Create an advertisement!
For language arts, you will be creating an advertisement for your food expo product.
This is due on Thursday, March 26.
Advertising is the art of persuasion. People who write headlines and advertisements are writing for a specific purpose-to get you to choose their product from among others in the same category. The craft of writing ads is not as simple as it looks.
ü Good ad writing has 3 “C” qualities:
1. Carefully written
2. Clear
3. Concise
ü Good ads answer 4 questions:
1. What am I selling
2. Why should you buy it?
3. Where can you buy it?
4. What is the price?
Headlines must stop people in their tracks. They must reach out and grab the customer in a very short amount of time. Here are some guidelines:
ü The headline should convey an idea or intrigue people.
ü It should speak to one person at a time; even if 20 million people see a headline, each person must feel singled out, like the headline speaks to her/him.
ü The headline should use words with an “announcement” quality, such as presenting, new, or introducing.
ü A headline might announce a free offer, a price, or information about value.
ü Often, a headline starts to tell a story.
ü Remember the difference between a selling point and a customer benefit.
o Selling Point: Using a picture of a famous athlete with a milk mustache to sell milk is a selling point.
o Customer benefit: The milk ads message that milk does a body good is a customer benefit.
Keep it short! The best ads use short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs. Here are some tips that will help you create a simple and specific ad:
- Use active verbs. E.g. Do it now. Pay attention. Make a difference. Short sentences encourage people to act.
- Be careful with adjectives. They can cause writing to sound exaggerated. E.g. A spectacular, fantastic, unbelievable offer! Too many adjectives make people suspicious and take up space.
- Don’t’ forget adverbs. Adverbs add punch to ads. E.g. It’s absolutely guaranteed.
- Don’t be too clever. Jokes, puns, and rhymes are fine. Just don’t use them all the time. Peole may remember the cleverness but forget the product.
- Make every sentence lead in to the next one. When an ad “flows,” readers can be carried easily to the last word and to purchase the product.
- Tie everything to your main idea and headline. People are too busy to pay attention ato ads that wander.
- Great words to include in and ad:
free new results
proven easy announcing
you win healthy
save safe sale
money value guaranteed
- Poisonous words to be avoided:
hard fail death
bad obligation loss
worry wrong sell difficult
Layout
ü Don’t’ use more than 3 main colors
ü Don’t overload your ad with details
ü Use a font that is easy to read from a distance