Advertising Strategy
Advertising, Design & Creative Aspects of
Marketing Communications
Chris PriceInternational Director, MJD Consultancy
Advertising Strategy
If you don’t do any advertising/marketing promotions (with
good creative) something terrible happens…
NOTHING
Advertising Strategy
What you are trying to do….
Advertising Strategy
What you are trying to do….
Advertising Strategy
What you are NOT trying to do….
Advertising Strategy
OK, but first we need to understand channel
management as this affects creative and
design aspects to a large extent…..
Advertising Strategy
Creating awareness though marketing communications
What do we mean?
• More than just having a
few channels
• More than just having
matching creative
• Looking for real synergies
• Looking for the “media
multiplier”
• The balance between on
and off line
• Using each channel at their
best
• The ideal marketing mix
Customers see and hear all
sorts
of messages
• TV commercials
• Press ads
• Direct Mail packs
• Posters
• Telephone Calls
• Radio ads
• Banner Ads
• Email messages
Advertising Strategy
Understand your target audiences preferences…..
But note this can be nationally specific!)
Advertising Strategy
Integrating marketing communications
They don’t care about “lines”
• On or off?
• Above or below?
• To them, it’s all just marketing noise
So lets forget about all the lines…
The Internet Advertising Bureau is
saying…
‘Smart marketers integrate their campaigns,
with online advertising working in partnership
with TV, print, radio and other channels’
Advertising Strategy
What’s really important is standing out from
the crowd
• Any Multi-channel communications strategy needs
strong, creative and purposeful design and that’s why
this is important!
• Otherwise you can spend serious $’s that could be
wasted and usually is….
Advertising Strategy
What makes a good advert with strong creative?
•
Communicate with your audience in a way they wish to be
communicated too (so get to know them!)
•
Don’t state the obvious (education institutions often do!)
•
Understand format effects design (banner, tower, pop up,?) and
placement (classified, run of paper top, side, embedded?)
•
Remember AIDA- the classic formula used by advertisers and it’s well
worth remembering. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
•
Strong ‘calls to action’
•
Your HEADLINE can be the most important part of your advert
Advertising Strategy
HEADLINES
• In the ad itself the most important element is the headline.
• The headline is either the heading that goes at the top of the
the ad or if there’
there’s no heading it’
it’s the
first words of the ad.
• If you're on the radio it's the first thing people hear. If it's
it's TV it's the first thing they see and hear.
• The headline needs to grab peoples’
peoples’ attention. One change in a headline can produce a 5050-100%
increase in response.
One of the biggest challenges that any print advertiser faces is getting people to read their ad – let
alone for the ad to produce a result. So the main purpose of the headline is not to sell your product –
it’
it’s just to get people to read your ad.
The headline should be about your readers – not about you. If your headline has the name of your
business in it, you are probably losing out. Imagine you owned a company selling $20 fire alarms.
Which of these headlines do you think would be most likely to get
get the reader’
reader’s attention:
‘Simpson Fire Alarms - Your Guarantee of Safety’
OR
‘Is your Family's Life worth the price of a round of Drinks?’
Advertising Strategy
REMEMBER AIDA
If you follow this formula in every ad that you write or produce,
produce, you will greatly increase your
chances of success.
•
Attention – the first thing your ad needs to do is grab the reader’
reader’s attention. You achieve this
with your headline.
•
Interest – once you’
you’ve got their attention, you need to create an interest in your product
product or
service.
•
Desire – There is a big difference between being interested in a product or service and desiring
it. You need to convert the reader’
reader’s interest into a strong desire for what you are offering.
•
Action - Even if someone desires what you have, it is not enough until they
they take action. At the
end of the ad you need a call to action. Tell people exactly what
what they need to do to follow
through and make it easy for them to do so. This is where many people
people go wrong. Even if you
have a good ad, you still need to tell people precisely what to do - how to take action.
Think creatively in terms of calls to action i.e. landing pages (www.city.ac.uk/cpm/visits2009)
guerilla campaigns (canwehaveourballback.co.uk)
Advertising Strategy
The Creative Approach/Process
•Differentiation is key.
•A strong creative that addresses important decision factors is going to stand
you apart from your competitors.
•Important that your creative neatly sits alongside the other messages
communicated by the institution something that many other organisations
find difficult to achieve through a lack of understanding of markets.
•Have a coordinated creative approach that appeals to a diverse and
demanding student population.
•The Brief – be explicit and have aims and objectives.
•Allow ‘creativity’ within boundaries (but ‘anything goes’ to start with. You can
always drop overly radical ideas later)
•Brain storm ideas and test them.
•Understand the levels of involvement required by you and your creative
team.
•Ask for options or if you are involved in the entire process then synthesise
the ideas into an outcome.
Advertising Strategy
What makes a good creative design for advertising?
The ‘branding brainstorm’
- The ‘Value Proposition(s)’ – finding differentiation
- Corporate guidelines
- Images and Icons
- Keep it simple but be ‘creative’
- Differentiate (avoid saying what everyone else does!)
- Be consistent (for branding)
- Test your ideas and on your students not yourselves!
Advertising Strategy
Exercise- publications review
Advertising Strategy
Example of creative development from ‘cluttered’ to ‘bold’
Advertising Strategy
Example of creative development using focus groups
Advertising Strategy
Example of creative design integrated for on and off line campaigns
Advertising Strategy
How it looks ‘on the page’
Leader
Board (Ad
space)
Study
Abroa
d Sub
chann
el
Name
Tool
Flag of
Netherlan
d and
Netherlan
d in
Chinese
Bar
Recommen
ded
Readings
INHollan
d
Banner
Guidance
for
choosing
school
Colle
ge
Rank
ing
College
profile
Advertising Strategy
The Results? Case Study of success In Holland- targeted on
line positioning campaign with good creative/branding
Campaigns running in; India, China, Germany, Russia, Poland &
on key global and local specialist aggregators.
Results (annualized); 18m Page impressions and >21,000 leads
generated
Advertising Strategy
MJD creative campaign example
creativity
• Busy markets: you
need to stand out
• Sensitivity to
international markets
• Works with UK
communications
working internationally
Advertising Strategy
Conclusions- Some final tips from an ‘insider’
• What are you trying to achieve?
• If your Advertising isn’t working – STOP IT! And go back to the drawing
board.
• Only use Direct Response Advertising- unless you are doing ‘pure’
branding or launching new products
• Metrics- testing and measuring
• Never pay the full rate for advertising
• Benefits, Benefits, Benefits
• Don’t follow the competition
• Don’t buy into the myth that advertising is essential for your business
success- its important but only a part of the marketing mix
• Get the services of an ‘insider’ (ensure they are ‘cash back’ MJDs 30-40%
rule)