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Unforgettable AdsBy Kim T. Gordon Billions of marketing dollars are spent every year to create campaigns designed to be memorable. But what does it really take to make your company’s name or message stick in a prospects mind? Here’s what the latest research tells us about how to create marketing messages that are hard to forget, plus tried-and-true methods for making your next campaign your most memorable. Engage Prospects The fact is, the more time someone spends with your ad, the more likely they are to remember it. "Vivid, deeper processing leads to better storage of memory," says University of California distinguished professor of psychology, Elizabeth F. Loftus, the author of 18 books and one of the world’s leading experts on memory malleability. The job of a good ad is to get the advertiser or brand into the mindset of someone as they’re considering different possibilities. And to be successful your ad must grab – and hold – their attention. How can you entice prospects to spend more time with your ads? The answer varies depending on the medium. According to Philip W. Sawyer, senior vice president of Roper ASW and director of Starch Communications, a leading testing firm specializing in readership studies, the most memorable print ads have a message that grabs the reader – including a headline that contains a benefit – and a strong visual focal point, such as a close-up photo of a model looking directly at you. In magazines, one large photo works best, while in newspapers you can use multi-product visuals. A Starch study on behalf of the Newspaper Association of America showed that when three-quarters of the space was devoted to illustrations, recall rates improved by 50 percent. Add Color and Contrast Among magazine readers, high contrast images also boost recall. For example, when Starch tested two virtually identical ads for Stolichnaya vodka – one with a clear background and another with a black background – twice the number of people remembered seeing the one with the black background even though everything else in the ad was the same. Testing shows that, on average, larger ads in all print media are more memorable. However, a highly creative small-space ad can grab attention and consequently be more memorable than a so-so one that takes up a full page. Some colors enhance memorability in print media – sky blue, golden yellow, shades of blue-green – and red as a spot color in newspaper, where Sawyer says color increases recall by 20 percent. But there is new information regarding four-color ads in magazines. As recently as a few years ago, color ads in general earned 24 percent higher recall scores than black-and-white. Now, new full-page black-and-white campaigns are breaking through the clutter, and four-color ads have lost their advantage. Communicate Frequently In all media, repetition is one important key to memorability. At the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, psychologist Mark E. Wheeler conducted a study of memory in which a word was paired with a picture or sound many times over several days to test subjects’ recall. He believes multiple exposures to information in different contexts actually helps you remember it. So when you see a message in many different formats, such as a print ad, billboard and TV commercial, "You associate the multiple different impressions and that helps you retrieve the information later when you need it." Use Memorable Benefits Ads that grab and hold prospects’ attention are the ones that immediately communicate a benefit that answers the question, "What’s in it for me?" The bottom line, according to Sawyer, is that features aren’t memorable – benefits are. "If you have a headline that states a benefit, people will read it, remember it and clip it out of the magazine or newspaper and hold onto it ... and that’s the trump card for everything." Get In-depth Coaching on this Topic>>Kim T. Gordon's columns and articles are read by nearly 3 million small and home-based business owners each month. She is the author of three books, including Big Marketing Ideas for Small Budgets: A step-by-step guide to growing your business. Copyrighted material. May not be reproduced in whole or part without expressed permission from the author. |
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