AUSTIN ADVERTISINGAUSTIN ADVERTISINGThey say a picture’s worth a thousand words. But sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures. Certainly there are words that can conjure up a thousand pictures – ‘love,’ ‘hunger,’ ‘joy,’ ‘freedom,' are a few examples.
But do you need a thousand pictures? No more than you need a thousand words, not when an ad of few well-chosen words and a key visual working together hand-in-hand will get your message across with impact. That kind of ad will stay in a reader’s or viewer’s mind long after the newspaper or magazine is put away, the TV or computer turned off.
It will be an ad Austin Advertising calls intrusive. Not annoying, not necessarily risqué, but never bland – it will certainly get noticed. Humorous, but only if it fits the product and the strategy – some things aren’t funny, most things can be. Timely too. Advertising should not be yesterday or tomorrow, but today – now and only now. And short – short is better than long any day. If you need to give a lot of facts, the end justifies the media, say it in a web site, a brochure, rack folder, or a DVD placed in the hands of your target audience.
Whatever your media – keep it simple and on strategy. Radio commercials with a lot of ya-da-ya-da are largely talking to themselves. So are TV talking heads. Whether print, Internet, radio, or TV, it doesn’t have to be expensive, any more than it has to be boring. We could drop a thousand-ton pizza on L.A. or Orlando in a radio commercial, and everyone would see it clearly in their minds. The TV spots featured on our web site are all simple. Almost all were cheaper to produce than any talking head. The one made up solely of hand gestures won many awards, including a special jury award at Cannes and a gold Clio for best TV commercial.
After thirty years of creating advertising for clients big and small, take it from me, Alan Austin, advertising works, and strong advertising – not empty words and pretty pictures – works best. Click here to see some samples of my work.
