Lighten Up Your Advertising to Make it Effective!
  Written By Darren

I was sitting here this morning drinking my coffee as is my usual pre-graphics warm up, and I got to thinking as to how certain commercials seem to catch my attention more or make them more memorable. So, instead of racking my brain for several hours trying to figure it out, I plopped my ass in front of the television and just watched commercials. I'd change the channels actually looking for advertising instead of doing the normal opposite of trying to avoid them. I think the only time consumers look forward to seeing commercials is during the televised Super Bowl in the U.S., even though those multi-million dollar commercials are not even as memorable as the ones of Super Bowls gone by.

So, as I started quickly surfing channels, I'd stop and really just watch the commercials not really trying to absorb what was going on, but merely looking at it and seeing what kind of effect it could have on me. Most of them seemed pretty boring and some I couldn't even figure out what they were marketing. Is that effective advertising? I really don't think so, especially since I couldn't remember what the commercial was about. However, those that were memorable to me or that at least made me realize what they were selling, were those commericals that either had a catchy tunes or that were funny. Maybe it was my somewhat relaxed state of mind and not really thinking about "issues", so the ones that tried playing on my emotions were not really effective at the time. The more memorable ones were commercials that were just good regardless of what kind of mood or situation I was in at any given time.

As you may know, effective marketing plays on the emotions of the consumer. Advertisers try to either hit you where it counts, such as pitching loan sales to people who are in financial distress, or by just making their product memorable with the music and humor tactic. In music, it's called a "hook" because that's the part of the song that's going to make you remember the song and hook you. Heck, I have know idea what the Bare Naked Ladies are saying in their song, "One Week", but I know they're talking about something like "Chickity China the Chinese chicken" and something about a samurai in a movie. The song has some great hooks which make it memorable. It's not necessarily playing on my emotions or frustrations such as, "If you've got a phone, you've got a lawyer!"...the song just works. It's fun! Hey, maybe that's it! Maybe the difference is that I like fun, we like fun, humans like to remember happy things!

So, how can you make your ads more memorable? Well, it's not really practical to play midi music by the Bare Naked Ladies in the background while your porn site loads (although the name seems to fit the theme quite well), but have you ever tried humor if the hardcore sex draw just doesn't seem to be working like it did 6 months ago?

I remember designing a BBW site for a client and I just couldn't figure out how to market to the niche. It didn't quite seem fitting to use something so serious because of the poses of the women and also because the models actually seemed to be having fun in the pictures. So, we made the tour quite humorous while at the same time discussing the member features. The site turned out to be a hit, not just because of the specific niche, but compared to other sites that it was being matched against, it converted two times better.

Humans love humor, so if you have a site that can use a little humor and still work, maybe by lightening up the seriousness of just trying to sell porn, with certain niches trying to use humor in the tours or ads might work quite well. Afterall, I seem to think the Webmaster Commerce flash banner of the boy getting boinked in the butt is quite hilarious, don't you? It made me click.

Remember the SuperBowl half-time commercials mentioned earlier? Well, Americans may know this, but for everyone else, the day after the Super Bowl, they usually state the results of polls on the funniest half-time commercials, and as far back as I can remember, humor has ALWAYS outnumbered other commercials. This past Super Bowl, Budweiser had three ads which all placed in the top 5. One played on the emotions of the 9/11 attacks with the Clydesdale horses bowing their heads to New York, remember that? The second was called, "Bud Light - Robot Bash," and the other commercial called, "Bud Light - Satin sheets are slippery", had a guy diving on the bed, because he was going to get sex AND beer in the bedroom, and suddenly found himself flying out the second story bedroom window because the sheets were so slippery that he skimmed off the bed and right out the window. Emotions and humor...works every time. Oh, and then there's sex, but we already know that, right?

To view the mentioned Super Bowl ads, you can check them out at:
http://www.superbowl-ads.com/articles_2002/winners.html