Advertising | Alex Tran

Magazine Ad Sales Down But Not Out

February 12, 2009 By Alex Leave a Comment

Yes it is true that magazine ad sales are down. According to recent figures, magazine ad pages, a measure of magazine ad sales, is down around 12% year over year. So where are companies spending their advertising dollars? While the recession has taken a big bite out of ad spending, many companies have also shifted their advertising dollars to online media. There is direct evidence of this in the rise of Google Pay Per Click rates over the last few years.

Even though offline channels like newspaper advertising, and now magazine advertising, have gone down, their advertising methods have not. As business owners and online marketers, we can still learn a lot from these offline channels. Let’s take a look at magazine advertising, for example. Before a magazine can sell advertising, it must first sell itself to customers perusing the magazine aisle in supermarkets or in bookstores like Borders.

The way that magazine writers do this is to create compelling mini-headlines. Cosmo magazine is the master at doing this. Here are some examples of the type of eye-catching headlines that you would see on a cover. There are a total of 8 mini-headlines that try to convince customers to pick up a copy. This is very much like what online advertisers do with PPC on Google.com.

The mini-headlines on the cover of might read:

617
pieces that
will change
your life

SPEEDY
TIPS FOR
PERFECT
HAIR

WE’RE GIVING
AWAY MORE THAN
$475,000
worth of
free gifts!
PAGE 236

How just
5 pieces
can get you
through
the week
PAGE 212

Update
your look
in one
simple step

NEW SECTION:
THE BEST
ONLINE SHOPPING
(and we should know!)

INSTANT
GLAMOUR:
THE ONLY
MAKEUP ITEM
YOU’LL NEED

Jenny Lauren
The strong
and sexy type

I tried to preserve the colors, caps, and bolding schemes that Lucky used to capture people’s attention. Study these mini-headlines and sub-headlines. This is the kind of wording that magazine advertisers have to try and capture and hold a passerby’s attention. Usually, you only have 3 seconds or less before people choose.

Study these examples. They represent excellent copy writing. In the next blog post, we’ll study these headlines in more detail.

DONOTCHANGE

Filed Under: Advertising Tagged With: Advertising, google, magazine ad sales, Online and offline, Pay per click, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Recession, Search Engine, swipe files

The Best Logos and Some Tricky Psychology

January 9, 2009 By Alex Leave a Comment

Back in the early days of advertising, coming up with the best logos used to be a pretty easy matter. All you really needed was a good font, a competent designer, and a catchy idea. Because advertising was so new to people, they were not yet jaded by. A pretty picture really could sell items, and quite easily at that.

Nowadays, things are more difficult. The top logos have come to saturate our national consciousness. Things like the Coca-Cola logo and the Nike swish, culturally recognized icons, are hard to duplicate. The more time that passes, the more people tend to resist new logos. In the same way that the best clip art is all over the web while new attempts are quickly forgotten, so the top logos tend to forestall new innovation in logo design.

Part of the problem is that the best new logos have to employ some tricky psychology that older ones didn’t. People are so sick of having things sold to them that they often don’t really want to see your company name in your logo – at least not in a clear and straightforward manner. Most older logos incorporated the brand name in a fairly easy to read text, but newer ones often obscure it. The challenge for a logo designer is to both associate the image with a company while at the same time obscuring the fact that one is doing so.

Of course, this principle isn’t universal. The best logos for food service companies are often pretty direct and straightforward. If you look at local coffee shops or small bookstore chains, for example, you will see the name spelled out in quite clear, classic lettering. This demonstrates an important principle for designers. What makes the best logos depends on what you are selling. You only want to be cutting edge if you’re selling cutting-edge products. The best logos for food service should not look high-tech and futuristic. Instead, they should look wholesome.

The idea of “the best logos” might be flawed in itself. As a young designer, I wanted to put my mark on the world. I was always studying what I thought to be the top logos, and trying to outdo them. What I did not realize was that logo design has a lot to do with what you are selling. The best logo might look quite conventional, but still fit the product very well.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: Advertising, Brand, Business, Logo, Marketing and Advertising

Gorilla Marketing or Guerilla Marketing?

January 3, 2009 By Alex Leave a Comment

What is the proper term — gorilla marketing or guerilla marketing? No matter. Both terms are used by people to mean a type of low cost marketing strategy for small businesses and individuals when they are going up against Goliath.

Products and services have to find customers in a fiercely competitive market. Large corporations have large advertising budgets and big marketing teams but small businesses may only have a small budget and they have to be a bit more imaginative. It’s not just a matter of cost however, but of results and the recent trend for gorilla marketing is proving successful in many cases.

Conventional TV campaigns, billboards and press advertisements are all expensive and the public is used to them and may have become desensitized to them. Niche marketing or aiming at a target audience is the modern way of doing things, aided by technology. The younger generation is particularly receptive to different sorts of promotions. Gorilla marketing, sometimes referred to as buzz marketing or stealth marketing, has also been taken up by bigger organizations.

This sort of method puts an emphasis on building a relationship that feels personal to the customer. Some tactics are inexpensive or free and a lot of companies have come to value word of mouth recommendations. The Internet plays a big part in this and potential consumers of a product may not even realize that they have been targeted in this way. Chat rooms, blog pages, messages and chain email are all portals for promotion. Sending text messages to cell phones is another method. The act of sending personal messages to a Bluetooth device has been dubbed “bluejacking.”

Communication has always been the tool of publicity departments and it’s easier than ever for people to share information, opinions and ideas. With the Internet, it is literally a global market. Gorilla marketing takes note of the fact that families have fragmented as far as their leisure time is concerned. Instead of gathering round the TV together, families are apt to be doing their own thing in different parts of the house. Mom may be watching her soap in the living room, Dad is listening to his baseball game on the radio in his den and their teenage kids are social networking in their bedrooms.

There are other ways besides high tech solutions to get the message across. Urban dwellers are familiar with sticker campaigns. They pop up everywhere and sometimes in unexpected places. They may be in subway stations, telephone booths or stuck in the cab of a truck. Advertisements are printed on receipts or on the reverse of bus tickets. The art of gorilla marketing is making use of the everyday things that we all take for granted. A slogan on a T-shirt is often a walking advertisement.

What else can you think of to get into the subconscious mind of your target market?

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: Advertising, Business, Guerrilla marketing, Market, Marketing Advertising, Marketing strategy, Target market, Word of mouth

Recent Post

Small Business Taxes Gone Wild In California

You Got the Opt-in, Now What? Here Are Some Top Email Strategies

Linkedin Company Page Follows the Leaders Facebook and Yelp

A Way to Promote Your Business with Facebook Events

Featured Post

How to Remove Antispyware Soft

Featured Video