What makes Advertising work?

Advertising is a very powerful tool to raise brand awareness, launch new products and communicate with your target audience. If an advertisement fails to catch your attention within seconds, it’s useless.

Renowned social researcher and communication expert Hugh Mackay has once said, “It’s not what the message does to the reader, but what the reader does with the message.”While advertising, make sure that your message reaches to the right people, the right number of times and market the benefits of what your business has to offer. Remember that your ad is competing with many others in a multi-page inflight magazine. It needs to stand out and quickly deliver your message. Your message should promise a benefit, rather than focusing on the company.

Features of a Good Advertisement

Strong Headline – Ensure your ad flaunts a strong, snappy headline to capture attention. According to the famous advertising guru, David Ogilvy, “When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

Less is More – Keep the info as simple as possible. Use your space wisely. Don’t use every inch of white space. Use contrasting colours for fonts and backgrounds to make sure that your copy is readable.

Eye-catching Visual – The consumer sees 5,000 ads a day. With so many ads, you need to have a key visual that can capture the attention, link to your brand and communicate your message. This helps the consumers to engage, follow along and remember.

For the Right Audience – An ad is the first meeting place of two parties looking for each other. So there should be something in the ad that will enable the reader to identify it as a source of information relating to his/her interest. This is done with either a picture or a headline – preferably both.

Portraying Company’s Insight – A company’s advertising strategy provides an opportunity to portray the company’s personality – the things that will make the company liked by the customer. Messy ads tend to indicate a messy company. Brag-and-boast ads suggest the company is maker-oriented, not user-oriented. Whatever it is, personality should be consistent over time and across the spectrum of corporate structure and product lines.