Marketers use Ads to communicate their promotional message to a large mass of people, customers or prospects. For this reason, I like to discuss in the following post the different components of an ad, so that you can see how people perceive it.
Who communicates the Ad?
First of all, people direct their attention to the source of communication.
- Is the promoter of the product a Man or Woman?
- How credible is the promoter?
- Which profession does the promoter have?
- Is the image of a person or brand of trust?
- Is the promoter visual attractive?
What is communicated? (Content of the Ad)
Advertising can target two approaches:
- the Emotional Appeal and
- the Rational Appeal
It is useful to have in your ad a mix of both components, that means to explain shortly the benefits of your product, but also to say how it can improve your customer`s life.
You can target positive and negative emotions.
Under the positive emotions, we count joy & friendliness, vitality & liveliness and competence & self-fulfillment. Under the negative emotions, ads target sadness & loneliness, overstimulation, and futility.
Provoking fear through ads should be weighted because too much fear can block people from handling. Fear is especially important for health campaigns such as stop smoking or the prevention of smoking. Humor in advertising can work if you know how to implement it in order to attract attention to your message. If you are not sure, how to use it, better leave it out!
Through which channel do we communicate?
- Ad Copy: The text of your ad. People recognize typical ads from a certain company by metaphors, slogans, imperative forms or formulas that are a constant factor in the ad copy.
- Visual Representations: Those are pictures or videos which are used in your ad in order to attract attention and to provoke emotions. Attention is attracted by pictures, that display reality differently than expected, through surrealism, visual parodies or direct eye gaze. Emotion is provoked through a vertical camera angle, power, status, looking down, nurturance and subservience.
- Music: The music of your ad can either grab attention or be congruent with your ad message. In the first case, speed and loudness can attract attention but also disturb. In the second place, you will use merely instrumental music to make people think, feel and contemplate on your ad message.
To whom do we communicate?
In this part, we should think of our target audience:
- Which language is spoken?
- From which culture are the majority of your customers?
- What preferences do they have based on this?
- What colors should you use based on this knowledge?
- Which values do those cultures have?
- Which age range does your customer base have? Which is your target generation?
And last but not least, think of the gender of your customers. If your business is targeting merely women the ad should discuss topics like individuality, connection, respect, relationship or stress relief.