Every other week, the ad department at our San Diego advertising and public realtions agency gets together for lunch (“brown bag” as we like to call it), to discuss articles, new industry trends or just agency life in general. Each team member has been assigned a certain industry publication, since obviously, none of us have the time to read every publication, blog, etc… everyday.

In our lunch yesterday, our Advertising Account Director, Jennifer Personette, shared with us an interesting article on AdAge about what makes ad campaigns work. Some interesting key points from the article are as follows:

1- Focus on hard objectives, such as specific market-share gains, rather than soft ones, such as brand awareness.

2- Focus on price, not volume.

3- Focus on penetration (winning new customers) rather than loyalty.

4- Influence consumers emotionally rather than rationally.

5- Create ads with “talk value.”

6- Have a high share of voice relative to brand market share.

7- Include TV in the mix.

8- Include a small number of media channels with a concerted message.

All of these are great ways to help increase a company’s sales or profit. I do have to admit though, I was a little surprised by number 3. I know it is extremely important to constantly win new customers, as that is one of the major ways to increase profit. However, I am also a big believer in customer loyalty and making sure you keep them as customers. Naturally, this varies from brand to brand, but still. Especially today with people spending less, isn’t it more important to keep the customers you have already won?

I really like how they included TV on this list. A lot of people think that TV advertising is not worth the money any more and that it is a dying medium. Yes, people are DVRing shows now. However, the vast majority of the population is not. Even people that are, like myself, sometimes forget to fast forward through the commercials or the remote control isn’t right next to them and are too lazy to get up to go get it to skip the commercials.

One thing I would have like to have seen on this list is to include some form of social media, whether that be Twitter, Facebook or something else. Social media is key these days.

What do you think is missing from the list or should not even be on the list?