ADVERTISING
PRINCIPLES
ROBERT SHORE
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PRINCIPLE 3 LESS IS MORE
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The message is simple, straightforward and effectively presented.
The more information you put into an ad, the less people are likely to take away from it. As Frank Lowe, one-time head of pioneering UK agency Collett Dickenson Pearce, put it: ‘Bad advertising tends to be complex advertising. Make it clean and simple. It’s the old analogy that if you throw five tennis balls at somebody, they can’t catch any of them. But if you throw only one, they can.’ A particular product or service may be better than its rivals in a hundred ways, but the ad that best conveys that superiority is likely to home in on just one of those qualities – its USP or ESP if you like – and to express it as simply and memorably as possible, as in this surprising and magnificently to-the-point advert for Gillette, which was conceived to introduce the new concept of safety razor blades.
The visual analogy between beer and ice cream focuses the consumer on the product’s creaminess.
The right slogan makes the product memorable.
These four ads connect their product to a simple and relevant idea: Ribena is a natural product; Evian makes you feel young; You are what you eat; Heinz Ketchup is made from real tomatoes.
[fig 33 Buildings such as this old warehouse have great flexibility, here adapted to a museum.
Positioning your product Positioning is key. Ted Morgan defines it as follows: ‘Essentially, it’s like finding a seat on a crowded bus. You look at the market place. You see what vacancy there is. You build your campaign to position your product in that vacancy. If you do it right, the straphangers won’t be able to grab your seat.’ Doyle Dane Bernbach’s groundbreaking Volkswagen ads from the early 1960s involved a masterful piece of positioning, avoiding the hype and hyperbole usually associated with car advertising to address the viewer with self-deprecating humour. ‘To advertise a car that looked like an orthopedic boot would have defeated me,’ David Ogilvy commented. ‘But Bill Bernbach and his merry men positioned Volkswagen as a protest against the vulgarity of Detroit cars in those days, thereby making the Beetle a cult among those Americans who eschew conspicuous consumption.’ Homing in effectively on the point of difference that really makes the product stand out from its competitors is often best achieved by means of a little lateral thinking. For instance, when London agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty was called in to help relaunch Boddingtons, a brand of bitter originally brewed in Manchester, it applied a bit of transformatory creative logic to the idea of the beer’s creaminess. As the managing director of Boddingtons’ parent group explained: ‘We were thinking how to turn a second-rate north-west brand into something more stylish, to make it more appealing again. BBH thought of focusing on the creamy aspect, of selling a beer like a face cream.’ And so it was that a series of award-winning ads were born that drew an analogy between beer and face cream, ice cream, sun cream and whipped cream. The sense of local identity was retained both in the tagline ‘The Cream of Manchester’ and, in the television campaign, in the use of a series of attractive women with distinctive Northern accents. Giving a simple, relevant idea – Bovril gives you energy, tomato ketchup is made from actual tomatoes, Ribena is an essentially natural product, drinking a particular brand of spring water makes you feel vital and young, you are what you eat – a clear, visually inventive treatment is the key to a great deal of effective, memorable advertising.
A clear message: Bovril gives you energy.
10 Principles of ADVERTISING ROBERT SHORE The popularity of the television series Mad Men has raised the public awareness of advertising firms and what may or may not happen behind the scenes. We all recognise advertising when we see it: it’s those bits that surround the editorial content in papers and magazines, that interrupt TV programmes or pop up on the websites you like to browse. As a discipline it might be defined as follows: advertising is about creating a message about something (usually a product or service) and then getting it out to people in the hope that they will react in a particular way – which in all likelihood means “buying it”. Or put another way, it’s paid persuasive communication that uses the mass media to connect an identified sponsor – the person or company that pays for the ad – with its target audience. This book examines the different elements of those definitions and shows readers – through discussion of the ten key principles underlying all great advertising – how to create dynamic, well-targeted adverts of their own. Engagingly written by journalist and critic Robert Shore, this book provides the basic principles behind creating a successful dvertisement. With clear explanations, illustrations and checklists for each chapter, the reader is guided through what goes into making an advertisement work. Whether you are a student or just interested in what you are bombarded with every day, this is an enjoyable and fascinating read.
Specifications 245 x 190 mm (7 1/2 x 9 5/8 in) 176 pages with 130 illustrations Paperback Recommended retail price: £ 19.95 | € 24.95 | US$ 29.95 18,000 words ISBN 978-1-908126-30-6 September 2012 Key features • Clear explanations of each principle • Quotes from advertising professionals • Useful checklists for each chapter In the same series: 10 Principles of Good Interior Design 10 Principles of Architecture
The Author Robert Shore is a journalist and critic who has written widely on culture and media for newspapers and magazines. He is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times and The Guardian. Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Know your audience Behind every great advertising campaign… Less is more A picture is worth a thousand words Originality is just copying with a twist The medium is the message There’s no such thing as bad publicity Restrictions will set you free Once is never enough Ignore all rules and prescriptions
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