Text ads as cost-effective envoys
This article discusses the roles of various advertising media,
including text ads. The article concludes that text ads do have
a role to play in businesses' advertising campaigns, as
cost-effective envoys.
Today, there are many ways to advertise products and services.
The range is from plain and simple text ads in local classified
directories, to exotic and sophisticated commercials on national
television. Thanks to technological developments and tumbling
technology prices, the whole of this range is available now to
just about any profitable business.
One result is confusion in many business advertisers' minds over
where best to invest their budgets. Another is the tendency for
them to be seduced by the power of 'rich' media, like video and
audio. Rich advertising media is, undoubtedly, powerful. Video
adverts produced by skilled practitioners with adequate budgets
have the capacity to influence customers' behaviour in
extraordinary ways. On the other hand, video adverts produced by
unskilled practitioners with low budgets have the capacity to
inflict extraordinary damage on products, brands and
companies.
This said, customers seem to be increasingly immune to rich
adverts, even to those that are produced imaginatively and well
resourced. Television commercials that would have shocked, or
beguiled, them into new behaviours ten years ago tend to have
less impact these days. It takes an innovative advert to make
customers sit up and pay attention, and one that's truly amazing
to keep them interested. At this time, only two television
commercials in the UK meet these criteria for the author. One is
the Citroen car that turns into a dancing robot and the other is
the 'Gene Kelly' advert for Volkswagen's new Golf.
The average advertiser of small and medium-sized businesses
cannot hope to compete with adverts like these. If they make
brave attempts, they run the significant commercial risk of
producing advertisements that make their businesses seem
ridiculous or cheap by comparison.
Given technical advances, like those that put digital video
editing and viral marketing techniques in the hands of lay
people, business advertisers must tread warily. Even if
advertisers can hire the means to create rich, amusing adverts
that captivate, inform and motivate, the creation process often
takes a considerable time to complete. During this time, it is
necessary to keep the topic, message and story line of adverts
secret, to ensure the desired impact on release.
So, what do we have so far? It seems that there is a bewildering
array of advertising options these days. Exotic, rich media are
intrinsically attractive to advertisers. All that motion and
colour is so, so tempting. Yet, adverts using rich media must be
resourced and managed properly if they are to be credible. This
implies adequate amounts of skill, money, time and security.
In a modern world, it's easy to overlook the fact that there are
other faster, cheaper and more secure ways to advertise, that
require fewer skills to produce than video say. It's worth
noting magazines, billboards and the Internet in passing. These
delivery media largely support static images, although they do
offer the power of colour. Text can be interspersed with the
images, the drawback here being the effort required of potential
customers to read sales messages. In television and radio ads,
the important sales messages are generally spoken.
Like television and radio, magazine, billboard and Internet
adverts are built around emotive images. The associated messages
are vitally important, but customers' eyes are attracted
initially to the images. Advertisers use powerful, arresting
images to make potential customers stop what they are doing and
pay attention. Then, support media interest them to the point
that they do something desirable as far as advertisers are
concerned, like telephone a call centre. The role of images is
to stimulate, or agitate, potential customers to the extent that
they make contact with businesses and, thereby, satisfy some
intrinsic 'problem'.
Like attractive television pictures and radio jingles,
attractive photographs and graphics require talent to produce.
Business advertisers might take a photo, or draw a graphic,
that's capable of interesting potential customers. An image that
will complement any sales messages they have in mind. An image
that is so technically proficient that it reflects the high
standards of their companies. If they're honest though, it's
unlikely. It takes years of training and practice to succeed as
a photographer or graphic artist. A few 'happy snaps' of trucks
or premises are unlikely to suffice.
Attractive adverts in magazines, on billboards and on the
Internet also require significant skill to produce then.
Although, thankfully, the time and money budgets will be lower
than for television or radio. In addition, the security aspect
will be less important, if only because fewer people are
involved in design and production. The trade-off for lower cost
is lower effectiveness (probably), compared to television and
radio advertising.
Effectiveness is relative though. These 'poorer' advert delivery
media are still very effective. They can be made even more
effective by making them integral elements in mixed media
packages. Business advertisers should focus on overall
'cost-effectiveness' therefore, when selecting media and
defining their systemic relationships, rather than effectiveness
or cost in isolation.
Humble, black and white text ads (both online and offline) offer
a cost-effective means of advertising too. They require fewer
skills to produce than magazine, billboard or Internet
alternatives. What's more, informed business owners are often
better placed to create text ads than external copywriters are,
which resolves the security issue. Yes, text ads are
cost-effective to create and distribute, in terms of money and
time.
Like other advertising media, text ads are seldom a complete
solution in their own right. In a few cases, they are though.
One such case is small businesses that trade locally; they may
rely solely on text ads. In these circumstances, simple lines of
well-written text can offer a highly cost-effective means of
advertising, especially if various versions of adverts are
deployed, and one version appears every week in local media.
In most cases, text ads should form an integral part of mixed
media advertising campaigns, as described above. Each element in
these campaigns should be designed to complement the others.
Each element should be assigned specific functions to
perform.
For example, many inexpensive text ads can be sown widely on the
Internet, in newspapers, in newsagents' windows, even on mobile
telephones these days. Meanwhile richer and more costly
television, radio, magazine and billboard adverts can deliver
complementary messages in specific locations. The campaign as a
whole should compel potential customers to seek salvation and/or
fulfilment by making contact with businesses and buying their
products or services.
In conclusion, like all other advertising media, text ads can
play a pivotal role in mixed media campaigns. In ways that
complement richer alternatives, text ads can be 'envoys'; envoys
that businesses despatch to the Four Corners of the known world,
to tell potential customers how well they can salve their
worries and meet their needs.