Advertising, What Do You Want To Say?

When it comes to advertising many people are inclined to take the stance that advertising is just ‘making people buy stuff they don’t need.’

There is a lot of dislike verging on hatred towards the advertising industry. Perhaps not as a whole but certainly towards some areas namely, direct or personal selling. What is the main catalyst to this aversion to the advertising industry? I feel it is the fact that people just do not like being told what to do, it’s human nature to want to be able to make up your own mind with the thought that no one is telling you what to do. Although it has been proven that as part of the purchasing process information gathering is one of the main components; advertising is one of the main methods companies use to explain their products.

It can be argued that over the past years the ‘hard sell’ buy now luminous signs and in your face television advertisements have proven to be financially lucrative for all of those parties involved despite the cynicism surrounding them. There is the other technique used in the formulation and deliverance of ads. The ‘soft sell’ which in essence is trying to sell a product or service without trying to obviously appear as you are trying to sell. It is removing the sales pitch from the ad without losing any of the punch or effectiveness.

Today’s consumer is known as the post modern consumer. They are intelligent, brand aware, skeptical and in need of convincing or eye catching creativity and design if they are to give an ad more than five seconds attention. Never mind to part with their hard earned money.

Soft sell advertising as the name suggests adopts a more sensitive approach to communicating their message, it’s subtle and adheres to the marketing ethos of finding out what the customer wants and delivering that; as opposed to telling the customer what they want regardless of research as with hard sell advertising.

When creating any advertising you have to ask yourself one important question – what is it that you want to say? This should be the basis for the way the project progresses and for how your advertisement is communicated. Keep your message concise and to the point, it is counter productive to point out more than one potential benefit of a product or service. You will give the recipient too much information and render the advertisement useless.