The basic rules for creating an advertisement (Part 2)

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I was chatting to a club owner who told me he had a problem with customers gathering at one end of the bar, getting in the way of the waiters. There was no apparent reason why they should gravitate to that particular spot, but they did. Sometimes the rest of the bar was empty but that end was always crowded.

What he did to change the situation was simple; he removed the pink light bulb above that section and replaced it with a green one. Result? It's now the last place that people gather.

Pink light is significantly more flattering than green and that's the reason that spot was so popular. I found the story interesting because the owner found the solution by getting back to basics. So often, we see creators of advertising trying to be too clever and, in doing so, miss the obvious and simple. You don't need any rules to tell you that an advertisement should dominate and have “movement”, etc., but one rule worth remembering is that your advertisement is not being produced as an art form. “Balance” is okay but “art” is a no­-no. So, if there's a moral here it's simply to be simple. Here are some other danger areas:

Reversed type: Unless your background is seriously dark enough, don't even think about doing this. It will often drive your readers away rather than inviting them in. Rather avoid it if possible.

Point size: Text point size should never be less than 10. Never ever. To expect a reader to fetch a pair of glasses in order to have the pleasure of reading your ad is asking a bit too much, don't you think?

Upper/lower case: Remember that lower­ case type is easier to read than upper­ case and that serif faces are easier on the eye than sans serif. Capital letters have the effect of SHOUTING and you don't want that.

Eye direction: If you're using a photograph of a model and she or he is looking in a particular direction, be sure the gaze is directed into the advertisement and not out of it. On the printed page a photograph will increase the notability of your advertisement by a huge percentage.

People like to see photographs of other people, children, strikingly beautiful people, strikingly ugly people, groups of people, people doing things – there's no particular order of preference (it depends on your product) but, oddly enough, it seems that animals would be fairly low down the list (but they're number one when it comes to chocolate boxes). There are some basic rules about photography:

1. Don't let the picture look too posed – it's sure to lose credibility for the entire advertisement. Readers are quick to spot a fake. It must look natural.
2. Use models who have faces that looked “lived in”. They have to look realistic (the opposite of those airbrushed Playboy pictures that were once popular).
3. Show the product is use wherever you can. It's much better to have a model draped in a bath towel than to show an inanimate pile of towelling, for example.
4. Don't ever use a model whose face has been used to promote a product with opposite values to yours. For example don't use the guy to promote your sexually­ charged after shave who was last seen in an erectile dysfunction advertisement.

They all seem obvious yet, almost on a daily basis, you see the same “errors” repeatedly. Constructing a “simple” advertisement is not always as easy as it may, at first, appear. This is why you see the same agencies and copywriters winning awards year after year.

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