5. YOU! Inject some of YOURSELF into your ads! Using your own experience, or testimonial, can be HUGE in getting through to your customers. Explain how it has helped you, how easy/profitable/inexpensive it is. Your enthusiasm and passion for your product can be your best ally when writing ad copy.

6. Call to Action Oddly enough, research has shown people are FAR more likely to click on a link, buy, or subscribe if you simply tell them to. So, including a "Click Here" or "Visit Our Website Now" can actually result in a higher response rate than ads without these simple instructions.

7. Ad Tracking Don't even bother advertising without ad tracking. It is absolutely essential to your business success. You MUST know which ads are working, when, and where. You will probably be surprised: sometimes an ad you love will be a real dud, another you might find somewhat questionable will blow up your hit counter! Play around with different headings, wording, where you post, categories where you place your ads - they can all yield different results. I like to test my headlines on free FFA and Classifieds sites, then use winners as subject lines for my safelist advertising.

Keep these seven Essential Elements in mind when creating all your advertisements (you might even want to print out this article for easy reference) and you'll soon have customers clammering for your products and services!

Silestone and Diana Pearl are not exactly household names. And Dennis Rodman slurred his line. It sounded like "Dinah Pearl, rather than, "Diana Pearl." I'm sure director or writer got dissed when they said, "Uh, Worm... it's 'Di-A- na'."

"Sure. Dinah."

As a side note, why were only Chicago Bears in it until Dennis Rodman at end? No Scottie Pippen or Slammin’ Sammy?

On to good 'uns...

Winners:

This year, game was nearly as good as ads, as there were a surprisingly good number of breaking spots. Leading pack was Career Builder, FedEx, Mastercard, and Anheuser-Busch.

FedEx likes to make ads relating to advertising on advertising's biggest stage. They did it again - patching together 10 "tried and true" Super bowl ad conventions to great results.

Career Builder put a great spin on a stale category with best work since Monster's "I Wanna Be..." [a brown noser, forced into retirement, etc.] from '98. Three ads featuring a hapless chump working for chimps managed to put their name into mind share largely dominated by two others.

MasterCard got a bunch of animated branded food icons together for a meal and a nice touch of nostalgia. Ad fans and agency folks dug this one.

A-B hit emotional hot buttons with a near-public service ad saluting troops retuning home. Yes, they were real military - not actors. Their uniforms just did not have any insignias, so common soldier would be represented. For their light beer category, ad with head on wall and designated driver spot were best for Bud Light.

Pepsi’s second year of an iTunes promotion kicked off well. They ran a humorous spot featuring people opening winning bottles for a free song. When bottles were opened, a song reflecting drinker’s taste in music would play. Although spot was humorous and worked, Pepsi could’ve really hit a home run by involving older “authority figure” more into ad. But, keeping with brand tradition, they kept focus young.

AmeriQuest had two entertaining spots revolving around themes of misunderstanding and jumping to conclusions. Their message was, “We don’t prejudge.” The ad featuring spaghetti sauce, a cat, and knife will certainly make some ‘Best Of” reels this year.

Decent work also included Honda's new pickup/SUV product introduction. Good detail with benefit highlights. Left "Honda" out until end. Cadillac and Volvo had solid ads. Volvo should have bought another ad, if not two, as many people missed early run. The audience also may have missed details on their unique contest. But they did follow up with some net portal ads day after. Ford's F-150 Biker spot was OK. Their line that "it makes YOU tough," really undercut effectiveness.