Ever written an advertisement, or thought about it? I’ve done marketing for my clients in small businesses for the past 6+ years. In that time I’ve learned a few things about making advertising look professional even on a tight budget. And the real measure of successful advertisement design elements is having customers remember and talk about the message.
Look at this: 2 Biggest Killer Ad Mistakes in Advertisement Design
Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.
Many small businesses don’t have a lot of time or resources to have ads professionally made. Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering.
Do you ever see a commercial that you liked and watched it? Can you remember the brand? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and tell us in the comments section? Our readers and we would appreciate the share.
So what’s a small business to do?
Related post: Ten Deadly Sins of Advertising Design
Here are 12 essential ad design elements we rely on to create effective advertisement messages. These messages include the best examples of each that we could find. Great way to learn and stimulate design ideas.
Grab and hold viewers’ attention
Interesting information gets and holds attention. Keep in mind that people don’t read ads. They know what interests them. Be different, avoid normalcy at all costs.
Stand out is the mantra. It’s OK to be controversial and to create conversation through the ‘buzz.’ Headlines are the first place for attention.
Funny. Memorable. Manly. The keys for success from the ‘Will It Blend’ marketing campaign. And certainly something you’ll want to do for a networked market. Like Blendtec did very successfully.
Tom Dickson, is the star of the videos. You see him put different crazy things in the blender and say “Will it blend? That is the question”.
While the item is blending, he smiles and waits for the process to end. When it does, he empties the contents and the subtitle “Yes! It blends”appears.
Once the videos got rolling, Blendtec engaged their fans seeking ideas for things to blend. Fans become more fanatical when their favorite brands go out of their way to invite them in on the fun.
Lucky advertisement design … value proposition
A unique selling point that truly discriminates you from your competition. It is essential that you give your customers reasons to select you.
Paint the picture of value and make the value stand out. Have you seen any of the recent Dawn TV commercials?
They started as YouTube videos and grew out of the success on that platform.
If not, you should invest 1 minute now and check it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9qLIz1SJsk
Two of the most practical value propositions we have seen in a while are shared in 10 seconds. As the volunteers are cleaning oil off the ducks, they state that Dawn Liquid effectively cuts grease and is gentle.
Don’t need to say much as the video does the talking. Powerful.
Successful advertisement design … end-state values
Focus on customer needs end state and not the means. The end state is the only priority.
A good example of this is the Prudential’s billboard ad. This commercial considers the end state needs of its customers.
The retirement needs of target customers are the ad’s objective. An excellent interactive graphic drives home the goal. What do you think?
Effective advertisement examples … simple messages
Make the message as clean and straightforward as possible. You cannot overachieve on the simplicity of the message.
A message that the reader will quickly understand. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words.
Have you seen the recent Apple iPhone5 TV ad?
If not, you should invest 1 minute now and check it out. It will prove helpful in reviewing our ad analysis.
Superb visuals and visuals are so simple that you quickly grasp them and don’t lose interest. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words.
And the music has a way to keep you tied in. Creating customer interest does get any simpler than this, does it?
A very simple, yet interesting design, don’t you think? And the real message at the end that is very soft not selling.
How to design a print ad … be relevant
Keep in mind that one message does not fit all. It starts with knowing
It starts with understanding your target market. Here the target market is families with young children and people with a high focus on car safety. Certainly relevant to this market.
Successful advertisement design … define your positioning
Your positioning is the current frame of reference. Make comparisons to your competitors if you can solidly substantiate the claim.
The Amazon Kindle certainly knows who its principal rival is and takes his head on as its strategy. An excellent move we believe.
The Kindle has three key advantages in comparison to the Apple iPad air. It is 20% lighter, has 1 million more pixels resulting in the better quality picture, and is 24% less expensive. So powerful, yes?
Check out this ad here:
Emotional influence and persuasion
Budweiser puppy love that was, by most accounts, the biggest winner of the 2014 Super Bowl. There are no better means of control or the power of persuasion than emotion. Hands down the best, in our opinion.
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory. Why?
Simply because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the skills are important to remember. Check out this ad here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlNO2trC-mk
There are eight basic, universal emotions – joy, surprise, anticipation, acceptance, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. Successful appeals to these basic emotions consolidate stories and the desired calls to action in the lasting memories of audiences.
This puppy love commercial focuses on emotional appeal in grand fashion. It is the secret of this ad’s success. The focus of the advocacy helps create emotional support, doesn’t it?
Visual advertisement design elements
Use pictures/visuals to convey the message much better than words. “Seeing is believing” and “actions speak louder than words” are two common sayings that reflect a bias and preference for visual presentation.
Here is a four minute Samsung ad with 15-20 new features shown on their phone. No talking. And so simple that you quickly grasp the features and don’t lose interest.
And the coordinated music has a way to keep you tied in. Creating customer interest doesn’t get any simpler than this, does it? A very simple, yet interesting design, don’t you think?
These ads subtly grab and hold attention based on a great music soundtrack, no speaking, and a total reliance of superb visuals. Letting the visuals totally carry the messages.
Creating customer interest doesn’t get any simpler than this, does it? A very simple, yet interesting design, don’t you think? Couldn’t be better in our opinion.
Articles with images get 94% more views than those without. And posts with videos attract 3X more inbound links than plain text posts.
A study by 3M showed that 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text.
Tell a story
A good story has a beginning where a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation. It has a middle where the character confronts and attempts to resolve the situation. And it has an end where the outcome is revealed.
It does not interpret or explain the action in the story for the audience.
Instead, a good story allows each member of the public to understand the story as he or she understands the work.
This is why people find good stories so appealing and why they find advertising that merely conveys facts and information boring.
Here is a link to the Guinness ad video to refresh you or for you to review in case you haven’t seen it.
Guinness’s marketing strategy has flipped traditional beer advertising on its head by getting rid of the template. Instead it tells a story – a real story – that connects with people.
The responses were overwhelmingly positive. Customers and particularly the target customers are looking for meaningful stories.
The marketing strategy certainly is addressing this end state in our opinion.
Clearly, link your messages
Link them to your brand. Remember the AFLAC duck, E-Trade’s talking baby, or the Geico gecko? These are great linkages to the brands.
Anyone who has watched television in the United States even briefly knows the Geico brand. Whether talking British geckos, erudite cavemen, greasy-haired announcers with mock baritones, all of them running gags. Gags used to get the company’s name to stick in peoples’ heads.
Make your ad a component
Your ads should be integrated elements of an integrated marketing campaign. Remember, stop interrupting what people interested in, and be what people are interested in.
It was in early 2009 when IBM began its Smarter Planet marketing campaign strategy. At the time, the plan seemed very ambitious. We might say maybe even a bit risky, even for IBM.
But their success was based on a plan to build out a long-term campaign.
To do this, they defined a theme around their vision (Smarter Planet). They used the idea to craft a marketing strategy connecting and integrating many smaller marketing objectives and tactics as they could.
They also linked their core competencies to this theme, vision, and challenge. Apparently, they made sure they were all apparent to their customers.
This very successful campaign continued for seven years.
Coordinate identifiable music
A great ad design element is to match what viewers see with what they hear.
People expect and prefer coordinated audio and visual messages.
Why? Simply because those messages are easier to process and understand. Audio and visual messages that are out-of-sync may gain attention, but customers usually find them uncomfortable.
The bottom line
So remember this:
You just can’t say it. You have to get people to say it to each other.
– James Farley, CMO Ford
It is not what advertising does with the consumer; it is what the consumer does after reading the advertisement. After looking over these enablers … how much have you learned?
