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Are these people nuts?

Do they have money to burn, and can't find any better way to get rid of it?

Wait, wait. I'm forgetting my 2007 New Year's resolution to not wax sarcastic about the perpetrators of ads that I find to be crying out for a makeover. So I'll try to stay calm and civil.

But this one doesn't make it easy. I found it in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal.

And what is it advertising? Well, take a quick guess.

We see a little girl sitting on a weather-beaten bench. She's holding and contemplating a silver loving cup. It's hard to tell where the bench is situated. It appears to be resting on a brick-tiled floor, and behind her is a gray horizon that could be sky, desert or water.

And running just below the back railing of the bench in small white letters is what presumes to be the headline: “The Pure Enjoyment of Life.”

If you look a little harder, you will see a loving cup logotype icon and the words “Silver-leaf. Scottsdale, Arizona.” This is followed by a lot of small white lettering on gray that most readers will never bother with.

Would this ad make you feel like plopping down 2 million to 10 million bucks on a retirement dwelling far away?

It makes the same old mistake of blathering vaguely at everybody rather than singling out, pulling in and talking to the right somebodies.

Out of the vast sea of paying readers (most of whom will ignore or merely glance at most of the advertising in the newspaper), which few is it seeking to attract? And what does it feature to attract them? (No answer.)

Many of you have had some experience in the past with the direct marketing of a considered high-ticket purchase. You learned to break the process down into two steps, getting and converting inquiries.

First, out of the general public, your tested advertising and promotion attracted your most likely self-identified prospects. And then, through a more detailed and perhaps customized additional sales effort, you converted the prospects into customers.

You learned to calculate your allowable advertising cost per inquiry and your allowable advertising cost per sale — right? If your advertising cost per inquiry was 10 cents and you converted 10% of them, then your advertising cost per sale was $1. You then used the same method to calculate the cost of converting a self-identified prospect to a purchaser. What was left over from your sales income was what was available for your product, overhead and profit.

I am reviewing these basics simply to make an important point: If the folks at Silverleaf used this familiar DM thinking and demanded this kind of accountability from their advertising, they wouldn't be running unsound ads like this one.

In planning my makeover I started as I usually do, by seeking to visualize and think about the most likely prospect. I see a man, woman, or couple of retirement age who can afford to retire at Silverleaf and may have at least a mild interest in Arizona as a retirement haven. If their affluence is not all due to an inheritance, one or both of them may have gotten their retirement nest egg from a lifetime of hard work and business or professional achievement.

Such a person may have conflicting feelings about retirement. On the one hand, it seems good to get out of the rat race and enjoy endless relaxation. During a lifetime of endless striving, most people keep looking forward to the freedom and ease of retirement. On the other hand — and here's the paradox — the prospect may worry that he or she may miss the excitement, stimulation and involvement of yesterday's rat-race life. Will trouble-free retirement bring endless joy or merely slow decline moping around in a rocking chair?

So first my headline identifies with and empathizes with that concern: “Maybe you thought your best years were over.” (This ad sounds like it's by somebody who understands me. If you, the advertiser, understand me, the prospect, then I am more inclined to believe and trust you.)

Then the headline finishes: “But then at Silverleaf you saw the light.” (Double meaning.) Coupled with the adjoining logotype, this starts to tell you who, where and what the advertiser is, and makes a strong promise that your retirement years in Arizona will be a highly rewarding new chapter in your life.

Within the limitations of necessarily small black-and-white photos, the illustrations visually convey “Arizona mountains” and “golf” for readers who might find these appeals inviting.

Next, the body copy (in readable type!) goes on to spell out attractive features and benefits of home ownership at Silverleaf that would appeal to my interested but concerned prospect: The luxurious private club and the fellowship it will offer. The impressive famous-designer golf course, very important to a golfer. The enchanting restaurant with outdoor dining patio. The biking and hiking trails. The retail shopping center. The medical facilities. Everything you need so you can “get away from it all but have it all.”

Finally, I have sought at the end to answer the question in the interested reader's mind, “Yes, yes, but exactly what do I do now? Hop on a plane and fly out to Scottsdale on the strength of the information in one skimpy ad?”

The answer provided by the original ad was to merely offer you a phone number to call for an appointment and a Web site address to visit for more information. And the site doesn't help enough, either. It tries to draw you in with a questionnaire — “Tell us about yourself” — presumably so a salesperson call call you and go to work on you.

But that's not what you want, certainly not yet. What you want first is to gradually get better acquainted with Silverleaf and what your life there would be like.

So my makeover provides not only a phone number for making an appointment and the Web site address for further information and views; I've also invented a third way to find out more: a color brochure.

What? A color brochure in this age of the Internet? Am I kidding?

But last year catalog merchants mailed out a record 19 billion catalogs. Well-done printed pages are still an enjoyable, orderly way to take in lots of persuasive information and illustration. A handsome, detailed brochure could provide a vivid guided tour in print to be dreamed and pondered over again and again in spare moments and finally lead to a decision to call for more information or an appointment.

In addition, tabulating the brochure requests generated by each ad and each insertion and comparing the inquiry costs would provide an invaluable index of advertising effectiveness. That would help the advertiser avoid wasting money by running (sarcastic adjective deleted) ads like this one.

(Note: I have made no attempt to include all of the original ad's gingerbread elements. My aim was to show a better direction, not provide a finished ad.)

THOMAS L. COLLINS (thomas.l.collins@verizon.net) has been a direct marketing copywriter, admaker, agency creative director and co-author of four books on marketing. He is currently an independent creative and marketing consultant based in Portland, OR.

Find more Makeover Maven columns at http://directmag.com/opinions-columnists/makeovermaven/.