The changes in the advertising climate

The new age of advertising

The new age of advertising comes in the form of conversation starters. We previously looked at some posters we really enjoyed. These posters were popular because of their ability to incite conversation. Advertisers have to be more selective on design and location of advertisements they want to run. Advertisements can no longer say “Look at my product, it is awesome. Buy it”. Advertisements need to say “Look at this pressing issue. Let’s talk about it”. The more people speak about your campaign, the more success you are going to experience.

Look at these 2 burger king ads from 2001 and 2017. Notice that in the 2001 poster, the ad simply introduced a new burger in various sizes. However, in the 2017 poster, the message more subtle and deliberate. This was actually from a research that showed that burger king has the most number of fires than any other fast food chain in the world. Instead of releasing a statement to promise better fire safety standards, burger took this information and created a campaign out of it, with their slogan flame grilled since 1954. This gives the audience something to talk about and they will forever relate these fires to burger king’s burgers being flame grilled.

Burger King 2001 poster

Burger King 2017 poster

Creating conversation

Advertisers these days must keep up with trends. Social media is your best bet to create conversations. Businesses always need to know what is being said about them in social media. Some businesses have included popular hashtags on their posters so that they are able to track interactions with the campaign. This popular campaign from budlight used the hashtag #UpForWhatever to incite a digital conversation. Coupled with videos that they posted on Facebook and YouTube, they managed to get people talk about what they would be up for. This is a good lesson that campaigns do not need to directly be about your product or service in order to be popular. Try to create campaigns that are worth talking about and it will be successful.

Events

Businesses need to recognise that the only way they are going to be able to build brand awareness is to interact with their customers. There is no better way of interacting with customers then meeting them face to face. Customers need to put a face to the brand. This is why more and more businesses are holding keynotes and press conferences to introduce no products. It all started with Apple introducing the first iPhone. Now every major phone brand has keynote events that promote new products or upcoming products. Even Tesla had a keynote to talk about their new trucks. These events need to have prints and pop up banners that will attract the attention of the audience and get them to talk about it.

Print is not dead. Print has simply evolved with the times. Businesses need to adapt to the new advertising climate to get the most out of their campaigns. The next time you want to print something, consider the campaign objectives clearly so that you can also get the most out of your prints.