This Crappy Ad Made Me Laugh!
OKAY, OKAY, I KNOW that Adster is in the web site business, but just humour me, and there WILL BE a web site connection at the end of this musing, I promise.
So here’s another newspaper ad that caught my eye last week, not because it was beautifully-designed – it’s NOT, or because it was selling anything I wanted to buy – come on, a trip to the dentist? I think I’ll wait on that one. I stopped to read it because it was a Q&A, something that probably catches a lot of people’s eyes, and it promised to deliver information from an expert, a dentist no less, and all one had to do was ask. The ad says “Ask the Dentist!” with the exclamation mark included.
The Adventures of Broken Teeth Man?
I read on and darned if I didn’t start laughing. Here’s a poor guy with lots of broken teeth, and he goes into way too much detail about his dental problems and stuff you don’t want to know about. I mean, the guy can hardly eat! He gets embarrassed at restaurants! He swallows big chunks of food, then gets gas! From broken teeth! Well, anyway, I found it funny. Then, I read the Dentist’s answer. It was all serious and expert-like, as if you could really trust this guy. But wait a minute, this guy’s name, this dentist, well, it was “Dr. C. Ross Crapo. Really??? I thought, this can’t be true. It’s got to be part of the joke. Well, I googled Dr. C. Ross Crapo, and sure enough, much to my amazement, there is a real dentist guy with the name of C. Ross Crapo. Now, I don’t know him from Adam, but if I had to guess, I would say that this fellow has a sense of humour BECAUSE of his kooky name, and he just likes to have a little fun.
Anyway, it worked for me. The humour reeled me in, and then the serious and considered answer made me begin to trust this dentist. Now, I don’t know if this dentist has done a series of ads like this, but if he hasn’t, he should, and then he should post them all on his web site, kind of like a blog. Then, he should rework the web landing page in his newspaper ad (which is nice and prominent at the bottom of the ad) so that his readers – his would-be dental implant candidates – arrive on the page with all the funny ads. Once they’re there, then of course they’ll start clicking around the serious parts of the site to learn more about dental implants and how Dr. Crapo can change their life AND alleviate their gas problems. After all, why not have some fun first before heading for the dentist’s chair!