There is some data that must be known by all personnel who are drafting up promotion of any kind. It is so important that lack of it is reducing the effect of your promotion by more that fifty percent.

As you know, there is no promotion that should be done without prior survey. And in most cases, the surveys are being done before the promo is put together. However it becomes obvious that most people are not duplicating their surveys and getting it on the promo.

So what is it that must be done to put your survey on paper as promo and make it effective? The primary thing you get from your survey is a “button”. This is the answer that was given the most number of times to your survey question. In the case of the most recent national surveys that button is HAPPINESS. You want to get HAPPINESS across in your promo.

You must realize what you punch up in your promo is what they see at once. That’s the headline, the prominent words, it’s what attracts the eyes. And it, in every case, must be the button.

Now let’s look at an example. Our button is Happiness. Does our promo look like this:

No. Intro Lecture is a non-existent button. It’s punched up big but will have no effect.

Now this promo would be much more effective if it looked like this:

Now why is this? Your promo is going out and gets received amongst thousands of other advertisements for soap, refrigerators, shoes and sealing wax. The public, deluged by this constant flow, tends to briefly glance at the promo and tosses it away. They see it and if it’s not sharp enough, and if it doesn’t push the right button fast enough, they pass on by. Promo that gets this treatment is called “throw-away”.

Now by using your survey tech, you can get the right button. If you punch it up as demonstrated above it will hit the public fast enough because they see it first, and they’ll read it all the way through.

You can actually test the “throw-away” time of your promo with a stop watch. Slip a piece of your promo in a magazine and hand it to someone. Time how long they read your promo piece while flicking through the magazine. If they pass right by it, you know there’s something wrong.

You can also test promo by its “confusion level” If the public has to read a paragraph to find out what it’s all about, they won’t read it. So the delivery of your message has to be sharp. They have to get your message at once. And you can accomplish this by being concise and clear. Know what your message is and get it across.

The last point here on promo is this — Promo has to be consistent. It doesn’t do to punch up Happiness and then talk about communication, communication and communication. Why? The public wants HAPPINESS, so they must be told how to ACHIEVE happiness. It could run like this: “Happiness is achieved through understanding. Understanding is increased by Communication. Take our Communication Course and achieve Happiness.” In other words, BE CONSISTENT. Relate your service to the button.

Work on the above points while keeping in the seven points of an ad per HCO PL 10 Feb 65 “Ad and Book Policies”. Improve your promo and you will increase the numbers of public coming into your Org.