Posts filed under ‘Advertising’
Gigi is trying to make plans to return to her native Ethiopia
By Steve Hochman, Spinner.com:
Don’t book your flights quite yet. But if you’re a world music fan (and given that you’re reading this, you probably are), there may be something happening in early January that you’d want to see.
Of course, if it happens it will be in Addis Ababa. The singer known as Gigi is trying to make plans to return to her native Ethiopia (where she was born as Ejigayehu Shibabaw) for the first time since she left in 1997, hoping to play a concert in the capital on Jan. 7 – the Ethiopian Orthodox Christmas.
When she left, she was just an aspiring performer. But after settling in the US – first in San Francisco and later New York – she became a sensation in world music and beyond, endorsed and encouraged by fellow Ethiopian expat Aster Aweke, signed by Chris Blackwell (the man who built Island Records and turned Bob Marley into a global icon) to his Palm Pictures label and produced by eclectic innovator/bassist Bill Laswell (who later became her husband). It’s a rise that, she has been told, those at home followed with great interest. This would be the first time she’d gotten to perform for her Ethiopian fans.
“I really became famous after I got here,” she says, talking from her Manhattan home. “I made one record there, but it came out after I got here. I’m not sure, but from what I’ve heard from people I have a huge following there. A lot of people know my records.”
Whether you can go or not – whether she can go or not – you can get a taste of what it might be like, as Gigi has just released a live album, ‘Mesgana Ethiopia,’ her first in-concert collection and her first of any kind in more than four years. The band behind her sports international jazz and traditional music frontliners (the latest edition of Laswell’s Material, including adventurous American drummer Hamid Drake and Senegalese percussionist Aiyb Dieng, Ethiopian-Japanese keyboardist Abegasu Shiota, Zaire-born guitarist Dominic Kanza and a two-man horn section). And with her voice a fluid, powerful instrument, Gigi revisits and recharges songs from her studio albums, along with a pair of earthy traditional Ethiopian songs and one previously unrecorded original, ‘Shemum Mune.’ … Read More & Listen @ Spinner.com
Ten Rules for More Effective Advertising
Smart
Leahy’s Law states that if a thing is done wrong often enough, it becomes right, and as a result, volume becomes a defense to error. When advertising fails to sway consumers, most advertisers follow Leahy’s Law by increasing the frequency of the advertising hoping that more of what is not working will somehow work when consumers are subjected to more of the same.
Use the following 10 simple rules to evaluate the advertising you encounter. You may be disappointed, but don’t be surprised when you discover that most advertising fails to follow any of the rules.
1. Does the ad tell a simple story, not just convey information?
A good story has a beginning where a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation, a middle where the character confronts and attempts to resolve the situation, and an end where the outcome is revealed. A good story does not interpret or explain the action in the story for the audience. Instead, a good story allows each member of the audience to interpret the story as he or she understands the action. This is why people find good stories so appealing and why they find advertising that simply conveys information so boring.
2. Does the ad make the desired call to action a part of the story?
A good story that is very entertaining but does not make a direct connection between the desired call to action – the purpose of the ad – and the story is just a very entertaining story. The whole point of the story in advertising is to effectively deliver the desired call to action. If the audience does not clearly understand the desired call to action after seeing the ad, then there is no point in running the ad. Contrary to popular belief, having an entertaining story and clearly delivering the desired call to action are not mutually exclusive.
3. Does the ad use basic emotional appeals?
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the experiences are important to remember. There are eight basic, universal emotions – joy, surprise, anticipation, acceptance, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. Successful appeals to these basic emotions consolidate stories and the desired calls to action in the lasting memories of audiences. An added bonus is that successful emotional appeals limit the number of exposures required for audiences to understand, learn, and respond to the calls to action – people may only need to see emotionally compelling scenes once and they will remember those scenes for a lifetime.
4. Does the ad use easy arguments?
“Jumping to conclusions” literally gave our ancestors an advantage even when the conclusions that made them jump were wrong because delaying actions to review information could have deadly consequences. Easy arguments are the conclusions people reach using inferences without a careful review of available information. Find and use easy arguments that work because it is almost impossible to succeed when working against them.
5. Does the ad show, and not tell?
“Seeing is believing” and “actions speak louder than words” are two common sayings that reflect a bias and preference for demonstrated behavior. This is especially true when interests may not be the same. Assume audiences are skeptical about any advertising and design advertising that shows and does not tell.
6. Does the ad use symbolic language and images that relate to the senses?
People prefer symbolic language and images that relate to the senses. People are far less receptive and responsive to language and images that relate to concepts. Life is experienced through the senses and using symbolic language and images that express what people feel, see, hear, smell, or taste are easier for people to understand, even when used to describe abstract concepts. The language and images used in advertising should “make sense” to the audience.
7. Does the ad match what viewers see with what they hear?
People expect and prefer coordinated audio and visual messages because those messages are easier to process and understand. Audio and visual messages that are out-of-sync may gain attention, but audiences find them uncomfortable.
8. Does the ad stay with a scene long enough for impact?
People have limited mental processing capacities. Quick cuts to different scenes require people to devote more of their limited resources to following the cuts and less resources to processing each scene. It takes people between eight and ten seconds to process and produce a lasting emotional response to a scene. Camera movement or different camera angles of the same scene can engage people through their orienting responses while providing enough time for them to process the scene.
9. Does the ad let powerful video speak for itself?
Again, the processing capacity of our brains is limited and words may get in the way of emotionally powerful visual images. When powerful visual images dominate – when “a picture is worth a thousand words” – be quiet and let the images do the talking.
10. Does the ad use identifiable music?
Music can be a rapidly identified cue for the recall of emotional responses remembered from previous advertising. Making the same music an identifiable aspect of all advertising signals the audience to pay attention for more important content.
These rules take into consideration consumers’ out-of-conscious processing systems. To learn more, go to The Scintillating Grid.
Source: American Research Group, Inc.
