If you watch an old Warner Brothers gangster movie from the Thirties or Forties, you hear a lot of palaver about the most terrible sin that a gangster can commit. It's ok to kill your brother or shove a wheel-chaired grandmother down a steep flight of steps. But whatever you do, DON'T become a cheese-eater.
Cheese eaters vs. D and D.
That is, a rat.
That is, someone who talks to the flatfoots.
That is, the coppers.
The police.
The highest praise you could bestow upon someone who stay quiet in the face of forceful interrogation was "he's D and D."
In the parlance of the movies and criminals, "D and D" meant "deaf and dumb." You don't hear anything, you don't say anything. (D and D is politically-incorrect today. Today we'd say HI and SI. Hearing-impaired and speaking-impaired. But, thankfully, I don't believe the mobsters are hep to that jive.)
In advertising today, at least advertising as practiced by GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, it seems to me that many clients don't have a ton of experience in either how advertising works or what it's supposed to do. They're either spread so thin they don't have time to learn it. Or they're too book/MBA smart. Or advertising is just a small portion of their daily tasks.
It seems to me that many marketers today are more "technologists," or "cost-consultants," "or what if my boss doesn't like its" than they are advertising people.
Because of that, and because I am constantly pitching, I've created some simple ways for GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company to explain what it does.
That brings me back to D and D.
Though in my neck of the woods it's not gang-related. And it doesn't stand for Deaf and Dumb.
It's my synopsis of what advertising must do for a client. What a client my demand from their advertising. What about 99.9-percent of advertising fails in.
D number one: Definition.
What does your client do?
What does your client make?
What need does it fulfill?
What makes your client valued or special or worthy of note?
What are they all about?
Why should I care?
D number two: Demonstration.
How can you show me what you do?
So I understand it?
So I believe it?
So I can "try it before I buy it?"
So I can tell my friends and my neighbors?
There are other Ds I could throw out here. A D for "dissemination." That is how do you get your message out there. And another D for "disciples." How do you create advocates for your product or services.
But to my mind, in capital A Advertising, the first D should get about 60-percent of your time, money and effort. The second D about 30-percent. And you can do what you will with the final two.
Without the first two, everything else is academic.
If I don't know what you do and why, why should I want anything to do with you?
Damn.
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