Take a moment to think about all the different kinds of advertisements you’ve seen over the years. This will obviously include the champions of the advertising world like brochures,
postcards, and so on.
But try to think about all the really odd advertisements, all the really interesting ones, those that you don’t see very often. What ones stood out to you? What kind of advertisements did you first look at and say, “Now that’s an interesting ad.”
And this isn’t just about things far beyond the normal kinds of advertising. Think about variations you’ve seen in the normal styles of advertising, such as pocket brochures, or more artistic postcards. The unique aspect can have more to do with the way the advertisement looks than with the form it comes in.
The point I’m trying to make here is that if these things caught your eye at the time, are you doing something similar with your advertising?
Quite often a person will see something they like, see something that really catches their interest, but they won’t try to duplicate it with their own advertising. I suspect there are a number of different reasons why this is the case.
But the thing you should be considering, and one of the key components of a strong marketing push, is that you need to stand out. Your advertisements are just one in a large mass being sent out by company after company. Every business who has any interest in making their name known is going to be paying for all the commercial printing they can to get as many ads out there as possible.
This is where you’re going to be standing, trying to get everyone to look at you instead of the other guy. If you aren’t doing anything different from them then how exactly are you going to make yourself stand out from the crowd?
But many companies don’t go for the unique advertisements out of fear that they won’t work because they aren’t the norm, or because they simply don’t think about them. The standard styles of advertising are the things people are confronted with so often it can be easy to forget that there is indeed something else out there to be had.
Commercial printing is a very broad concept that is open to many possibilities. Marketing is a very broad concept that brings with it all sorts of different means of being noticed you would be smart to take advantage of.
Not every advertisement will work for every industry. It’s up to you to figure out what connects to your customers and gets people talking the most. You can’t figure that out if you aren’t looking at what options you have.
The next time you see an advertisement you really like ask yourself what it is about it that works for you, and try your best to emulate it in your advertising.
