotions that combine digital media with analog communications are also effective.

Best of all, there are whole worlds of culturally relevant marketing opportunities we haven’t even thought of yet.

One of my daughters is seriously into a CD-ROM game called The Sims. After setting parameters for computer-generated individuals, you can watch your simulated people interact with each other, get jobs and find romance. Not long ago, she breathlessly announced that one of her Sim women had proposed to a man, he accepted, and they got married.

“Did the ring have an Ekati (Canadian) diamond?” I asked.

“There are no brands in The Sims, Daddy,” she replied.

Interesting. “Would you like to have brand choices?” I probed. She needed no time to think about it. “Of course,” was all she said.

The opportunities are right in front of us all the time, in the midst of today’s teen culture. We merely have to see them. Just like always.