I recently had a talk on TV advertising from Dave Trott, a well known art director of many famous and award winning TV adverts. He showed us a selection of adverts form the 80's which he chose because he said we would never have seen them before and therefore would have no pre-judgements of them. He told us a good advert must first have impact and then communicate a persuasive reason to buy the product. When writing an advert you should first find the persuasive reason to buy the product and communicate it with impact. I found this very interesting and useful.
The adverts Dave chose to show us were played in pairs, and these pairs of adverts were for the same or very similar products but from different brands. After watching each pair we discussed which one of teh worked and which didn't. We were told never to look at an advert and say 'I like it' or 'I don't like it' as that is a subjective view. We should always look at an advert objectively and say 'It works because..' or 'It doesn't work because..'. As we went through the sets of adverts we began to identify the reasons why each advert either worked or didn't work. As Dave explained to us, an advert needs to give you a reason to buy something. It seemed obvious but after watching these adverts, we saw that many big brands run adverts that don't actually give you a reason to buy the product. The competitors then seemed to follow with an advert which would give you an actual reason to buy the product.
When looking back on the talk and trying to recall the adverts we saw, the ones that I remember most clearly are the ones that worked and with these adverts I remember the reason to buy that product whereas I can't even remember the message from the other adevrts. For example, we were shown tow adverts for the same products from Nike and Reebok. They were slightly different in look like all trainers, but had pretty much the same benefit. The Nike advert, I recall, used a celebrity basketball player to advertise the product but gave no real reason to buy the product over other brands. The only reason you might buy them would be that they are 'cool' because so and so wears them (or is payed to wear them). There was no real persuasion. The second advert was the advert below, from Reebok. It's a funny and surprising advert and therefore has impact: you will remember it, but it also communicates a good persuasive reason to buy Reebok's air pump trainers: they fit better.
After this talk I look at TV advertising in a completly different way. We see around 20 minutes of advertising per
hour of TV we watch but when you try and remember one that youve seen recently it's quite difficult. The ads that
you remember, have impact and give you a good reason to buy the product and therefore you also remember what
the product was.
Dave Trott gave us a copy of a short book that he wrote n the 70's: How to Get Your First Job in Advertising . It was
published by Campiaign and Marketing last year when they set out to publish a series of key pieces about the
advertising iindustry that are worth preserving and celebrating. Although it was written over 30 years ago the ideas are
still relevant and blindingly simple. It took only about 15 minutes to read unlike other huge, fat advertising books but I
learnt more from it in that short time than I have from any other book. It tells you how to approach advertising in such
a simple way with simple rules that shoudln't always, always be obeyed, but usually work. For example 'if your selling
a cheap inferior product, you say 'Why pay more?', whereas if you are selling an over-priced, expensive product, you
say 'Buy the best.' You always give the best reason to buy the product. Don't sell it on price if the price can easily be
beaten and don't sell it on quality if it's a poor quality product. If you want people to remember you're ad, give it impact.
Simples.
No comments:
Post a Comment