The art of persuasion

© Igor Mojzes – 123RF.com

The first is: "Effective advertising grabs your consumer's attention so you can tell him what you want him to know so that he will do what you want him to do."

Then there's: "Creativity in advertising generally means finding a distinctive new way to persuade your target market to buy your product or service."

And: "Creating an advertisement is simply gift-wrapping the truth about a product or service" - or is it?

When you come to think about it, advertising works very hard to be good. It's far more disciplined than any of the other arts.

Most TV comedy shows have about 15 minutes in 30 to make you laugh. Quiz shows have about 10 minutes of quiz.

But the advertisement generally has 30 seconds to do its job. In print, it has less than two seconds to prevent you from turning the page.

To call it "good" is to do it a great disservice. It's actually "fabulous" when you consider the time frames it has to rigidly stick to, as well as the fact that its audience is mostly unreceptive to begin with. And yet, new and exciting and, most importantly, highly persuasive advertising continues to be produced decade after decade. Quite staggering, really.

Some slight of hand

How do audiences interpret your discount message, for example?

Of course you'll have discovered much of this during your pre-testing research. But which of these statements do you think is most effective:

50% off!

Two for the price of one!

Was R20.00 - now R10.00!

Each one says more or less the same thing, but two for the price of one works better in most cases (so research tells us) because it introduces the second item at no additional cost and no mental calculation is necessary.

Also, you'll move more stock.

Here's another good idea of giving away a discount that appears to be more than it really is:

"Free! A R20.00 gift voucher with your second R100 purchase!"

A quick calculation will tell you that, although it sounds like 20%, this is, in fact, only a 10% discount - but it's actually even less than that because it's a "voucher", which can only be redeemed against yet another (the third, actually) purchase.

It's clever, if not a little underhanded. But then, that's advertising for you.

The word "free" is very powerful, which is why you see "bundled" products around so much. For example: "A free 50ml single malt with every bottle of XYZ blended whisky".

Magazines learned this years ago - offer a free plastic hair comb [cost about 5 cents] with this month's edition and watch the copies being piled into supermarket baskets.

Over the next few weeks I'll be discussing other clever little ideas and some basic copywriting rules, which you might find interesting.

Read my blog (brewersdroop.co.za) or see what other amazing things we do at brewers.co.za

*Note that Bizcommunity staff and management do not necessarily share the views of its contributors - the opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.*