'But How Do You Know?'
Why? Because hating it means the idea is provocative. And when something sparks that strong a reaction, it could also incite donors to respond — and not necessarily negatively. Explore the basis of your reaction, and consider getting over it — at least for the purposes of a test. Because that thing you hate just might pay off bigger and better than you considered.
In those cases, you might be served best by adopting what one of my favorite account executives of all time started doing when presented with creative he couldn’t stand. After seeing other concepts and offers he really disliked end up performing better than anything else tested, in the future he’d grin and announce enthusiastically, “I hate it! How soon can we get it into the mail?”
Who’s doing it?
Contrary to what your parents told you, this is one case where it does actually matter if “everybody else is doing it.”
Sure, it’s great to be a pioneer and identify the new-new thing and be the first one in the mail with a fancy new format or a nifty new premium. But that isn’t a cheap proposition usually, and if you have a limited testing budget, you don’t have a lot of expense money laying around to blow on one really pricey gamble.
Unless you’re confident the offer (or something very similar to it) is mailing regularly in rollout quantities, it’s probably best to
resist the allure of the shiny and remember that silver bullets are only real in werewolf and vampire movies.
One exception: If the offer was mailed in big quantities in the past and you’re thinking about giving an old, gray mare another chance to be everything she used to be, bump this idea from the bottom to the middle of the pile depending on the cost of a test and how many tests of new creative you have allotted for the year.
