| 30 November |
Focus on the Most Influential Sense in Advertising |
For any of us to communicate with another person, we must get our message across through one of their five senses. Advertisers, of course, know this. At times the sense of smell is used. You walk by a bakery and decide to stop in and find out what smells so good. The taste test is used for soda drinks or pizza ads. Pictures of food appeal to previous memories of its good taste. Touch is the main seller when people are buying a mattress. Consumers want to lie on it to find out if lying on it would be restful for eight straight hours.
Of the five senses, sight takes first place as most important. Researches discovered that 80% of what we learn is received through our eyes. Most of the rest comes through our ears. This means that radio ads must get the consumer to recall a vision, smell, feeling, or taste of the product through audio alone.
Since 80% of what we learn enters our eyes, that means advertisers are smart to center their ads around this gate to the will. If they can appeal by way of sound also, this is even better. Printed ads can be read multiple times and by multiple people. They can last longer and thus potentially influence more people than sound ads alone.
Advertisement using the sight will include either words or pictures or both. Words are rather abstract for the letters represent a reality. The word ‘car’ stands for a vehicle of transportation. Words can also represent products. For example, slogans identify products. One of the must successful was, “Where’s the beef?” as part of a Wendy’s ad. This one phrase sold millions of hamburgers and put the company in the limelight.
It is rarely how many words are used but which words that is important in an ad. People are usually too busy to read a long message and it is more expensive anyway. The message must be catchy yet have content. This balance is hard to achieve.
Sometimes humor is just the ingredient needed to make an ad unique. It generally makes an ad easier to remember. Alaska airlines’ ads did an excellent of portraying their qualities through exaggerating the competition’s weaknesses. Their humorous ads won many awards and kept people watching.
Sometimes the ad is so brief that it only reminds consumers of facts they already know. The colors of Pepsi alone will sell the product. A motto or logo or symbol without words will associate their need with the company’s product. In other words, the picture is all the ad needed.
So, we see that the use of visual and audio, of effective words, and of humor make an ad memorable. This takes time and creativity to achieve. Once this is in hand, the advertiser must choose where he will publish this written message. One creative approach is to fly the ad on a banner over a large group of people. Banner ads have been shown to be effective in taking a message to the public in a memorable way. When you consider that the drone of the plane engine adds an audio attention getter, you understand that this method incorporates both sight and sound to effectively drive the message home.
Once you have followed these principles, it is time to get in touch with an aerial advertising company and get it printed and into the air. It won’t take long before your well planned message will be read by thousands and the result in sales will follow.
