Advertising techniques

The purpose of advertising is to sell a product. To achieve this, professionals use certain rhetorical techniques that they use in the design of their advertisements with the intention of convincing the public to which they are directed. These techniques vary depending on the medium chosen to convey the message. They consist of giving the acquired information and, above all, creating communication links.

Radius

The radio uses the spoken word and sounds to convince the public about the benefits and the need to purchase a product or service. In general terms, when reciting the announcement, it is advisable to adopt a positive tone and attitude as it is what will be transmitted to the listener.

One of the most common techniques in broadcast ads is repetition. The interest of some advertisers in naming their product or brand is widely known. To this end, they simply try to make the name be remembered by pronouncing it three or more times. If you also want to transmit a telephone number, it is vital to repeat it several times so that the listener can write it down or learn it.

Most of the ads used in this medium use the "sound exaggeration" technique. This technique consists of changing the tone of voice and putting on striking music before or while the announcement is being said. They are techniques that break with the monotony of the radio and that attract the attention of the listener.

Magazines and outdoor advertising

In these supports, it is the graphic image that commands, having to be attractive and impressive. It has been shown that the images with the greatest hook in advertising are in this order:

• Boys and girls.
• Mother and son.
• Animals.
• Popular characters.
• Women or semi-naked men.
• Food.

When designing an advertisement, some visual techniques that are especially attractive to the viewer must be taken into account:

• Contrast. The guy. before-after, night-day. For this technique, ads published on double-page are ideal.
• Series and sets. Similar series of articles and groups of objects immediately attract the look. Let's think of Andy Warhol's Marilyn series.
• Size. A large image will impact the audience with much greater intensity than several of medium or small size.
• Surprise. The impossible, strange, shocking scenes constitute an important claim of the viewer's attention.

Colors also have a psychological meaning that the advertiser knows how to use to highlight certain qualities of the product. The most common meanings are the following:

• Black. Night, sophistication, luxury.
• White. Purity, polishing. It is typical of cleaning products, light, unborn, etc.
• Blue. Harmony, trust.
• Red. power, aggression, excitement.
• Green. Nature, freshness. Proportion of products with natural ingredients or that preserve the environment.
• Yellow. Emotion, youth.
• Gris. Evocation, nostalgia.
• Brown. Home, privacy, maturity, security. Food in the house of all life.
• Violet. Fantasy, luxury.

Newspapers

Advertising in the daily press is based on the written word as an essential tool of conviction as it is information media in which the user is accustomed.

Television

The publicist will use images, sounds and words to develop his message. The commercials with the best results on television are:

• Those who show what a product is able to do.
• Those who show the result not to use the product announced.

Advertisers use several recognizable techniques to better convince the public to buy a product. These are some of the most common:

• Music. Once the product is used extensively, the publicists hope to convince potential buyers by making them slow down some stribille. Music can be composed expressly for an ad or use a known melody both in its original version and adapted for the occasion. Some melodies inserted in advertisements have become so popular that they have managed to throw the start at their authors. A successful practice in recent years is the inclusion in an announcement of an issue that has not been officially launched into the market. In this way, the author gets to spread his song that reaches notoriety in a "free" way, while the publicist will benefit from the later association that consumers do with the product when they hear the subject of their own interpreter.
• Testimonies. Publicists often seek to promote the superior quality of their product with the testimony of:
  • Users: are classic in detergent ads.
  • Popular characters: the recognized qualities of the character extend by affinity to the product he announces.
  • Experts: specialists in product analysis, management, manufacturing or maintenance.
  • Collectives or ordinary people: "three out of four dentists recommend...".
  • The advertiser himself: the ads in which the manager or owner of the company comments the excellences of the product are also popular. With this you want to transmit a guarantee to the highest level, giving at the same time a sense of proximity and commitment.
• Humor. Humor has always been a good ally of advertising. An ad that makes smiling, causes good sensations, is considered sympathetic and, that feeling automatically moves to the promoted product. It can be considered that the greatest success of an ad is that getting it collated and talking about it.
• Demonstration. One of the most successful techniques to advertise a product is the physical demonstration of the benefits that are preached from it. The detergent ads in which the result of two washes made with different product or the of the refresher test is compared are already classic advertising. Direct heire of the demonstrations carried out in the street by the fairers, this technique reaches its maximum recognition when it is given public faith of it, that is, when it is claimed that the test was to the notary.
• Emotion. The appeal to the various techniques concerning the manipulation of emotion is used to get people to buy a product. Apart from artistic expression, it is proposed to provoke an emotional reaction (which is usually used for association purposes or to relax or excite the spectator). Some regular appeals to the excitement in advertising are:
  • optimistic at ultrasound,
  • Appeal to the Adjustment
  • Appeal to ridicule.
  • Calls to compassion are often used by charitable organizations
  • Calls to fear are often used in messages and products that perform a public service, such as alarm systems or antibacterial sprays, which require protection against an external infection.
  • Finally, appeals to the grudge are often used in advertising aimed at the younger audience.
• Cartoons. Ads that resort to cartoons are also appropriate when dealing with sensitive topics such as bad smells (clean toilets), pest removal (raticides, matamoscas, matacucarachas, etc.), etc. Here we could include other techniques such as plastilinary animation or computer-assisted animation.
• Association. Publicists often try to associate their product with desirable images to make them look equally desirable. The use of attractive models is a well-known practice as well as attractive landscapes, dream houses and other fascinating images.

Other techniques

• Guerrilla advertising. Advertising by association. Made in such a way that target audiences do not know that they have been announced, but manages to increase their product perception (or decrease if this is the advertiser's attempt).
• Provocation, as in Benetton advertising campaigns that incite on taboo topics such as AIDS, ecclesiastical chastity, etc.
• Pressure: trying to make people choose quickly and without long consideration, some advertisers hope to make quick sales. Thus, it is easy to finish the sales argument with imperative phrases: "Come now, before they are finished!"
• Attraction by curiosity. Some ads capture our attention by appealing to our innate curiosity. It is the case of mentions such as: ‘Discover how to earn a living wage’ or more provocative, even: ‘Don’t keep reading this announcement.’
• Personalization of the message. Publicity often uses the recourse of the exclusive offer and addressed to a single individual which does not cease to be a consensual deception. Thus, the announcements include phrases such as: "Thinking only in you", "Designed for you", "In exclusive".
• Division of the amount. The figures to be paid seem smaller when they are divided and compared to small amounts: ‘So it costs a daily coffee, it can get a child out of misery’
• Word games. It is also common to use word games containing desired associations, usually on the slogan. The reason is that the mind considers them interesting so it makes an additional effort getting to better remember the message. In this sense, it is important to avoid negative connotations of the phrase, such as that of fruit juice that was announced as of mother fruit or the truck that It's loaded..
• Involving questions. It is usual that an ad ends with a direct question to the viewer. This technique seeks for the viewer to do a personal reflection exercise by applying directly to the message: Are you or are you not?, Who are you?
• The advertising slogans. These can employ a variety of techniques; even a short phrase can have an extremely elaborate technique. For example, Ford's popular motto "we want you to think about buying a Ford" is an extreme pressure tactic directed directly to the viewer, and McDonalds' motto, "I love this" (I love this).I’m loving it) is a combination of many different techniques, including a variety of social responses (this evokes the brand and the product, as well as the slogan as it is a phrase, and cognitive dissonance.
• Subliminal messages. It has been feared that some ads will present hidden messages, for example with short flash messages or soundtracks, which have a hypnotic effect on viewers (must buy the car, must buy the car). The notion that hypnosis techniques can be used by advertisers is now generally discarded, although subconscious sexual messages are extremely common, extending from the car model with prefixes such as SX to the suggestive placement of objects in magazines and posters.
• Dynamic advertising. The rise of the Internet and the development of new information technologies subject the world of advertising to constant renewal and updating. A new concept of dynamic publicity requires new channels of communication. Through the Internet make messages reach an objective audience. These messages are displayed on television monitors, large-scale LCD (or plasma) displays and their management is performed by a browser. The content of the multimedia message is produced as a programming grill and allows the broadcasting of live or deferred videos.

It is important to note the following: Over the past decade, advertising has increasingly relied on irony. Knowing that today's savvy viewers have become familiar with and cynical about the traditional media and methods listed above, advertisers have turned the fun on those very media. This wink approach means to viewers, "We know YOU know we're trying to sell you something, so come join us and let's have some fun." The ultimate goal of such advertising is to convey a sense of confidence and security to viewers, essentially saying, "We respect your intelligence, and you should respect us because we're not trying to fool you. That is why you need to be more intelligent and think that they are deceiving you, but it is very likely that you have already thought about this before and are making you believe that you are being deceived and take what they want you to take and make you believe that you are more intelligent. ».