Here’s an absolutely great article. Elevator pitches that don’t work. They took 17 big companies, scrambled up their one line elevator pitches and tried them out on 350 smart marketers. The goal was simple. Match the pitch the to company. eBay, of course, is “To help practically anyone buy and sell practically anything”. But which company, precisely, is “Continued investments in IT result in measurable productivity gains.”

I don’t think the point is that these companies need a better elevator pitch (the product offering is probably too broad.) The point, from where I stand, is that EXPECTING your ads to communicate ideas this complicated in a sentence or two is ridiculous. One more reason ads don’t work for complex offerings.