It's nothing less than fantastic how easy it is to recognize an excellent piece of advertising. Recently my son marvelled at an airline's advertising poster with a headline "Welcome onboard!". The clever visualization showed a young snow boarder in mid-air taking a breathtaking jump. "Good thinking, ha?" my son said with a smile on his face. When you see a product presented in an effective, different, fresh, consistent and even stunning fashion, you have most likely not simply been confronted by any piece of advertising but brilliantly-planned advertising. Intelligent marketing communication certainly makes the difference - and is bound to sell better too.

The main distinction between factual product information and real advertising is the style and way of addressing the recipient of these messages. It's the approach, not the choice of media or even the substance, that counts! Along with the approach, another factor explaining the nature of advertising messages is the fact that they are assigned, approved and, finally, also paid for by the company or organization that is behind the message. Admittedly, this may create either some constraints or biases. However, do not forget that this may also create an amazing degree of freedom.

IT’S ALL ABOUT CREATING SOME MAGIC. AND IT DOESN’T COME EASY! This brings us to the magic aspect of advertising. In this context, a great many misconceptions, prejudices and outright misunderstandings flourish. There is a common tendency to think that all magic must be based on tricks or distortion. The most serious kind of accusations state that truly evocative advertising on less than magic products can only be created with the help of lies or half-truths. Nothing could be more distant from the truth. If an ordinary product or a very commonplace service can be successfully marketed through a brilliantly composed advertising campaign, the truth is that there must be something latently special in those advertised objects, something that is well worth discovering. Advertising might help people to make those discoveries.

Finding "it" is the number one task for all sufficiently ambitious advertising planners. Penetrating the most essential core of the product's nature is the primary function for every campaign designer - irrespective of whether he or she is a copywriter or a visualist. Martti Korpijaakko, the founder of Smart Communication, was attracted to his career in advertising by a recruitment ad that didn't have as a headline "A Copywriter" or "A Campaign Planner" or anything like that. The ad showed a face immersed in deep comtemplation and an evocative headline simply stating "A Thinker." It took Martti several years to thoroughly comprehend and appreciate how correct that one-word description was about the very essence of the truly painstaking process of advertising planning.

There is an obvious paradox between the ease of recognizing brilliance in a piece of advertising and the difficulty that must be overcome in the process of creating, developing and finishing that very same excellence. Somehow this paradox resembles any sports performance representing world-class level. For instance, take tennis played on the center court of Wimbledon: the world's best tennis looks very smooth and easy, yet everyone is well aware of what a truly harsh process has produced those two competitors.

WE NEED CULTURE, AESTHETICS, ENTERTAINMENT - AND TRUTHFUL FACTS! Brilliant advertising always stems from an evocative interpretation based on proven facts. Good advertising should always be firmly based on nothing less than truthful information about the product or service it tries to sell. Even when we talk about complex products that may even be revolutionary in some sense or another, one of the most evident tools at our disposal is the fact substance related to that product. Still advertising is never a consumer report or a product test vehicle in spite of its reliance on facts that can be proved. Generally speaking, we can say that advertising is an interpretation of the product or service in question - the more fresh, unconventional, aesthetically pleasing, interesting, fascinating, teasing or convincing that interpretation is, the better.

If that interpretation is properly developed and sufficiently ingenious we start seeing some changes in the minds of the recipients of this communication. At least their interest towards the product to be marketed has been boosted, their opinion about the product may have become stronger and the likelihood of them even buying that product has been enhanced. If that kind of changes take place in the minds of the target group, we can say the marketing communication has accomplished something. In spite of all this influencing of people’s minds, advertising as such can hardly make anyone make more or less intelligent choices. Individuals are precisely as smart or stupid as they are.

Good advertising is based on sense for culture and aesthetics, entertainment, product information - all of these at the same time. Without advertising our environment would be much poorer, both spiritually and materially. To plan marketing communication is a difficult and challenging profession where the most important tools are brains, intuition, good taste and - last but not the least - true appreciation of the people you address with your message.