Advertising Question of the Week: What Are Some Design Essentials for Effective Online Ads?

We could spit out a hackneyed laundry list of how to use color, graphics, images and selective accents to make online ads that are engaging, relevant and well-timed. 

But rather than induce catatonia with yet another design tutorial, we’ll attempt to answer this question from a broader perspective. 

So here goes:

1. Keep It Simple

The wildly expressive creative type never wants this directive.

Ah, if only advertising were as gorgeous, dynamic and beautiful as a Pride Parade. Then writers and designers could openly and freely express themselves. But the sad truth in advertising is that when everything stands out, nothing stands out. As it turns out, simple advertisements are just easier to understand than those that are complex. 

So think more Lenny from Of Mice and Men, and less Pythagoras from…um, his theorem. 

Ease up on the excess verbiage. Ads should be designed to ultimately drive traffic to other places - namely one’s website where verbosity rules. When viewers are given TMI in a short amount of time, they can become disinterested, distracted, unable to later recall the information, and possibly develop a need to draw blood.

Plus, if there’s too much stuff gumming up the works - and not just excess content, but also lots of showy images - the page will take a long time to load. People won’t like you if you do that.   

2. Remember to Whom Your CTA Is Calling

You need a call to action (CTA). That much you know.

But for your CTA to be effective, it should be visually appealing and focused on value. Now obviously, what’s visually appealing and of value is going to differ vastly for a 24-year-old versus a 77-year-old. For example (and to completely stereotype), fidget spinners versus tchotchkes. 

The fidget spinners will likely benefit from some flash and whiz-poppery, while the Hummel lovers will fare better with a more subdued CTA.

No matter the demographic though, the CTA should be brief and direct. Try to stick with fewer than five words. It should also be action-oriented. Be completely clear about what the click will accomplish. “Click here” isn’t gonna cut it. Especially if someone thinks he or she might get blown up.  

But “download your free ebook” sets an expectation and expresses value.

3. Strike A Balance 

Balance = harmony and order. 

Imbalance = chaos and tension. 

This isn't to say that a balanced composition is always better. Just as there are times when you benefit from the antics of an imbalanced friend (like when trying to steal a grocery cart), there are times in a campaign where it may be necessary to stress some chaos. But generally speaking, if stirring the pot with the giant spoon is not the goal, then balance is typically a good rule of thumb.

“Balanced” does not denote some boring symmetrical milquetoast design. There are many factors that contribute to balance. The main idea though is to create a harmonious and balanced experience for your customer.

4. Stay Visually Consistent

A designer may pour his or her soul into crafting the perfect ad, only to be reminded (once again) that most people are only going to casually glance at it for a few seconds. If at all. Yes, it’s demoralizing at times. 

So the talented online ad designer has learned to employ a specific image or display repeatedly across numerous ads and exposures. It’s a way of taking those numerous short term viewings and connecting them. This creates visual consistency to help move the message from short-term to long-term memory, while simultaneously giving the designer’s life a purpose. Again.

And it’s not just images. Taglines need to be a part of that visual consistency too. Part of what makes this approach so effective is that even if the ad changes in some way, consumers will still identify the brand with the tagline and imagery that’s been ever so gently and lovingly hammered into their consciousness.

In A Nutshell?

People are always going to process visuals and read subheads long before they get to the body text. That’s because people are busy. And simple.

So determine the relative importance of the various areas of content in your message. Give your CTA precedence. Then make use of simplicity, consistency and balance (along with the color, graphics, images and selective accents we mentioned in the first paragraph) to allow the viewer to scan the page and get drawn in by the most important information. 

If you’re doing it well, or if you’re lucky, they’ll be interested enough to read the entire text. From there, they’ll hit your website. 

Then you’ll just need to be sure you’ve got stellar content there…

Five Weirder Than Usual Advertising Stories

 Advertising is a strange industry. 

This is due in part to how heavily populated it is by creative people who need to pay their rent. But the nature of the work is inherently odd. Respected ad agencies are paid by individuals or companies to “talk them up,” as it were.

Remember back in middle school when you told Alex to tell Jessie how cool you were because you LIKED liked Jessie? Or maybe you pretended to be “going with” Alex to see if Jessie would suddenly find you interesting? It’s a lot like that, but more complicated.

Advertising Relies on a Deep Understanding of Psychology

And then using that psychology to generate interest. This has made for some pretty interesting stories.

Sunkist

Picture it. A smoggy morning in Minneapolis in 1902. A young man with a ripped t-shirt is downing some orange juice and getting ready to go pump iron at the gym. 

Okay. So before you go racing down to the comments section to skewer us for inaccuracies of the anachronistic nature (and perhaps question your own psychological need to do so), the above paragraph was intentional.

You probably caught the obvious mistakes. But did you include orange juice as one of those? Because orange juice wasn’t really around in 1902. And certainly not in Minnesota. Of course, oranges had juice. And both California and Florida were producing them. But nobody had given much thought to extracting that juice. 

By 1907, the production of oranges had increased beyond the demand for them. Most Americans didn’t know much about citrus fruits. So the California Fruit Growers Exchange (CFGE) hired the Lord & Thomas ad agency in 1907 to try to pump up demand for them. 

The problem was, the CFGE consisted of about 2,000 independent farmers, each with their own brand of oranges. So how could they do this? 

Enter Albert Lasker - a.k.a. the original Don Draper (though hopefully not so lascivious). Lasker was able to get the farmers to understand strength in numbers. He got them to unify all their brands under one brand. It would be the first perishable food product to be advertised.  They named the brand Sunkist; a name that delivered strong on the warm fuzzies. Who wouldn't want something that was sun-kissed?

But he knew that wouldn’t be enough. Americans were just too unfamiliar with oranges. Sun-kissed or otherwise. So what could be done with the excess of oranges? Lasker realized that it took a lot of oranges to make a glass of juice. That was the key.

So the campaign set out to teach consumers how to squeeze juice from oranges by educating them on different kinds of juicers for that purpose. By creating this new use for oranges, the fruit’s consumption in the United States sky-rocketed from an average of half an orange to 2-3 oranges per day. 

In essence, orange juice was created by advertising.

Formula E Racing

This ad is interesting for a couple of reasons. 

First, it serves as both an ad for Formula E Racing, as well as a breed of public service announcement promoting electric cars to lessen the impact of climate change… specifically on cheetahs.  

The ad shows a race between a cheetah and a Formula E car. But unlike the Michael Phelps race with a computer generated shark, this was actually a real race. It took place on

a landing strip in a remote part of the Western Cape of the southern tip of Africa.

We’re not quite sure how they pulled it off, but they did. And no cheetah was hurt in the making of this ad. Here’s how it went down. 

Both the Formula E race car and the cheetah can reach speeds of 62 miles/hour in 3 seconds. So at the beginning of the race, the cheetah takes the lead. Which is pretty impressive. But since the electric car has a top speed of 139mph compared to the cheetah’s maximum of 70mph, the race car eventually won.

Of course Formula E created this ad to promote its division of electric car racing. But the end game was to also bring attention to the effects of climate change and the danger it poses to the natural habitat of cheetahs and other wildlife. So there’s that.

Red Bull

Understanding of psychology has lead to some success stories in advertising. But, just as with the human brain, there have been misfires as well.

Take Red Bull, for instance. You’ve seen the commercials. Red Bull gives you wings. Catchy, even infectious, tagline. But hold up. If you look carefully, you’ll see that Red Bull actually gives you “Wiings.” 

What are wiings? Simply put, they’re the result of Red Bull getting sued in 2014 for not only stating that their energy drink will give you actual wings, but they also claimed that the drink could improve your concentration and reaction speed. Neither of which it does.

So several consumers brought a case against the company, regretfully stating that they showed no signs of improved intellectual or physical abilities - the ability to fly notwithstanding.

The damage? Red Bull agreed to pay out a maximum of $13 million — including $10 to every US consumer who had purchased the drink since 2002. Nevertheless, they’re still going strong.

Perfect example of taking broken wiings and learning to fly again.

Toyota Altis

If you live in the United States, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of the Toyota Altis. (Our version is essentially the Corolla.) But if you were in Malaysia back in 2002, you might have noticed a dearth of the zippy little Toyota’s advertising. It vanished. That’s because Malaysian officials pulled the plug on any advertising featuring Brad Pitt.

Now, using attractive people in advertising is nothing new. It taps into that psychological desire to also be attractive. (And driving an Altis will make you look like Brad Pitt.) 

But the Malaysian government found it an “insult to Asians” and was concerned about the effect Pitt’s good looks would have on the self-esteem of Malaysian men. "Why must we use their faces in our advertisements?” asked Zainuddin Maidin, the deputy information minister at the time. “Aren't our own people handsome enough?” 

It was definitely an oversight. While the self-esteem of men in the United States is routinely assaulted by Brad Pitt’s good looks, they’re used to it. But Toyota should have considered using an Asian Brad Pitt instead. 

Of course, the fact that Malaysia has some of the world's toughest censorship laws might have played into the decision. Television and film are strictly vetted by government officials. Kissing is often cut from films and TV programs. And forget about swearing. It’s viewed as a direct attack on Malaysian family values.

Imagine the reaction to an ad with Brad Pitt kissing a swearing woman who’s just stubbed her toe. 

Advanced Medical Institute (AMI)

In its day, the AMI was no stranger to controversy. The Australian medical clinic thrived on it. Experienced ad people know that negative attention is rarely better than no attention. But for the AMI, negative attention was ALWAYS better.

AMI dealt primarily with men’s erectile issues. And their advertising was often the subject of complaint. Their billboards and bench advertisements were considered tasteless and offensive to many. But there was one particular erectile-dysfunction spot they created which garnered 220 complaints. And this is in a country that started as a penal (no pun intended) colony.

The commercial shows a wife using her husband's erection as a step stool to get something out of the cupboard. And yes, there were probably a great many people who found it amusing. (We reserve comment on our opinion.)

But it wasn’t just this commercial that created buzz around AMI. It was the way they used psychology in advertising as a dangerous weapon. They laid claims behind which there was no science. Furthermore, they engaged in unconscionable conduct and used unfair contract terms in treating men for sexual dysfunction. Clients were warned of the dangers of stroke, prostate cancer and “penis shrinkage” if they failed to have treatment. 

When the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) got wind of this, a long-running court battle began. They stated, “It is immoral to seek to harness the fears and anxieties of men suffering from ED [erectile dysfunction] or PE [premature ejaculation] for the purpose of selling medical treatments.” They were right.

We won’t elaborate on the very drawn-out battle that ensued. Suffice it to say, AMI is no longer around. And now the ad sits happily on YouTube as one of the funniest advertisements ever. 

All of which brings us back to our original point. Advertising is a weird industry.

Question of the Week - What Makes Some Creative People Rather… Difficult?

This is a particularly relevant question for those working in the ad industry - seeing as it’s the primary refuge for creative

people who have ceased romanticizing starvation and homelessness in the name of their creative venture. 

So yeah, there is more than a handful of advertising creatives who never envisioned themselves designing ads for walk-in bathtubs or attempting to convey the sheer excitement of banking apps. And they may not be thrilled about it.

But that’s not really the reason they can be challenging. It’s much more than that. And just to be clear, we’re not isolating creative people as the sole proprietors of onerous behavior. 

There Are Jerks in Every Line of Work

Take surgeons, for example. Many of them - men and woman alike - have that certain je ne sais quoi. Let’s call it outright over-the-top cocky swagger. But think about it. It makes perfect sense. When you’re getting cut open, do you want the surgeon who’s going into battle for you to be confident and aggressive? Or would you rather have an easy-going, agreeable barista type on the front line? 

It’s not all that different with creative people. Some of their being seemingly difficult is born out of necessity. And some of it is just part of being a creative in a society that doesn’t always embrace it.

Way back in the mid-1990’s, Psychology Today published an article by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People, that highlighted the creative personality. And he’s something of an expert on the topic, seeing as he spent over 30 years researching how creative people live and work. Much like Jane Goodall and her chimps. 

He prefaced the PT article with this: “Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.”

So it sounds like they should be easy to get along with and to understand. But what Csikszenthmihalyi found is that it’s far more complicated than that. 

It turns out that one huge requirement of living as a “creative” is this:

They Must Possess the Ability to Inhabit Opposite States of Being Simultaneously

And at all times.

For example, in their work to bring forth a new reality, creative people alternate between the flightiness of imagination, and the rootedness of that reality. 

And in order to stay innovative, they must also keep one foot forever in the stream of rebellion, and the other in the pool of conservatism. Because it seems that innovation is most easily digested when reckless abandon is mixed with a measure of stability.

In their work, creatives also have to balance being playful and disciplined, extroverted and introverted, humble and proud - this last one being particularly challenging. And since they tend to be open and sensitive, they’re prone to both deep suffering and pain, as well as surges of mind-blowing enjoyment.  

In other words, being a creative simultaneously dwelling in two worlds at all times takes some nerve, some grit and some unorthodox coping skills. And, just as with the aforementioned surgeon, the chutzpah required to navigate this difficult situation is often mislabeled as being difficult, challenging, jerky and a series of other demeaning and incriminating adjectives. 

The biggest difference between the jerky creative and the jerky surgeon though is that almost nobody questions the surgeon. But creatives have to field questions (and criticism) about their work. ALL OF THE TIME. And regardless of the adage, there are plenty of stupid questions. 

So here’s the thing.

Creative People Have to Willing to Take Risks and Break from the Safety of Tradition

Which is usually not a problem since most are, by nature, prone to deep thinking and not terribly compliant. In fact, studies have shown that the part of the brain that lights up for creativity is also the part that controls rumination, pondering and self-awareness. In other words, their brains are created to push, reinvent and question. And it can be irritating for those around them. 

We get it. 

But some of the most creative people in history - Frank Lloyd Wright, Maria Callas and Oscar Wilde, to name a few - were famously difficult to be around. 

Yet it is also highly creative people who incite progress and institute change. So maybe they’re hard to work with. And you might call them difficult. Burdensome. Jerks.

Because they are sometimes. But keep in mind that it can be uncomfortable to be around people who bring dissent and want change. Especially for people who don’t want change. 

Which begs the question, are those who resist change just as difficult? 

Something to consider.