How Advertising Actually Works
You've heard the terms: brand building, the 60/40 rule, mental availability. This is where the research behind them gets explained in plain language, so you know what it actually means and what to do differently because of it. We draw on the people who've spent decades studying how advertising works, Binet and Field, Byron Sharp, Robert Heath, the IPA, and translate their findings out of academic language into decisions you can make. If you want to understand the evidence instead of just repeating the buzzwords, this is for you.
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Emotional vs. rational advertising appeals for services
Emotional ads win for restaurants, rational ads win for dentists.
Whether an emotional or a rational pitch works better isn't a matter of taste; research shows it depends on what kind of service you sell and how easily a customer can judge its quality before they buy.
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How Advertising Actually Works
Advertising research doesn't replicate as often as gurus pretend.
A surprising share of the behavioral science behind popular marketing advice doesn't hold up on retest, so the right response to a confident claim is to ask what it's built on.
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Statistical confidence in small business ad testing
Why a 97% confidence score can still mislead you.
A dashboard that says your ad is winning with 97% confidence sounds like proof. It usually isn't proof that this ad will keep winning, and the fix is not a better calculator but more patience.
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How Advertising Actually Works
Why a clever ad can still lose to a boring one with a logo.
The research says a viewer's brain needs about 1.5 seconds and a clear brand marker to remember an ad, which means recognizable branding does more reliable work than a clever idea.
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60/40 rule
The 60/40 rule doesn't apply if you don't have two budgets.
The 60/40 rule was built for companies with a brand budget and a performance budget to split. Most small businesses have one ad account, so the ratio doesn't transfer, but the reasoning behind it does: mixing recognit...