My entry into the world of advertising
After years of skipping ads on YouTube and scrolling past them in crossword puzzles, I never thought I would one day find myself on the other side. Even less did I realise its complexity. How do you create an advert that gets attention? What does the process of creating a print ad actually look like? I was not even aware of these key questions before I entered this world.
The philosophy of advertising
At the very beginning of my journey into the world of advertising, I had a tray of problems in front of me at lunchtime at my company – “How do I sell the content of a website?” A few years back I would have answered “With an attractive advert”, but now I had to remember ‘attractive advert’. Stella. But before I could even think about an advert and what it would look like, I had to look into the meaning of the word ‘content’ and the problem of its understanding in the Slovenian public – do people even know what it is or do they even care about it?
Concluding firstly that the general public is unlikely to delve too deeply into the meaning of the word ‘content’, and secondly that this is not a priority on most people’s agenda, I decided to focus on the ‘why’ in the advert instead of the ‘what?’. So my next ideas came from the question “why would someone want to have content, even if they don’t quite know what it is?” Soon, after a few days of editing ideas, I had a second tray with a new problem – “We now have the option of placing an advert in a local magazine. What kind of ad should it be for readers?” I have been to the same place a few times, but I admit that I could not have done the reader profiling myself with my current knowledge. So it was essential to have people who knew the target audience better than I did to work with me on the ad. Without them, the ad would not have felt alive, but would probably have died in the conversation with the editor, because it would not have been adapted. Together, with the team, we tried to identify what could be the values of our audience that we needed to communicate in the ad. We concluded that the readers of the newsletter are artisans, who aim to create or increase interest in their own company, but at the same time may have problems with their online presence.
Ad content for content
So, in the second step, I started to generate more concrete ideas based on the group’s findings – I illustrated several ad concepts on a sheet of paper with different sketches, slogans and layouts. When I presented the ideas, it was clear that some of them just wouldn’t stick with readers, but this step was necessary because we finally came up with the ad’s layman’s question – “No traffic (to your website)?” Now we had to make a story and enrich it with illustrations. As an amateur in the field of design with digital tools, I would have spent several days here instead of a few hours working with other digital specialists. It wasn’t long before the first visual image – a full and empty lane of motorway – was ready. “Great! Just the text and the colour matching to go” , but, like the previous steps, this one was not easy or without obstacles. There are a lot of different visual combinations, but not a lot of time and energy. However, overcoming these obstacles and trying out different combinations of the elements of the advert was also an interesting experience.
The end? Where is it!
Shortly after the first advert, the opportunity for an advert and a PR article in another magazine came up. Again, the ad needed to be re-designed, the PR article needed to be created and edited, and it needed to be enriched with graphic content for the new target audience. It is very likely that this is not the end of the campaign, despite the results showing the need for a redesign. The sad truth of the advertising world is that sometimes, due to various factors, advertisements do not catch on with the audience to the extent desired and the campaign is a waste. The advert I helped to create was not as successful as I would have liked. However, based on the results – less than the desired response – we put our heads together again and tried to uncover the reason. We ended up concluding that the lajtmotiv “No traffic” had a connotation that did not grab enough attention from the target audience. So the need for new ideas is not yet gone, and I am not short of ideas.
If I had to choose just one lesson I took away from this experience of making an ad and advertising, I would choose this one: “If you have the opportunity, get specialists in different fields” For the most optimal ad creation, you need at least knowledge in economics, design and psychology. I realised that advertising is much more interdisciplinary and complex than I had imagined before this experience. It also makes it more interesting and dynamic. However, it should not be forgotten that in this case I was creating an advertisement for an analogous medium – print. This means that I have only had a taste of one sphere of advertising, while the digital world is still more nebulous to me at the moment. I am aware of the fact that an ad has to be presented to a person more than once for it to register, which means that in the current world, advertising (also) online is very important for maximum ad penetration. I am curious to know what challenges await me in digital advertising.
Summary
Creating an advert is a multi-step process, with many factors to consider if you want the advert to gain attention and get the reader interested in the content. From the initial idea to the actual implementation of the campaign took several days and the results are not yet definitive either, although it seems more likely that this shot did not hit the target. However, I am not going to throw in the towel just yet.
(Text by our new creative 16.10.2024)