Advertising Primer 6: Appeals and Executions
The title of this article may sound more like a criminal law topic than one about advertising. But we're talking advertising appeals and executions here, not criminal ones, and when the time comes to actually create your advertisement, these are two of the most central concerns. How you will appeal to your audience? What methods will you employ (or execute) to deliver your message?
In addition, you will need to consider what kinds of creative strategies will underlie your approach. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is the stage where you create the ad that will transform your message from concept to reality.
So let's take a look at some of the basic types of creative (or "message") strategies. It's important to remember as you review these that rarely are most ads exclusively one type or another. Instead, advertisers often mix rational elements with emotional ones, or place promotional pitches inside brand-image advertisements, etc.
A brand's Unique selling proposition (USP) is the simply-stated benefit that a brand promises to provide the consumer. A good USP must truly be unique to the brand. That is, you can't advertise a feature that every one of your competitors also offers. It also has to be something the consumer actually cares about. Finally, an effective USP must be a feature or benefit that the audience finds believable.
The USP might be delivered directly in a purely information ad, but most often it's indirectly communicated. For example, the obvious (though not stated) USP of the Wendy's "Where's the beef?" ads was, "Wendy's hamburgers have more meat." Like the Wendy's ads, good ads leave no doubt as to the USP of the brand being advertised because they clearly connect the USP to the actual creative execution.
Appeals are specific ways advertisers connect with their target audiences. These represent the foundational channels of all human communication, but each kind of appeal is only appropriate (or effective) for certain kinds of messages. Let's take a look at the major types of appeals:
Rationality: Here of course we're talking about "head" as opposed to "heart" appeals. Rational appeals attempt to provide all the information the audience needs to make up their minds. Therefore, print media are often selected for rational advertisements because they are condusive to lots of text, charts and diagrams. Print ads also may involve the reader for several minutes, whereas a TV spot may be over in as little as fifteen seconds and have little time to convey much information.
It's easy to feel that all ads these days target the emotional side of consumers. However, while it's true that most ads have shifted from information-heavy content to soft sells, many products and services are much better served by rational appeals. Businesses-to-Business advertising, for example, frequently involves selling complex or technical products or services that would not benefit from emotional (or only emotional) advertising appeals.
Emotions: In the golden era of advertising, ads were all about convincing the consumer with long swaths of text copy. Today, advertisers realize that humans are emotional animals. We are more likely to use our emotional response than our intellect to make everyday choices, even when we think we are making decisions based on reason. Among other benefits, emotional appeals have been shown to grow brand loyalty. Emotional appeals create personal attachments with brands and these attachments can turn into long-term bonds. Even B2B advertising has increased the use of emotional appeals from as low as 5 percent to around 25 percent. Because video combines visual images and sound, this format is best suited to emotional appeals.
Humor: A great attention getter, humor is used in about a third of all advertisements. Humor grabs attention and helps the audience remember the ad. However, advertisers must be careful to tie the humorous elements directly to the message of the ad. Humor must also be carefully targeted and delivered to the appropriate audiences. We all know that some people have a greater sense of humor than others. Also, what may be funny to one group of people may be explicitly offensive to another.
Fear: Usually this appeal is more memorable than upbeat or neutral ads, but if too disturbing,viewers may turn away or tune out the ad altogether. I shouldn't have to mention that using fear—like any kind of emotional appeal—carries ethical risks. While it might be hard for a homeless shelter to overstate the plight of their clients, it probably would not be appropriate for a business to frighten people into buying an air purifier by telling them their children will get cancer if they don't.
Scarcity: This type of appeal is pretty self-evident. Scarcity appeals are meant to do one thing: create action because of the fear of limited time or availability.
Sex: For better or worse, ads often use sexual or suggestive appeals. And while it's almost certainly overused as an advertising appeal these days, sex is literally a fact of life, and we mammals have been using sexual appeal to communicate for millions of years.
Sex appeals range from merely romantic inclinations to outright nudity (rare in the USA, but more commonly in other countries). Turns out, ads with sex appeal do grab attention, but people tend not to remember the brands being advertised—they're too distracted by the sexually charged content, it would seem. They also tend to remember the visual components of the ad and tend not to remember audio or text content.
About the only time suggestive appeals are effective is when the product being sold actually relates to sex. (So sorry car part catalogs, those bikini babes are not helping you sell more wrenches.) Also, sexual suggestiveness may be more powerful than outright nudity since the viewer's mind is free to fill in the blanks or the situation presented in the ad.
Music: Musical appeals have been shown to capture the attention of viewers. In addition, they actually increase the rate at which audiences remember other ad content because the human brain often stores memories of music in long-term recall areas of the brain. Further, music in ads can make ad content more persuasive.
Executions are certain common types of ad formats. Just as movies may be animations, dramas, or documentaries, there are many ways to present creative strategies and appeals. Here are a few of the more common executions:
Straightforward or Informative: This type of execution simply transmits information unfiltered and direct to the audience without gimmicks or drama. Straightforward ads are best suited to products that require "high involvement," that is, products that require lots of information and research before the customer buys. Business advertising often employs this format. One type of straightforward ad is the news format, in which a product is presented as new or original or in a newscast-type presentation.
Demonstration: Similar to a straightforward ad, a demonstration ad shows how to use a product or service, and how it can benefit the user.
Comparison: Usually also straightforward, comparison ads simply compare the product or service being offered with competing brands and show how the advertised brand is better. The comparison may be direct (identifying the competitor by name), or indirect (merely alluding to the competition).
Slice-of-Life: Slice-of-Life ads depict common situations that the target audience may find themselves in and shows how the product can help. These ads may also be called Problem Solution or Product as Hero ads. The corny and ever-popular "As Seen On TV" ads come to mind here ("Does your car have scratches? Are your closets disorganized? We have the product for you."). Businesses use this ad format to great effect as well.
Dramatization or Fantasy: Dramatizations are usually just more sophisticated slice-of-life ads, employing a more Hollywood feel to the presentation. Fantasy ads provide a framework for communicating difficult or risky messages, such as romantic or suggestive themes. Dramas sometimes use illustrative techniques like animation or computer graphics.
Related to dramas and fantasies is the concept of strategic alteration of reality, which is a fancy way of saying the ad twists a familiar situation or object(s) into something unusual or unexpected. This is done in such a way as to point out a unique feature or selling point in the product being advertised.
Authoritative or Spokesperson: A celebrity spokesperson appears in about 20% of all ads today. In fact, so many ads use celebrities front-and-center or as narrators that "regular people" are used with increasing frequency. Not all spokespeople are celebrities. Sometimes CEOs are used, or experts in the field. These individuals may not be well known (though a long-running campaign may turn them into celebrities). In general, celebrity endorsements are more convincing to younger audiences than older ones.
Obviously, it's not enough to choose celebrity based on fame alone. They must be likable, credible, trustworthy and somehow relatable to the product or service being promoted.
Testimonials: This is another advertising execution that is particularly effective with B2B marketing. Testimonials are also a good choice when marketing services since the spokespeople can help flesh out an otherwise intangible product. The idea behind testimonials is that they add credibility to brands because the sales pitch is coming from a happy customer instead of the advertiser.
Teasers: These ads do something dangerous: they don't actually give enough information to identify the product or brand being advertised. However, they are great at generating lots of interest and curiosity about a new product and are usually followed by ads that reveal the product at or near the time of launch.
Shockvertising: This creative execution employs loud, outrageous, or controversial deliveries to arrest audience attention. This type of technique carries obvious risks and should only be used when it can complement the product or service being advertised.
Visual elements are more easily remembered than text or dialogue. However, viewing an image doesn't require as much brainpower as reading or listening to words and then creating an image in the mind's eye. So whenever possible, try to coax the viewer into creating their own mental image of the scene—this will establish a more personal connection with your ad and your audience will remember it longer.
Vampire creativity or borrowed interest occurs when an ad is so creative that people remember it, but don't remember or associate the brand being advertised. In my opinion, this is a huge problem with national brand image ads today. I can't tell you how many ads I've seen and can remember in detail except for exactly what the ads was promoting (jeans? beer? a car?). Again, be careful to always connect the creative concept with the brand itself.
Last, here are some general guidelines for creating powerful ads:
In addition, you will need to consider what kinds of creative strategies will underlie your approach. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is the stage where you create the ad that will transform your message from concept to reality.
CREATIVE STRATEGY
So let's take a look at some of the basic types of creative (or "message") strategies. It's important to remember as you review these that rarely are most ads exclusively one type or another. Instead, advertisers often mix rational elements with emotional ones, or place promotional pitches inside brand-image advertisements, etc.
Reach the Head or the Heart?
- Cognitive Strategy: This approach to advertising seeks to convince the audience through rational argument. The advertiser is using logic and reason to convince the viewer. This is the "head" approach and it emphasizes features/attributes, differential advantages, competitive strengths, claims and proofs. Cognitive strategies often come in the form of comparative ads, hyperbole ("the best on the planet!"), and unique selling propositions. Ads with a cognitive approach are typically considered a "hard sell"; they may or may not be forceful in their approach, but they will certainly be direct.
- Affective Strategy: An affective strategy usually seeks to reach audiences on an emotional level. The goal is to touch the viewer through emotions and feelings. A resonance approach seeks to connect with people's experiences. Either method will make use of emotional appeals. These ads are considered "soft sells" because they are indirect and instead attempt to make a connection with the heart.
Change Preferences or Stimulate Action?
- Brand Transformation Strategy: With this approach, advertisers seek to establish a brand identity or personality. Brand personality exists when a relationship is formed between the consumer and the brand itself independent of the actual functions or benefits of the brand. One way this is achieved is through the use of associations (with a type of person, a lifestyle or other characteristic). A good brand transformation approach will create attention, awareness, interest, recognition and recall.
- Perception, or Persuasion Strategies: Here, the goal is to change attitudes about a given subject (perhaps a brand, perhaps not), and/or to create conviction and preferences. Persuasive ads often make use of unique selling propositions.
- Behavior (or Conative) Strategy: The goal of this strategy is to stimulate action. We are concerned less with what our ads make people think, but what it makes them do. Behavior ads will usually have a clear call to action, a point in the ad that directly asks the audience to make a purchase, call a phone number, visit a website, or take some other action.
Unique selling propositions
A brand's Unique selling proposition (USP) is the simply-stated benefit that a brand promises to provide the consumer. A good USP must truly be unique to the brand. That is, you can't advertise a feature that every one of your competitors also offers. It also has to be something the consumer actually cares about. Finally, an effective USP must be a feature or benefit that the audience finds believable.
The USP might be delivered directly in a purely information ad, but most often it's indirectly communicated. For example, the obvious (though not stated) USP of the Wendy's "Where's the beef?" ads was, "Wendy's hamburgers have more meat." Like the Wendy's ads, good ads leave no doubt as to the USP of the brand being advertised because they clearly connect the USP to the actual creative execution.
APPEALS
Appeals are specific ways advertisers connect with their target audiences. These represent the foundational channels of all human communication, but each kind of appeal is only appropriate (or effective) for certain kinds of messages. Let's take a look at the major types of appeals:
Rationality: Here of course we're talking about "head" as opposed to "heart" appeals. Rational appeals attempt to provide all the information the audience needs to make up their minds. Therefore, print media are often selected for rational advertisements because they are condusive to lots of text, charts and diagrams. Print ads also may involve the reader for several minutes, whereas a TV spot may be over in as little as fifteen seconds and have little time to convey much information.
It's easy to feel that all ads these days target the emotional side of consumers. However, while it's true that most ads have shifted from information-heavy content to soft sells, many products and services are much better served by rational appeals. Businesses-to-Business advertising, for example, frequently involves selling complex or technical products or services that would not benefit from emotional (or only emotional) advertising appeals.
Emotions: In the golden era of advertising, ads were all about convincing the consumer with long swaths of text copy. Today, advertisers realize that humans are emotional animals. We are more likely to use our emotional response than our intellect to make everyday choices, even when we think we are making decisions based on reason. Among other benefits, emotional appeals have been shown to grow brand loyalty. Emotional appeals create personal attachments with brands and these attachments can turn into long-term bonds. Even B2B advertising has increased the use of emotional appeals from as low as 5 percent to around 25 percent. Because video combines visual images and sound, this format is best suited to emotional appeals.
Humor: A great attention getter, humor is used in about a third of all advertisements. Humor grabs attention and helps the audience remember the ad. However, advertisers must be careful to tie the humorous elements directly to the message of the ad. Humor must also be carefully targeted and delivered to the appropriate audiences. We all know that some people have a greater sense of humor than others. Also, what may be funny to one group of people may be explicitly offensive to another.
Fear: Usually this appeal is more memorable than upbeat or neutral ads, but if too disturbing,viewers may turn away or tune out the ad altogether. I shouldn't have to mention that using fear—like any kind of emotional appeal—carries ethical risks. While it might be hard for a homeless shelter to overstate the plight of their clients, it probably would not be appropriate for a business to frighten people into buying an air purifier by telling them their children will get cancer if they don't.
Scarcity: This type of appeal is pretty self-evident. Scarcity appeals are meant to do one thing: create action because of the fear of limited time or availability.
Sex: For better or worse, ads often use sexual or suggestive appeals. And while it's almost certainly overused as an advertising appeal these days, sex is literally a fact of life, and we mammals have been using sexual appeal to communicate for millions of years.
Sex appeals range from merely romantic inclinations to outright nudity (rare in the USA, but more commonly in other countries). Turns out, ads with sex appeal do grab attention, but people tend not to remember the brands being advertised—they're too distracted by the sexually charged content, it would seem. They also tend to remember the visual components of the ad and tend not to remember audio or text content.
About the only time suggestive appeals are effective is when the product being sold actually relates to sex. (So sorry car part catalogs, those bikini babes are not helping you sell more wrenches.) Also, sexual suggestiveness may be more powerful than outright nudity since the viewer's mind is free to fill in the blanks or the situation presented in the ad.
Music: Musical appeals have been shown to capture the attention of viewers. In addition, they actually increase the rate at which audiences remember other ad content because the human brain often stores memories of music in long-term recall areas of the brain. Further, music in ads can make ad content more persuasive.
EXECUTIONS
Executions are certain common types of ad formats. Just as movies may be animations, dramas, or documentaries, there are many ways to present creative strategies and appeals. Here are a few of the more common executions:
Straightforward or Informative: This type of execution simply transmits information unfiltered and direct to the audience without gimmicks or drama. Straightforward ads are best suited to products that require "high involvement," that is, products that require lots of information and research before the customer buys. Business advertising often employs this format. One type of straightforward ad is the news format, in which a product is presented as new or original or in a newscast-type presentation.
Demonstration: Similar to a straightforward ad, a demonstration ad shows how to use a product or service, and how it can benefit the user.
Comparison: Usually also straightforward, comparison ads simply compare the product or service being offered with competing brands and show how the advertised brand is better. The comparison may be direct (identifying the competitor by name), or indirect (merely alluding to the competition).
Slice-of-Life: Slice-of-Life ads depict common situations that the target audience may find themselves in and shows how the product can help. These ads may also be called Problem Solution or Product as Hero ads. The corny and ever-popular "As Seen On TV" ads come to mind here ("Does your car have scratches? Are your closets disorganized? We have the product for you."). Businesses use this ad format to great effect as well.
Dramatization or Fantasy: Dramatizations are usually just more sophisticated slice-of-life ads, employing a more Hollywood feel to the presentation. Fantasy ads provide a framework for communicating difficult or risky messages, such as romantic or suggestive themes. Dramas sometimes use illustrative techniques like animation or computer graphics.
Related to dramas and fantasies is the concept of strategic alteration of reality, which is a fancy way of saying the ad twists a familiar situation or object(s) into something unusual or unexpected. This is done in such a way as to point out a unique feature or selling point in the product being advertised.
Authoritative or Spokesperson: A celebrity spokesperson appears in about 20% of all ads today. In fact, so many ads use celebrities front-and-center or as narrators that "regular people" are used with increasing frequency. Not all spokespeople are celebrities. Sometimes CEOs are used, or experts in the field. These individuals may not be well known (though a long-running campaign may turn them into celebrities). In general, celebrity endorsements are more convincing to younger audiences than older ones.
Obviously, it's not enough to choose celebrity based on fame alone. They must be likable, credible, trustworthy and somehow relatable to the product or service being promoted.
Testimonials: This is another advertising execution that is particularly effective with B2B marketing. Testimonials are also a good choice when marketing services since the spokespeople can help flesh out an otherwise intangible product. The idea behind testimonials is that they add credibility to brands because the sales pitch is coming from a happy customer instead of the advertiser.
Teasers: These ads do something dangerous: they don't actually give enough information to identify the product or brand being advertised. However, they are great at generating lots of interest and curiosity about a new product and are usually followed by ads that reveal the product at or near the time of launch.
Shockvertising: This creative execution employs loud, outrageous, or controversial deliveries to arrest audience attention. This type of technique carries obvious risks and should only be used when it can complement the product or service being advertised.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON CREATING EFFECTIVE ADS
Visual elements are more easily remembered than text or dialogue. However, viewing an image doesn't require as much brainpower as reading or listening to words and then creating an image in the mind's eye. So whenever possible, try to coax the viewer into creating their own mental image of the scene—this will establish a more personal connection with your ad and your audience will remember it longer.
Vampire creativity or borrowed interest occurs when an ad is so creative that people remember it, but don't remember or associate the brand being advertised. In my opinion, this is a huge problem with national brand image ads today. I can't tell you how many ads I've seen and can remember in detail except for exactly what the ads was promoting (jeans? beer? a car?). Again, be careful to always connect the creative concept with the brand itself.
Last, here are some general guidelines for creating powerful ads:
- Keep your ad simple.
- Select and clearly identify a primary selling point.
- Repeat your tag line or primary selling point several times in the ad.
- Make your ad visually consistent.
- Run your ad long enough to be seen more than once or twice.
- Vary your ad's content and outlets. Don't lull your audience to sleep. Create variations to your ad so it's not identical every time the audience sees it. And complement ads in one media with similar ads in other media.
posted by David Board at
7:31 PM
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