One ad can never tell the whole story about your business. Great ads make one point very powerfully. If you try to convey too many different ideas in the same ad, it gets confusing. Of course, we’re talking about intrusive media in this case. You can cram all the information you want into a newspaper ad or direct mail piece. But for intrusive media it’s best to strategize a cohesive series of ads, better known as a campaign.
A successful ad campaign is one that’s easy to recognize. The goal is for each ad to be identified immediately by using the same music, voice, characters, style, etc. Whenever you release a new ad in the campaign, you hope that it’s instantly recognized based on the awareness you’ve built up to that point.
Many advertisers get bored with a campaign and change directions just about the time they start achieving top-of-mind awareness. When you have a solid campaign in place, use it as long as possible. Do you think Motel 6 would have been wise to pull the plug on Tom Bodett after only a few months? Can you believe they’ve been “leaving the light on for ya” since 1986?