Text ads as cost-effective envoys

This article discusses the roles of various advertising media, including text ads. The article concludes that text ads do have a role to play in businesses' advertising campaigns, as cost-effective envoys.

Today, there are many ways to advertise products and services. The range is from plain and simple text ads in local classified directories, to exotic and sophisticated commercials on national television. Thanks to technological developments and tumbling technology prices, the whole of this range is available now to just about any profitable business.

One result is confusion in many business advertisers' minds over where best to invest their budgets. Another is the tendency for them to be seduced by the power of 'rich' media, like video and audio. Rich advertising media is, undoubtedly, powerful. Video adverts produced by skilled practitioners with adequate budgets have the capacity to influence customers' behaviour in extraordinary ways. On the other hand, video adverts produced by unskilled practitioners with low budgets have the capacity to inflict extraordinary damage on products, brands and companies.

This said, customers seem to be increasingly immune to rich adverts, even to those that are produced imaginatively and well resourced. Television commercials that would have shocked, or beguiled, them into new behaviours ten years ago tend to have less impact these days. It takes an innovative advert to make customers sit up and pay attention, and one that's truly amazing to keep them interested. At this time, only two television commercials in the UK meet these criteria for the author. One is the Citroen car that turns into a dancing robot and the other is the 'Gene Kelly' advert for Volkswagen's new Golf.

The average advertiser of small and medium-sized businesses cannot hope to compete with adverts like these. If they make brave attempts, they run the significant commercial risk of producing advertisements that make their businesses seem ridiculous or cheap by comparison.

Given technical advances, like those that put digital video editing and viral marketing techniques in the hands of lay people, business advertisers must tread warily. Even if advertisers can hire the means to create rich, amusing adverts that captivate, inform and motivate, the creation process often takes a considerable time to complete. During this time, it is necessary to keep the topic, message and story line of adverts secret, to ensure the desired impact on release.

So, what do we have so far? It seems that there is a bewildering array of advertising options these days. Exotic, rich media are intrinsically attractive to advertisers. All that motion and colour is so, so tempting. Yet, adverts using rich media must be resourced and managed properly if they are to be credible. This implies adequate amounts of skill, money, time and security.

In a modern world, it's easy to overlook the fact that there are other faster, cheaper and more secure ways to advertise, that require fewer skills to produce than video say. It's worth noting magazines, billboards and the Internet in passing. These delivery media largely support static images, although they do offer the power of colour. Text can be interspersed with the images, the drawback here being the effort required of potential customers to read sales messages. In television and radio ads, the important sales messages are generally spoken.

Like television and radio, magazine, billboard and Internet adverts are built around emotive images. The associated messages are vitally important, but customers' eyes are attracted initially to the images. Advertisers use powerful, arresting images to make potential customers stop what they are doing and pay attention. Then, support media interest them to the point that they do something desirable as far as advertisers are concerned, like telephone a call centre. The role of images is to stimulate, or agitate, potential customers to the extent that they make contact with businesses and, thereby, satisfy some intrinsic 'problem'.

Like attractive television pictures and radio jingles, attractive photographs and graphics require talent to produce. Business advertisers might take a photo, or draw a graphic, that's capable of interesting potential customers. An image that will complement any sales messages they have in mind. An image that is so technically proficient that it reflects the high standards of their companies. If they're honest though, it's unlikely. It takes years of training and practice to succeed as a photographer or graphic artist. A few 'happy snaps' of trucks or premises are unlikely to suffice.

Attractive adverts in magazines, on billboards and on the Internet also require significant skill to produce then. Although, thankfully, the time and money budgets will be lower than for television or radio. In addition, the security aspect will be less important, if only because fewer people are involved in design and production. The trade-off for lower cost is lower effectiveness (probably), compared to television and radio advertising.

Effectiveness is relative though. These 'poorer' advert delivery media are still very effective. They can be made even more effective by making them integral elements in mixed media packages. Business advertisers should focus on overall 'cost-effectiveness' therefore, when selecting media and defining their systemic relationships, rather than effectiveness or cost in isolation.

Humble, black and white text ads (both online and offline) offer a cost-effective means of advertising too. They require fewer skills to produce than magazine, billboard or Internet alternatives. What's more, informed business owners are often better placed to create text ads than external copywriters are, which resolves the security issue. Yes, text ads are cost-effective to create and distribute, in terms of money and time.

Like other advertising media, text ads are seldom a complete solution in their own right. In a few cases, they are though. One such case is small businesses that trade locally; they may rely solely on text ads. In these circumstances, simple lines of well-written text can offer a highly cost-effective means of advertising, especially if various versions of adverts are deployed, and one version appears every week in local media.

In most cases, text ads should form an integral part of mixed media advertising campaigns, as described above. Each element in these campaigns should be designed to complement the others. Each element should be assigned specific functions to perform.

For example, many inexpensive text ads can be sown widely on the Internet, in newspapers, in newsagents' windows, even on mobile telephones these days. Meanwhile richer and more costly television, radio, magazine and billboard adverts can deliver complementary messages in specific locations. The campaign as a whole should compel potential customers to seek salvation and/or fulfilment by making contact with businesses and buying their products or services.

In conclusion, like all other advertising media, text ads can play a pivotal role in mixed media campaigns. In ways that complement richer alternatives, text ads can be 'envoys'; envoys that businesses despatch to the Four Corners of the known world, to tell potential customers how well they can salve their worries and meet their needs.

About the author: © Steve Hawker 2005. All rights reserved. Steve is a partner at http://www.ehawker.co.uk, the small ads search engine. E-mail him at: info at ehawker.co.uk