FAB

Features. Attributes. Benefits. These are the three categories of information given while selling a product. The features are the common things among similar items. The attributes are the specific items that differentiate your product from the others.  The benefit lets the buyer know how the product will help them. In selling a car some features would be power windows and things along those lines. The attributes would be the sync Bluetooth system in Ford vehicles and the benefits would tell them how reliable it will be for transportation.

Brands

Just to see what brands we use or how often we come in contact with different or the same brands we wrote down all the brands we used every half hour for a day.  I personally had a huge variety of brands throughout the day, but also had a consistent run of the same brands during the day.  Using so many products you are bound to see some variety, but there are certain things or brands that I used often.

Do's and Don'ts

There are several things in advertising you should do and don't do. For the do's you should always try to translate you message for the audience, create emotion, be simple, concise and focused. All of these will be create the most vivid picture for the audience.  A few don'ts are to avoid cliche's, soft language, double speak or betray your audience.

Soft Words

We watched a clip of George Carlin talking about soft words. We've been so immersed in these soft words that they have become the standard today. We live in a very PC society and very few people can actually say what they want to say without offending others or bringing up bad emotions. A lot of these soft words come from the government or corporations that don't want people to know what things really mean because they don't want to look bad themselves.  One of his example was of people that are traumatized coming back from war.  It started off as shell shock, but after several name changes it's now known as post traumatic stress disorder. There are countless examples of soft words being used in today's society.

SAFEST

There are several ways to make a story better. SAFEST is the acronym for the six ways to add to a story.

Statistics
Analogies
Facts
Examples
Stories
Testimonials

Concrete v Abstract

There are two types of language that can be used. Concrete language and abstract language.  When writing it's best to avoid abstract language.  It takes more work and longer to get the message to the audience. Abstract language is very vague and uses theory as opposed to concrete words that get the most out of fewer words.  Concrete words are solid and tangible. Concrete words help to utilize dual coding and let the audience fill in the gaps and draw the conclusions the writer wanted them to.

5 Senses and Words

Everyone has five senses. Sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste. When writing you need to tap into as many of those senses as possible.  The saying a picture says a thousand words needs to work in your favor as a writer. When writing you need to use as few words as possible to get you message across as vividly as possible.  You need to try for fewer than eight words per sentence and only two to three sentences per paragraph.  Dual coding is a great tool to tap into multiple senses for the audience at once. Let them do the work and put the story together.

Subway Commercial

I'm not sure if anyone has seen the new Subway commercial about the buy one 6-inch sub get one free for the month of April, but I personally haven't seen it until the past week. For full disclosure I have to admit I don't have cable so I'm not able to watch anything besides local channels.  There is nothing special about the commercial itself, but the timing of the commercial I thought made it interesting.  If they, in fact, did just start showing it in the second half of the month it seems like a pretty good get it now tactic.  They were probably offering it all month, but didn't advertise it so they didn't have to give out the discount as much.  They also put it into people's heads that if they don't come in soon they will miss out on the opportunity.  They might even come back several times in the next week or so.