Designing the Ad - Lecture Notes Week #6

Creative strategy is the process that turns a concept into an advertisement. An effective advertising
message should satisfy four requirements that marketers call the AIDA concept, which is an explanation
of the steps through which an individual reaches a purchase decision: attention, interest, desire, and
action. An effective message should get attention, hold interest, create desire, and produce action. First,
the promotional message must gain the potential customer’s attention. It then seeks to arouse interest in
the product. At the next stage, it stimulates desire by convincing the would-be buyer of the product’s
ability to satisfy his or her needs. Finally, the advertisement attempts to produce action in the form of a
purchase or a more favorable attitude that may lead to future purchases. One ad usually can’t take the
consumer through all four stages. The goal of the advertising campaign is to present a series of messages
and repeat it to a sufficient degree so that the customer will progress through the AIDA stages.

Message Strategy
The first step in creating effective advertising messages is to decide what general message will be
communicated to consumers. Developing an effective message strategy begins with identifying customer
benefits that can be used as advertising appeals. Ideally, advertising message strategy will follow directly
from the company’s broader positioning strategy. Message strategy statements tend to be plain,
straightforward outlines of benefits and positioning points that the advertiser wants to stress.
The advertiser must next develop a compelling creative concept—or “big idea”—that will bring the
message strategy to life in a distinctive, attention-getting, and memorable way. The “big idea” may
emerge as a visualization, a phrase or slogan, or a combination of the two.
When designing ads, advertisers come up with many ingenious ways to express a concept. Advertisers
can use a number of different appeals in advertisements. Advertising appeals should be meaningful,
believable, and distinctive. Appeals are usually either factual or emotional. In general, logical,
rational, reason-why appeals are more effective in persuading educated audiences; and emotional
appeals are more effective in persuading less-educated consumers. Frequently used emotional
appeals are fear, humor, and sex.

Strong fear appeals tend to be less effective than mild fear appeals. Marketers should use reasonable but
not extreme fear appeals. They should also realize that fear appeals are not always appropriate.
Many marketers use humorous appeals in the belief that humor will increase the acceptance and
persuasiveness of their advertising. Some marketers believe that younger, better-educated, upscale,
and professional people tend to be receptive audiences for humorous messages. Research has
demonstrated that surprise is almost always needed to generate humor and that the effectiveness of
humorous ads is influenced by message elements such as warmth and playfulness. Humor attracts
attention, doesn’t harm comprehension, is not more effective at increasing persuasion, does not enhance
source credibility, and enhances liking. Humor that is relevant to the product is superior to humor that is
unrelated to the product. Audience demographic factors affect the response to humorous advertising
appeals. The nature of the product affects the appropriateness of a humorous treatment. Humor is more
effective with existing products than with new products. Humor is more appropriate for low-involvement
products and feeling-oriented products than for high-involvement products.

Karen Geller Oct. 2023[Type here] [Type here] [Type here]

Sex appeals have attention-getting value. However, studies show that they rarely encourage actual
product consumption behavior. Sexual appeals interfere with message comprehension, particularly when
there is substantial information to be processed. More product-related thinking occurs in response to
nonsexual appeals; visual sexual elements in an ad are more likely to be processed than its verbal
content, drawing cognitive processing away from product or message evaluation.

Some researchers have concluded that nudity may negatively impact the product message. Sexual
advertising appeals often detract from the processing of message content. If a sexually suggestive or
explicit illustration is not relevant to the product advertised, it has little effect on consumers’ buying
intentions.

Message Execution
The advertiser now has to turn the big idea into an actual ad execution that will capture the target
market’s attention and interest. The creative people must find the best style, tone, words, and format for
executing the message. Any message can be presented in different execution styles, such as the
following:
• Reasons Why– This style gives consumers a single, clear reason why one product is better at
solving a problem. The format focuses on a need and points out how the product can satisfy it.
This is known as a unique selling proposition.
• Comparative Advertising– This style explicitly names two or more competitors. Comparative ads
can be very effective, but there is a risk of turning off consumers who don’t like the negative
tone. Comparative advertising is probably best for brands that have a smaller share of the market
and can focus on a clear observable superiority to a larger brand.
• Demonstration– This style shows a product “in action” to prove that it performs as claimed. This
style helps sell products that people “use.” Demonstration advertising is most useful when
consumers are unable to identify important benefits except through seeing the product in use.
• Slice of Life– This style shows one or more “typical” people using the product in a normal
setting.
• Lifestyle– This style shows how a product fits in with a particular lifestyle.
• Fantasy– This style creates a fantasy around the product or its use.
• Mood or Image– This style builds a mood or image around the product, such as beauty, love, or
serenity.
• Musical– This style shows one or more people or cartoon characters singing about the product.
This can include jingles.
• Personality Symbol– This style creates a character that represents the product. The character
might be animated.
• Technical Expertise– This style shows the company’s expertise in making the product.
• Scientific Evidence– This style presents survey or scientific evidence that the brand is better or
better liked than one or more other brands.
• Testimonial Evidence or Endorsement– This style features a highly believable or likable source
endorsing the product. It could be ordinary people saying how much they like a given product or
a celebrity presenting the product.

Karen Geller Oct. 2023[Type here] [Type here] [Type here]

Is it best to present your commercial first or last? Communications researchers have found that the
order in which a message is presented affects audience receptivity. Commercials shown first in a series
are recalled the best, whereas those in the middle are recalled least.

Pretesting
After the creative personnel have developed the ads, how can you know if the campaign ideas will work?
Advertisers try to minimize mistakes by getting reactions to ad messages before they are actually placed.
Much of this pretesting, the research that goes on in the early stages of a campaign, centers on
gathering basic information that will help planners to be sure they have accurately defined the
product’s market, consumers, and competitors. This information comes from quantitative sources,
such as surveys, and qualitative sources, such as focus groups. Copy testing measures the effectiveness of
ads. This process determines whether consumers are receiving, comprehending, and responding to the ad
according to plan.

Media Selection
One of the most important decisions in developing an advertising strategy is the selection of
appropriate media to carry the organization’s message to its audience. The media selected must be
capable of accomplishing the communications objectives of informing, persuading, and reminding
potential customers of the product being advertised.

Media planning is a problem-solving process for getting a message to a target audience in the most
efficient and effective fashion. The decisions to be made include audience selection and where, when,
and how frequent the exposure should be. The choice depends on the specific target audience, the
objective of the message, and the budget. For the advertising campaign to be effective, the media
planner must match up the profile of the target market with specific media vehicles. The first task for a
media planner is to find out when and where people in the target market are most likely to be exposed
to the communication.

Karen Geller Oct. 2023[Type here] [Type here] [Type here]