First, the radio commercial.

Question: As you listened to that commercial, what pictures did you see in your mind’s eye?

The GPS device?

A woman behind the driver’s wheel of a car?

Probably.

How about you or someone else using TurboxTax software to complete your income tax return?

Probably not.

Here comes the clue train.

Here Comes The Clue Train: The picture you paint in the listener’s mind is the picture they will remember. If the picture they remember has nothing to do with the results promised by your product or service, you have just thrown away your advertising dollars.

Also, most people don’t enjoy being lied to.

That woman was behind the wheel of a car, confessing that she’s “not good with directions”? There’s a GPS device in the car, and it’s helping her get to her destination?

A believable scenario. (Not necessarily a believable staging or performance, but a believable scenario.)

So we join this woman on her driving adventure…only to discover this story isn’t about driving at all. It’s a sales pitch for something called “TurboTax.”

And when we realize we’ve been lied to, we stop listening. Yeah, it’s something called Turbotax, but we lose interest before we can learn exactly what it is and how it can help us.

Finally, the inane Call To Action: “See for yourself at…”

Right. Uh-huh. We listeners have a burning urge to see for ourselves whatever it is they’re trying to sell us.

On a scale of 1 to 100, this campaign scores:

Lame.