Yes, I know, people normally say that it's the first sign of madness, but not in this case. This type of talking to oneself is about the way an advertiser talks to their Target Audience and they so often get it wrong.

I remember, a long time ago, a very smart adman told me that the only way you could ever effectively sell a product is by living with it - and that means eating it, drinking it, needing it, playing with it, giving it house-room – and that was very memorable advice.

If you don't understand a product completely then how can you possibly attempt to sell it and I know of dozens of examples of admen & adwomen living the product for that very reason, including a creative team who ditched their 911s for a whole week and travelled at least 3 hours a day on the London Underground and I'm quite sure that at the end of it they probably knew more about the Tube than the client did.

(This game also has other benefits such as extra time out of the office and more than a few product freebies).

However, this is only half the story and although it is so very important to understand the product completely, it's even more vital that we understand those mysterious people that we're trying to sell to. The Target Audience.

We need to be able to talk to them in a language that they will relate to, in a language that uses phrases and terminology that they use themselves, and using claims, hooks, benefits and offers that will capture their attention and make them want to buy.

If you walked into an old established City Investment Bank looking like a Jack the Lad sporting a Sarf London accent and asked to see "The Guvnor" you'd probably get short shrift and shown the door.

Likewise, if a City toff wandered into a backstreet pub on the Isle of Dogs in London and ordered a "Gin & Tonic my good man and be quick about it" he'd probably get the same shrift – but even shorter.

And you probably wouldn't talk to women in the same way as you'd talk to men.

Now whether this is all right, wrong or indifferent is irrelevant and they are merely extreme examples to make a point, but the cold fact is that people like to communicate and socialise with similar people. 'Birds of a feather' so to speak. It makes them feel comfortable.

But this is far more than just accents, social demographics and misplaced preconceptions; this is also about terminology and phrasing.

How many times have you seen a piece of advertising copy that has been littered with over-complicated jargon or extraordinary scientific Esperanto?

We do not create ads to show off our technical, literary or linguistic expertise, nor do we assume that our product is "the very finest" and therefore "you're very fortunate to have the opportunity to buy it", nor do we create ads just to win awards (well, not any more).

We advertise to ultimately sell product and to do that successfully we must certainly understand the product thoroughly, but we must, more than anything, understand the reader, or listener, and talk to them as if we were them.

If other words – talk to ourselves .

And that's not mad, just good old-fashioned commonsense.

David Wood. 2009

SHRIFT. Not a word you hear every day. A shrift is a penance (a penalty) imposed by a priest in a confession in order to provide absolution, often when the confessor was near to death. In the 17th century, criminals were sent to the scaffold immediately after sentencing and only had time for a 'short shrift' before being hanged.