Driving Home the Lesson of the Red Sports Car: Command Attention with Your Next "Top 10" List

Can you picture a sports car?

How about a red sports car?

With that little, colorful adjective, the image becomes much more vivid. It catches your attention in a way that a generalized statement did not.

It's the same with "Top 5" or "Top 10" lists, which were everywhere we turned as 2010 drew to a close (year-end reviews of this, that and every other thing). Compilations along those lines should be in decent abundance as 2011 gets rolling here, too, as we learn how to get smarter, thinner, wealthier, safer and savvier.

So if you're in the attention-getting business and are thinking about developing a "Top" list, remember the lesson of the red sports car. Be different, be flashy, be memorable--or risk winding up in someone's "Top 10 List of Hum-Drum Top 10 Lists."

Anyone can come up with a "Top 10 Weight Loss Tips." Be someone who goes the extra half-ounce, steps out on an edgy ledge and offers counsel on "10 Steps to Quit Being A Fat American."

My favorite recent "red sports car" example is from Dave Ramsey's financial e-newsletter: "11 Ways to Be Weird in 2011."

A Less-Is-More Creative Gem From Bill Daniel

Providing to your readers, in an economy of words that succinctly get to the single, distilled point or principle that you seek to convey, is infinitely more effective and engaging than droning on endlessly, even if you employ 15-cent words and $1.50 phrases and $15 paragraphs that have each and every punctuation mark—including the oft-used em-dash, which I rely on a bit too much myself—in their proper place.

Or, to put it another, much better way: less is more.

That’s why I want to take a moment to rave about this fantastic ad that my father-in-law, longtime advertising genius Bill Daniel, created a few months ago.

Before moving to Palm Springs four years ago with my wonderful mother-in-law, Pat, Bill was a force in the Chicago ad world for more than 35 years. After working for the likes of McCann-Erickson and Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), for 20 years he co-owned an ad firm in Chicago (Equinox Advertising, which later became Washington Daniel).

Along the way, he was instrumental in numerous award-winning campaigns for the likes of Reebok, Allstate Insurance, IBM and Anheuser-Busch. At FCB, one of his brainchilds was The Silver Bullet, for the Adolph Coors Co.

As for this classic rabbit-foot ad, it is appearing regularly in Below the Line, a movie trade publication. It replaced a text-heavy ad that, while highly informational, was only slightly more digestible than the 70-word monstrosity that began this post.

Which Below the Line ad do you suppose will be remembered, and acted upon, more frequently?

I hope and trust that you will enjoy Bill’s creative masterstroke as much as I do. And if you want to try to lure him out of semi-retirement a bit more, just drop him an email at wjdaniel@mac.com.

Let The Dogs Bark, The Caravan Moves On!

If you're a publicist and want to avoid controversy, then there's a simple formula: take no risks and go to great lengths to avoid offending others.

In short, prepare to fail.

With any worthwhile pursuit, if you bring enthusiasm and creativity to the task, you will leave yourself open to naysayers, hecklers and all manner of critics.

That's because one person's enthusiasm and creativity is another's bad idea and unseemly taste.

Such was the recent case with I Do, Doggone It!, the Nov. 8 event in Oak Park, Ill. that I publicized for Downtown Oak Park, an association of businesses who wanted to bring attention to their shopping district.

We drew 87 couples on a bone-chilling, rainy day--easily the 2nd-largest wedding in history, though shy of the Guinness World Record of 178, set in Littleton, Col. in May 2007. And with 13 same-sex couples (nine male and four female duos), we likely set the standard in that category.
Local letters to the editor, and even an editorial, found fault with either the premise itself or the fact that we did not break the Guinness record.

All those slings and arrows go with the territory.

Fortunately, so does the continuing national and regional coverage, from the likes of Fox News, the Chicago Tribune and various Chicago television stations, which continue shining a spotlight on Oak Park's downtown.

Let the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on!