“Introducing Choice” was the worst ad I ever wrote. It didn’t address any specific audience or any particular element of laboratory workflow. It promised only a vague, useless benefit (“Choice!”). It failed to position the products advertised in any meaningful way, and it was ugly. There was really nothing in it for the reader but hard work. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t pull.
At substantial cost, we were placing it in Science, Nature, and Biotechniques. We were just about to cut its insertion schedule short when Bio-Rad began running a counter-strike advertisement in the same books. Bio-Rad’s “Real Choice” ad was a deliberate clone and had the same layout and typeface and everything. Even though we were unhappy about the performance of “Introducing Choice,” we found Bio-Rad’s move hilarious. We also thought that the visual similarity between two ads appearing in the same issues, and the phony controversy, might motivate some subscribers to read and reply to our ad, and we let it continue its run.
But the lead count remained pitiful. “Introducing Choice” was a turkey, and nothing could save it.
