Battle for the limelight

Battle for the limelight

You have a great product and your current customers love it, your company is doing reasonably well, but you want more. It’s time to think about advertising. But, in a world saturated in images and messages all fighting to grab your attention, how can you be sure that your advert will get noticed?

There is an infinite number of images, concepts and ideas out there, so when you start to develop your advert – from scratch – the prospect of creating something eye-catching, memorable and thought provoking is really quite daunting.

Russell Smith, Managing Director of design agency Intuitive Design, explains: “As people are buying into franchises, one can assume that the reason that they are buying into a franchise is because the franchise works. The brand is therefore key to the advert franchises produce. It is important to get the balance between the brand and message that you are trying to convey, or the particular promotion that you are advertising.”

Starting point

Russell advises: “The first step should be to define your target market to make sure you send the right message to your desired audience. Once you have decided on your target market, you then need to explore the most effective advertising opportunities available within your budget.”
Russell urges you to remember: “Good advertising does not always mean expensive advertising. Always check out the competition, analyse what’s good or bad about adverts already on the market. This will give you some direction on how you want or more importantly, how you don’t want your adverts to appear.”

Think outside the box

Being creative and innovative is essential when it comes to increasing the impact of your marketing message. Advertising and public relations specialists, Kate Hague and Cat Bailey of Pink Green explain the challenge: “No one really likes adverts. People do however generally like things that are fresh interesting, provocative or completely unexpected!”

Kate and Cat highlight some great examples of good advertising by companies such as Honda, Millets and Dove. A spokesperson from Unilever, which produces Dove beauty products, says: “Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, which promotes the idea that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes and ages, is a good example of aligning the values of the brand with what's important for its target audience: [this] seeks to promote products that help our consumers look good, feel good and get more out of life.” The impact of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, launched in 2004, is phenomenal. Unilever now boasts that Dove is the world's number one cleansing brand, has sales of over € 2.5 billion a year in over 80 countries, outsells all other skin care bars combined in the US, and that there are over 1 billion showers taken with Dove products in the US each year!*

Few franchises will have the same marketing experience or advertising budget as Unilever. However, it is worth noting that the success story here is very much a result of combining originality with your audiences’ needs, or as Kate and Cat would say: “Tell your audience what they want to know, not what you think they should know.”

Grab their attention

Russell explains it is essential to be clear and concise: “Many adverts that you see overload you with content. The audience is going to be turned off by this and will not want to read it. Adverts have got to catch their attention with a good line, relevant to the target audience that will engage them and make them want to read on. As Kate and Cat agree: “The main purpose of the headline is not to sell your product, but to grab the readers attention…and keep it. If you are not a fantastic copywriter then keep to the point. Break copy down into bite-sized chunks of information that are easy to digest.”

Carefully selecting where you place your adverts in a magazine can also improve your chances of grabbing your audiences’ attention. As Kate and Cat explain: “Look at the publication before you start and explore the different advert formats and positions available”. For example, cheap air fares intelligently positioned next to a business news page will ensure that the right audience sees the advert.

The big picture

Kate and Cat recommend that you think before you leap into the advertising game, “never think of your advert as a one-off publicity shot, think about your whole campaign. If you have a product that comes in seven flavours, do not try to cram them all into one advert, run several adverts each with one clear message.” This not only strengthens your brand through consistency, but also ensures your marketing message is clear.
“Highlight the main benefit of your product or service. Does your advert fully convey what those benefits are? If not go back and fine-tune it until it feels right,” and “identify the problem that your product or service can solve for the reader,” say Kate and Cat.

When it comes to monitoring response rates, Kate and Cat advise: “Develop a system for asking people who contact you for the first time where they heard about you. Put an identifying reference code on your advert. You could set up a unique telephone number or web page, or a simple spreadsheet would do.” Your aim is to get a direct response from your target audience. If your phone starts ringing and your inbox is rapidly filling with queries, then you know that you have hit the spot and your advert really has got noticed!

Russell Smith’s dos and don’ts:

Do:
•    Make sure your message is clear and stands out
•    Use a headline to grab the attention of the reader
•    Include facts and figures to give the reader a means of comparison and thus differentiate your product or service from that of your competitors’
•    Use adverts to reinforce your brand. Adverts are the first point of contact with potential customers, therefore make sure your brand stands out and its image is reflected within the advert
•    Ensure you include a call to action, i.e for more information call or refer the reader to a website
•    Include images, slogan or taglines to build on product/brand recognition
•    Use a font that is clear and easy to read
•    Keep copy consistent throughout
•    Ensure copy does not bleed off the edge of the advert
•    Keep paragraphs short or use bullet points to highlight key points

Don’t:
•    Use more that one message per advert
•    Overload the advert with too much information.
•    Use too many different fonts, particularly italics or scripts

* Quoted from Unilever’s Key Facts for the Dove brand.