The many faces of print advertising

We found a very useful video on youtube, which surprisingly was also made by a student for a project. It goes through the different types of print advertising and also shows some interesting examples.

Remember, there is a difference between appeals and types!!!

Appeals: determines what the advertising message will communicate
Types: the ways of presenting advertising messages (advertising execution)

Advertising Appeals

Another point to remember when analyzing an ad is to decide what technique is being used to communicate the message to the audience.

Advertising appeals is the term used to describe the approach which determines what the advertising message will communicate to influence the audience’s response and feelings towards the product or service.

Some of the basic appeals are:

- Happy families

- Luxurious lifestyles

- Dreams

- Love

- Successful careers

- Glamorous places

- Nature

- Art and culture

- Self-importance

- Humor

- Childhood

From reading the list of appeals you can straight away see that advertisers pinpoint our social needs to make it more effective.  Advertisers use these appeals to also create need!!! They have to make us aware that we need it in order to sell the product.

In other words, this is also known as BRAINWASHING!!

Basic Steps

We look at an advertisement for the average time of 1.5 seconds!!! These few seconds leaves us with a lasting impression of the brand image.

The basic steps to analyzing your first print advertisement, is to decide:

-          WHO the ad is aimed at

-          WHAT is being advertised

-          WHEN/ WHERE this ad might appear

-          WHY this helps sell the products

Answering these simple 5 questions will be the beginning to unveiling the hidden aspects of ads

Breaking it down

To learn how to analyze print advertisements, you first have to understand its components...

Even though most print advertisements look different, they all follow a basic format believe it or not! A print advertisement is usually broken down into the following 5 parts:

1. Headlines: the words in the leading position of the advertisement

Types of headlines:

· Direct headlines: straightforward and informative

· Indirect headlines: provoke curiosity (ex: using questions)

2.  Subheads: secondary headlines that appear in smaller type size

3. Body copy: the main text portion of a print ad that focuses on the factual information

4. Visual elements: illustrations, photos, brand logo…etc, to identify  and create a strong, memorable brand identity

5.  Layout: the physical arrangement of the various parts of the ad

It all starts with a simple blog ...

Welcome to our online guide to everything to do with 'Print Advertisements'! This is a simplified A to Z guide on how to analyze and compare different types of print advertisements. This blog  is not only created to educate minor students, but also to raise awareness. We are constantly bombared with advertisements and we are constantly sucked into buying products without having any answers to explain our actions.

You're probably wondering why you should continue following this blog...

Well, learning how to analyze advertisements is a power tool that we all need to make better choices in our lives, understand the hidden intentions behind them, and take control of our decisions! And it all starts here with a simple blog ...

You can also follow us on @printads101 for any updates.