Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [174]
The early 20th century ads for trains and ocean liners were works of art. Advertisers believed that “art sells.” Ad agencies competed for leading artists, and paid them enormous salaries. Typically, the artist would paint a picture and a copywriter would add the text later; however, some artists, such as Frederic Remington, Maxfield Parrish, N. C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell, often created entire ads.
In some ads, such as trains and ocean liners, the art focused on both product information and on emotion. However, the use of artists declined in the 1930s, perhaps largely due to improvements in photography. In addition, some agencies seemed more interested in art than in persuasion. For example, in the exhibits in Sobieszek’s (1988) book on artistic advertisements, the connections between the art and the sales messages were seldom clear.
9.2.1. For high-involvement ads based on strong arguments, consider informative pictures.
Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would
only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
David Ogilvy, 1960s
Pictures can provide an efficient way to communicate information. They can show size, shape, features, and colors of a product. A map can show how to locate a store. On the other hand, pictures are not needed for every ad. Messages can often be conveyed more effectively without a picture.
Uninformative pictures might distract from strong arguments. To the extent that an uninformative picture is interesting, recall of strong arguments might suffer even more.
Artistic quality is only persuasive when the product relates to art (such as with museums, art, or fashion), when the appeal is strictly for emotion, or when the ad seeks “high-class appeal.” For an appropriate and apparently successful example of the latter, Harvey Nichols, the stylish U.K. department store, launched a campaign in 1992 to reinforce its image among status-conscious people. It used ads with B&W artistic photographs that associated its name with designers and artists. The text seldom included information.
Do not distract readers by writing on pictures. The reasoning is threefold: First, it makes the text more difficult to read; second, it obscures the information in the picture; and third, because the writing and the picture compete for attention, readers might have trouble understanding the information. Note that in their efforts to convey information, newspapers seldom write on pictures. Internet experts also advise that advertisers should not write on pictures or on “wallpaper.” Advertisers seem to agree. For example, our WAPB analysis of 480 tested full-page print ads found that writing on pictures occurred in only 12 percent of the ads.
There are times when text can be effectively provided on pictures, such as when the picture contains a uniform plain background, or when the writing enhances the key point. For example, a Little Brothers ad, “Friends of the elderly,” showed a close-up of an old man’s face. The copy around his mouth said, “They’re not wrinkles, they’re stories.” The writing on his brow said, “wondering if I’d ever return from Iwo Jima alive.” Below the wrinkles around his left eye, the text read, “winking at the USO girl who became my wife” (Berger 2001).
Consider using “bleed” for print illustrations. This means that a picture runs to the edges of full-page ads—that is, there is no border. Perhaps it makes the picture larger with no loss of information? In any event, bleed is a costless principle with no apparent disadvantages.
In many cases it takes more than one picture to get the message across. An analysis of full and double-page ads in Time and the Saturday Evening Post found that from 1930