We found advertising works the way the grass grows. You can never see it, but every week you have to mow the lawn. Good thought from the Nielsen Company. Do you occasionally read or watch ads? We would say people don’t read ads. However, they do read or watch what interests them. So if you are going to create compelling and persuasive advertising, you are going to have to create something interesting that will help consumers want to read. And you absolutely must avoid the ten deadly sins of graphic design advertising.
And, oh by the way, what you write must be more interesting and entertaining than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it?
Daunting is not a strong enough description, is it? According to Nielsen, there are 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day. And Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds – one second less than a goldfish!
Related: Some Great Story and Storytelling Examples to Study
We check our phones 150 times per day. We check our email up to 30 times an hour. And the amount of information in the world continues to double every 18 months.
All this available information and data is creating a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and every one of us who creates content. But more importantly, it’s forcing businesses to think and act like publishers and creative designers. What about you?
Do your ad designs have the power to encourage the right sort of conversations? We’ll discuss this point in a bit.
It has been said that advertising is the price to be paid for being unremarkable. That may be true, but I have noticed, despite the growth in online marketing, that even remarkable businesses also advertise the old fashion way. It is an essential component of your marketing campaign, for awareness or consumer education of your value.
If you are going to be successful in advertising, you absolutely must avoid these ten deadly sins of advertising design:
Are there too many choices?
Graphic design advertising … too many choices
Ever heard of Hick’s law? This law states that the time required for a customer to make a decision is a direct function of the number of available choices.
Too many choices are not a good design as they make decisions more difficult. And that is not a good idea, is it?
Not keeping promises
This sin is closely related to the one on lack of trust. When you make a commitment to a potential customer in an ad, and then don’t deliver, you most often lose the client for good. Not a desirable outcome is it?
Visual distractions
Abstract or conceptual visuals tend to distract viewers. People prefer symbolic language and images that relate to the senses. People are far less receptive and responsive to language and images that relate to concepts.
Life is experienced through the senses and using symbolic language and images that express what people feel, see, hear, smell or taste are easier for people to understand
Sins of advertising design … too much design
Don’t use every inch of white space because you can. Leave some “breathing room” so people can digest your message. We believe the more, the better.
Remember people will take away only one or two things from what they see. The clutter of a design keeps them from spotting the takeaways you desire.
Lack of trust
Customers more easily remember companies that they know and trust. Focus your ads on either getting known to start the trust building or conveying memorable messages. Doing both at once is not a good practice.
The whole point of the story in advertising is to deliver the desired call to action efficiently. If the audience does not clearly understand the call you want to action after seeing the ad, then you are missing the real opportunity.
Graphic design advertising … often too ambiguous
Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. If the information is obscure it certainly won’t be remembered.
Showing no originality
Don’t present material that overwhelms people with sameness. Unique messaging grabs attention much more readily. You only have a few moments to communicate, so use powerful, focused and straightforward words – such as ‘free,’ ‘unbelievable,’ etc.
No consistency
Being inconsistent means your information is not prioritized. You should choose information that’s most important and make it your primary element of the ad. Every piece of information in your ad should be weighted according to its importance.
Also, the idea is to make things more user-friendly by an aesthetic consistency of style and appearance.
Too much text
When you have prioritized information in your ad from most critical to least, start stripping away the least important text. Remember the best you will do is get readers to remember 2-3 things. Too much text and the readers quickly move on, remembering nothing.
The bottom line
I’m not as much surprised as saddened that such nutty beliefs and misconceptions that advertising (and marketing overall) can lead otherwise smart, creative people to squander their effort, money, and the patience of would-be consumers.
I’m sure there are binders full of a rationale for why it’s stunningly brilliant stuff, and there’ll be metrics that declare the spot a wild success. But believing those arguments, or valuing those outcomes, requires that you swallow the message hook line and sinker. Not me.
So if you remember one thing from this article, remember this:
In marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. And stand for things that potential customers value.
We believe an effective ad is interesting, entertaining, and stands for things viewers can stand behind. We believe it is persuasive and certainly creates the right kind of conversation.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to the advertising industry’s woes. No grand initiative, strategy wrapped in a bow, or presentation deck can bring back the glory days. The reality is that in order to survive, ad agencies will have to learn to experiment, risk failure, and pivot quickly. In effect, they will have to stop thinking like ad agencies.
What do you think?
Heard enough? I rest my case.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your advertising design?
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Case Studies to Evaluate New World Marketing Concepts
How to Frame Marketing Messages for Optimum Engagement
Some Great Story and Storytelling Examples to Study
Jaw Dropping Guerrilla Marketing Lessons and Examples
Like this short blog?Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.
Leo Burnett: The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships. It has been said that advertising is the price to be paid for being unremarkable. That may be true, but I have noticed many killer ad mistakes even remarkable businesses have.
It is a key component of your marketing campaign, for awareness or consumer education of your value. So small businesses need to design ads and avoid killer ad mistakes.
Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. And that means not making these two killer mistakes.
You must definitely avoid marketing messages that are overly complex. Keep to simple thoughts that the reader will quickly understand. In this regard, keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words, even in advertisement design.
And people usually only remember can 2-3 thoughts. So carefully select what is most important to be remembered and eliminate everything else.
It is always amazing to us how many small business ads forget to have a call to action. That is usually the most important part of any ad. It is what you want consumers to do after reading the ad.
For example, you may want to send consumers to your website where they can see more of your portfolio visual designs. So ask them to do just that.
In addition, here are 10 important enablers small businesses should rely on to create effective advertisement design messages:
Make an advertisement … grab and hold viewers’ attention
Attention is usually grabbed and held with interesting information. Keep in mind that people don’t read ads, they read what interests them. Your advertisement design messages must be interesting to your target communities.
Killer ad mistakes … no emotional influence and persuasion
Budweiser puppy love that was, by most accounts, the biggest winner from the 2014 Super Bowl. There are no better means of influence 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 because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the experiences are important to remember.
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.
A great example of successful advertisement design.
This puppy love commercial focuses on emotional appeal in grand fashion. It is the secret of this commercial’s success. The focus of the advocacy helps create emotional support, doesn’t it?
Killer ad mistakes … lacking a value proposition
Define a value proposition that truly discriminates you from your competition. It is essential that you give your customers reasons to select you.
For more information on value propositions, see our article on building the best Unique Selling Propositions.
Killer ad mistakes … little artwork and overall design
The visual means of conveying ideas, which simply means that the entire advertisement, including blank space, should have a priority in its design. A meaning and logic.
We recommend that you use short paragraphs, lists, and catchy illustrations and graphics to break up and supplement the text and make the document both visually inviting and easy to understand.
Remember, an advertisement has to capture the reader’s attention quickly or it won’t happen at all.
A good example of this is Dell’s fast delivery of a custom computer. Remember most customers want what they want, when and where they want it. This is what made the Dell business model so successful, isn’t it?
Make an advertisement … tell a story
A good story has a beginning where a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation, a middle where the character confronts and attempts to resolve the situation, and 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 audience to interpret the story as he or she understands the action. This is why people find good stories so appealing and why they find advertising that simply conveys facts and information boring.
Guinness marketing strategy
Guinness’s marketing strategy has flipped traditional beer advertising on its head by getting rid of the template and telling 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.
Make a poster online … be relevant to your target market
Keep in mind that one message does not fit all. It starts with knowing your target market. And what they want and need … their priorities. Without this information, you are just shooting in the dark.
Killer ad mistakes … lacking your positioning
Your positioning is your frame of reference. When defining your positioning make comparisons to competitors if you can.
Clearly, link your messages
Link your messages to your brand. For example, remember the AFLAC duck or E-Trade’s talking baby … these are great linkages to the brands.
Make your ad a component
Any ad needs to be part of an integrated marketing campaign. Integrated campaign plan theme is the part to build first.
The bottom line
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to the advertising industry’s woes. No grand initiative, strategy wrapped in a bow, or presentation deck that can bring back the glory days. The reality is that in order to survive, ad agencies will have to learn to experiment, risk failure, and pivot quickly. In effect, they will have to stop thinking like ad agencies.
Remember, it is not what advertising does with the consumer; it is what the consumer does after reading the advertisement. After looking over these enablers and Allstate’s mayhem ads … how do you think they did?
Need some help in capturing more customers from your advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on, and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
