Good-Bad Advertisements

The last assignment for Strategic Media Communications was to find examples of good and bad advertisements in magazines and newspapers. I forgot to do this assignment so I am posting it a few days late....oops.

One example of a bad advertisement that I found was an ad that was included on 2 different pages in last week's issue of The Critic. The ad was in color and eye catching, but all it had was an orange background with various patterns of yellow lines running through it. I found this ad to be ineffective because it gave people no indication as to what it was about, or what it was advertising. I feel like this ad would have been more effective with either the inclusion of writing, or an obvious visual explaining what it was about.

One example of a good advertisement that I found was from the March 31 issue of The Wall Street Journal. It was a full page color ad put out by Toyota. I found this ad to be effective because rather than using visuals of cars or displaying a large Toyota logo, this ad (and other similar ads) took the opportunity to answer consumer questions about how they plan to improve and assure the safety of their vehicles. The question was quoted in black at the top of the ad, and the answer was posted in red on about 3/4 of the page. The only time in which the Toyota logo appeared was at the bottom of the page. I found this ad to be effective because it was consumer based, and placed their needs among the needs of the company to display their logo and products.

Another example of a good ad that I found was in the same issue of the Wall Street Journal. It was a 1/8 page, black and white ad for Tiffany and Co., a jewelry company. This ad featured a 3 layer ring in the center, which was the focus, with some small writing underneath explaining what the item was. The logo was centered at the bottom of the ad, so that can easily catch peoples attention as well after they are initially attracted to the ring that is shown. I thought that this was effective because the item that is featured catches your eye, and draws you to the company based on product. It was also featured on the top right hand corner of the page so it would be hard to miss. Personally, this was the first thing that I saw when I opened to this page.

An ad on the same page that I found to be not so effective was a 1/8 page, black and white ad for David Yurman, which appears to be another jewelry company. The reason that I was not real drawn to this ad was because it focused more on the model wearing the bracelet being advertised rather than the bracelet itself. While I understand that people may like to see an image of how something might look on them before they purchase it, I feel like this was not the most effective way to do that. I think they should have had a larger image of the bracelet, and maybe just have displayed the model's arm rather than a larger image of her. People are drawn away from what the focus of the ad is supposed to be.

One final ad that I found to be effective came from the same source. It was a full page ad for Chevron, a company promoting the improvement of the economy through use of human energy. This was a full page, color ad. The thing that made this ad most effective for me was not the statistics that were displayed at the top (though those are important), but rather the face of an innocent little girl that takes up about half of the ad. This attracted me because it showed be that through improvement of the economy through Chevron, we could be saving this little girls life, and providing her with a healthier and better place to live in her future. I also liked this ad because, like the others, it did not have it's logo plastered all over the page, just modestly in the bottom right hand corner. This focuses more on the people, not the company.