Should Your Ads Include Details?

A customer's natural craving for details will determine how she responds to your advertising, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Customers who hunger for details will eat them up, if you provide tons of them in your ads.

But customers who don't care for details will be turned off by your information-heavy ads, and probably won't buy your product.

The study's authors say there are two types of customers, distinguishable by their desire to understand things.

Some customers like to think; some don't.

From a series of experiments the authors conclude that, by presenting a lot of product information to the latter group, you remind those customers they're shallow.

That reminder makes them feel uncomfortable—and less likely to buy from you.

In related experiments, the authors also found that the latter type of customer is less willing to pay a premium price when the ads for a product are detail-heavy.

Dreck Mail

The US Postal Service may be floundering, but neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will stay advertisers' use of direct mail.


No matter how attractively designed, in my book a direct mail piece that obscures the product or its benefits fails.


Case in point.


Yesterday's delivery brought me a hefty, richly printed B2B piece.


The piece arrived in a clear polywrap sleeve.


The advertiser was a major oil company.  


On the front side, below my name and address, appeared an offer ("Earn 5% rebates up to $30 on fuel purchases for 60 days").


On the reverse side was a large panel with a picture of a twisted highway.  


Above the picture was the headline, "Sometimes, managing your vehicles can seem, well... unmanageable."


I had to open the piece and pull a tab (marked "Pull") to slide the panel out.


My action revealed a picture of a straight highway.


Above was the headline, "Introducing real control and convenience."


Get it?


Before and after.


Before and after pictures should prompt me to visualize the product's benefits.


In this instance, they didn't.


I guess a picture isn't always worth a thousand words.


Only by opening the folder and reading the enclosures did I learn the oil company was pushing its credit card.


That's just too much work.