A perfect and the best creative advertising is the one that makes the viewer look twice on your advertisement. We all know that it is indeed a very busy world and no one has enough time to stop and look at your creativity. Print advertisements are bit different than other means of promotion i.e. flyers, brochures, postcards, business cards, posters, booklets or calendars that mostly have a lot of content that communicates the message well. On the other hand, press ads are highly based on crisp and creativity. The creative element in your ads needs to speak for itself and should capture the attention of your viewers instantly. When it comes to advertising, being creative is not enough. You need to have good communication skills as well to be able to see your creativity.
As a designer or a concept writer, you need to follow a few guidelines in order to be able to do creative advertising successfully. Even campaigns that include rack card printing can be spiced up with eye catching graphics. Let us take a look at a few tested guidelines for creative advertising:
Simplicity is the Best Policy
In any field, going over the top is never a good idea. Even if you are a creative person, you do not have to add your creativity at every step as it might not give a very good look together. Simplicity has to be the most important thing but it is the most ignored thing by most of the creative people. In order to make everything perfect, people tend to go over the board and then even the creativity does not make sense. Simple things can catch the visitor’s attention too. So, while you are thinking for an advertising campaign, make sure you keep things simple yet attractive.
Product or Benefit
A visitor or viewer would only want to buy your product if he sees some sort of benefit in that product for him. While you are making an advertising campaign, make sure that your creativity sells the benefits of the product and not the product. Making your product look all fancy and high profile will obviously grab the attention of the viewer however, the whole purpose of advertising is to be able to sell your product and that can be done only if you highlight the benefits of the product.
Your ad should be self explanatory and make sure that it has that element which would keep the interest of audience alive in your product.
Luxury vs. Need
You need to advertise your product in a way so that it comes across as a need to your audience and not as a luxury. If you are aware of Maslow’s hierarchy you would be able to do this without any issue. Also, you need to give some sort of relevance to the viewers. They will buy your product if the benefits are relevant to their needs and this is what Maslow’s hierarchy was all about. Provide viewers what they need and keep in mind their physiological needs, social needs, emotional needs, security needs and any other needs that your product could relate to.
Get Famous People Involved
At times, fans do buy things just because their favorite superstar was in the advertisement. This is one of the best ways to sell your product by involving a superstar in your advertising campaign. Any advertisement that involves a superstar is bound to get more attention and viewers than other ads. While switching channels, a viewer will stop to a channel where he sees a superstar and will view your advertisement anyway. With a common model, you cannot get this kind of attention from audience. So if you want to be heard, get a famous personality to model for your advertising.
Importance of Colors
Audiences do not like to see dull advertisements on TV channels or in magazines. At times colors can become identification of the brands for instance red color is mostly associated with red color. It does not matter if you making a commercial for TV or if you are advertising in print media, you need to use bold and beautiful colors to make your ad look beautiful and to grab the attention as well. Another good example of color association is Fanta and its orange color. You can get plenty of such examples so make sure that your product is of a strong and bold color which can attract viewers and can become a representation of your brand. Moreover, colors impact the printing of the advertisement as well.
Delivering Information in Bounds of Creativity
Obviously, your product has a lot of benefits that you would like audiences to know. However, you need to make sure that you deliver information in a correct manner. Revealing benefits one by one and revealing the important ones first would be a good way to deliver the information to your audience and that too in a correct way.
Also, make sure that you deliver the correct message which is easy to understand. Highlight the important benefits of your product initially and then you can get into details. This way audience will know the best qualities of your product.
Avoid Overlapping Messages
The message of your product should be clear and direct. Any sort of information which is over lapping can be confusing for audience and it could end up making a negative impact on your product. Be very clear about your messages and avoid taglines with hidden messages. You can even use specific words or other things to support your product and message. Taglines are an important part of any product so your tagline should be relevant, direct and clear so that it is easy for people to understand what your product is all about.
