The world of advertising is incredibly competitive. Thousands of companies use advertising to boost brand awareness and entice potential customers to make a purchase. Gone are the days of purchasing a slot on one of a handful of television or radio stations or buying a page in a magazine or newspaper.
Today’s master advertisers aim to go viral online and start trends among the public. It takes strategic planning and a whole helping of luck to make that happen in what is a saturated market.
Creating an ad campaign is not a simple task by any stretch of the imagination. The ad represents your company and its products. The tone of voice must be perfect for your brand. Video adverts online and on television usually only last 30-60 seconds, which is not a long time to grab the viewer’s attention, market your product, and make it memorable.
There are several software tools available online that can help if you’re struggling with creativity. One such ad creator is the free advertisement maker from Adobe. If you are having a mental block, using one of these resources may give you exactly what you need and save you both money and time.
Get it right, and you can sit back and watch the orders fly in. However, should it go pearshaped, you are left with a tarnished reputation that is difficult to rectify.
Finding The Right Tone And Targeting Your Ideal Customer
Then there are the rules of various watchdogs worldwide, agencies put in place to protect the consumer. For example, car manufacturers are no longer permitted to sell their vehicles based purely on speed and power. Likewise, some countries’ rules prevent the biggest online betting firms from using representatives under the age of 25, nor can they promote gambling as a way of making money.
Of course, different jurisdictions have their own rules and regulations that companies must follow, or they run the risk of severe financial penalties. All these things combined make for a potential minefield when it comes to running an ad campaign.
There are almost unlimited options when it comes to your ad’s content. Some companies go for class and sophistication; others go down the humor route. Of course, the old adage of sex sells remains true even in today’s modern, digital world.
Defining your target audience is key to any successful advertising campaign; most marketers agree this is the most crucial stage of creating any campaign.
Who is your ideal customer? What you are selling is not going to be appealing to every demographic. For example, it makes little in the way of sense to try selling Breitling watches to the 18-25 age group because very few will splurge several thousand dollars on a timepiece. The same is true for targeting 40-to 50-year-old professionals with a small hatchback car.
Advertisements That Everyone Remembers
The very best adverts stick in a consumer’s mind long after they have finished airing on their screens or the turning of a few magazine pages.
Sweden’s Absolut Vodka was the master of this.
The company’s U.S. importer, Carillon Importers, enlisted the services of TBWA Worldwide for Absolut’s first advertising campaign back in the early 1980s. A simple picture of the Absolut bottle with a halo over the cap above the slogan “Absolut Perfection” started an epic campaign spanning more than 25 years and producing more than 1,500 separate advertisements, with each following in a similar vein.
Absolut ads resulted in the firm’s bottle becoming the most recognizable bottle on the planet despite there being nothing stand-out about it. The company had a market share of only 2.5% when the ad campaign began but was selling 4.5 million cases annually by the time it ended.
The campaign resulted in the American Marketing Association inducting Absolut into its Hall of Fame in 1992. These adverts show your product does not have to be exciting because you can build a story around it.
What would your answer be if we asked you what three words your mind’s eye conjures up when you think of the Nike brand? Just do it would be the answer of almost every person on the planet.
Nike created the “Just do it” ad in the 1980s when it took on Reebok in the freshly emerging fitness market. Nike initially targeted marathon runners, but Reebok was selling many more shoes than Nike, so something had to change.
The Just do it slogan is a short but hugely effective tagline that encompasses everything people who want to get fit think about. Nike got into the minds of their target audience and came up with a slogan that still works 40 years later.
Adverts Are Not Only For Selling Products And Services
Although the prime reasons for advertising are promoting brand awareness and eliciting sales, brands can use advertisements for other purposes. For example, companies use them to thank customers, apologize to them, or even promote a different cause entirely.
KFC suffered logistical problems in the United Kingdom in February 2018, issues that ultimately saw many of its restaurants run out of chicken.
That is correct; a company that sells chicken had no chicken to sell! Instead of burying its head in the sand until the chicken was in free stock again, KFC created a standalone print ad apologizing for the situation. It featured an empty bargain bucket where the KFC logo was altered to read FCK. The ad then explained the issues it faced along with a timescale they would be fixed, in addition to an apology.
It was a light-hearted way to try to bounce back from negative press.
Supermarket giant Tesco hit the headlines in the marketing world by creating a print ad during the COVID-19 pandemic. The British government placed tight restrictions on the public visiting pubs and even forced their closures at one stage.
This was great news for Tesco, and its rivals as customers flocked to stores and purchased alcoholic beverages. When the pubs reopened, Tesco pulled an ace from its sleeve and published print adverts thanking customers for taking advantage of its 3-for-2 and other alcohol promotions, but now was the time to support pubs because they needed customers. It finished with Tesco’s famous “Every little helps” slogan.
It was a genius move because it advertised its own offers by stealth. It drew attention to its products while looking like the good guy by requesting customers to support the British pub business. The ads were shared far and wide and reached a much wider audience than they could have dreamed.
Sometimes, all that is required to create a great ad is to think outside the box a little.
