“A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time”. Do you agree?

Well, if this is said by the great Henry Ford, who will I be if I dare disagree?

 

 

I agree for the most part. But I’d, also, say in a very low voice (to avoid public scrutiny from the “majority vote”), that this is a saying by a great industrialist who changed car/automobile production into innovative mass production (the first conveyor belt-based assembly line in a car factory), benefiting from being only the second manufacturer in the US after Ransome Eli Olds, soon the biggest in the US and the one with lowest competition and biggest market share by 1913, already.

The likes of Ford and big companies can afford ongoing advertisements efforts and expenditure without turning an eye to ROI vs cost.

 

 

I don’t think this saying applies to all businesses all the time! You can’t “stop the time”, but you can pause your advertisement efforts according to situations. Why? Some advertisement simply entail more cost than any gain or ROI and sometime no gain and no ROI whatsoever. Your advertising strategy may need some tweaking and reconsidering. Would you still follow such saying blindly because Ford said it about his company, product, market and TIME?

 

A great ad should be…?

What makes a great ad differs according to the type of advertisement. You didn’t specify what type of ad, so I will choose TV-ad.

TV-ad

A great TV AD should be interesting to watch and re-watch, enjoyable to listen to from the kitchen, hard to zap away during commercial breaks and easily remembered and associated with the advertised product.

It can be anything from funny to lame and from informative to vague as long as it does not humiliate the intelligence of the viewer with too many clichés.