7:4 Word and Image (1) - Amazon Prime

For our next session we looked at this ad for Budwheiser and were told to make our own headline as a warm up.

Some I/others thought of:

Round up your friends this Christmas

There’s only one horse in this picture, your just drunk

Sleigh safe this Christmas - drive safe - doesn’t work because you don’t drink and drive

A bottle for us all Don’t horse ride and drink

How drunk are they

How drunk do you have to be to have 8 horses

A tip given was to write down what we see.

2 guys riding a horse led carriage

Crate of beer - dragged along so much beer u need 8 horses

Horse puns - whose, whores lol

Some good ones from others were:

8 horses drinking

Quit horsing around

Say neigh to drink driving

Cookies and milk won’t do

This was the real ad:

We explored how word and image can compliment with each other. Steve Lloyd also joined in on this session. He described type as 'design glue' and showed us an ad for Bosch drill where the copy is immediately relevant to the image.

We all shared some ads we found as a class and use creative rational to judge what works and what doesn't.

The ikea ad doesn't work because the goat has no relevance to the copy. The copy on the adidas ad relates to the image purely because you can see through the actor's pose and expression the effort he's putting in. His foot also brings you to the typography on the left but it doesn't work because the headline doesn't do anything. The nike ad needs a game changing image to work. The marmite ad would've worked better without the last line 'no breakfast'. The copy is mimicking brexit but because they give the reader three options, it doesn't work.

This was the ad I submitted:

The poster uses a painting of the 'girl with the pearl earring from 1665' with airpods in. Personally I thought it works because the image relates to the copy. Brian and Steven's feedback was that you need to know the painting to understand it. And some trivia was that ads for financial services, like this one, always want clever outcomes for briefs. The image and text work but the ad is flawed.

The raise a toast ad works because it's not too cluttered, the short headline uses a good cheeky, funny tone of voice. The viagra ad works because of obvious reasons. The rock and roll ad doesn't work because rock fans don't like listening with headphones. The Amazon ad uses familiarity to work but the 'you're kidding' part doesn't work.

The cricketer ad works because it says what you see. The Mr Cool also works for the same reason. The McDonalds wifi ad, the image is the headline, and there's small copy in the bottom left, it works but there was preference over art direction than copy when this ad was made. The north face ad, the image is confusing. Is it an elbow or a mountain or both? The logo and headline have swapped places though which is interesting. The coke ad works because of the text placement, but the font size is too small. An example of where the copy enhances the image.

Brian showed us this ad from American Airlines to teach us that although art direction and copy are important, Empathising with your target audience will take you a long way because they will see more than you show.

He also showed us these series of ads he once did for American Airlines that uses typography to enhance the copy and how using less the words, the better. He got the idea from the credits of the film North by North West and explained references from anywhere can help with your work.

American Airline customers are savvy and would be attracted to the word 'new'. I spoke to Brian some more about this ad and he said when he was presenting it to a client he didn't show them the reference because then they would want to directly copy it. I also asked him why the type on the first poster is coming off the building and he said it's because it would've looked too blocky and it gives the art direction some dynamic.

Our next task was to use the following image for an Amazon Prime ad:

I am currently reading the 'The Copywriter's Handbook' (and I plan to finish reading it in the next 5 years). and some tips for writing a headline that I took on board were:

Use the 4 U's: Urgent, unique, ultra specific and useful

Good headlines: Get attention, Select the audience, Deliver a complete message, Draw the reader in to the body copy

Good words to use: Free is the most powerful word. Others include - how to, why, sale, quick, easy, bargain, last chance, guarantee, results, proven and save

Use the word you - make it personal to your consumer.

Make a list of words related to the product and use that as a guideline:

Amazon prime video, Premier league, Football, On demand, Exclusive , Sign up

Now, Instant , Competition, Fun, Quick easy, At home, Convenient, Guarantee

I did some research on customers that watch Sky Sports to better relate to the target audience:

"The dominant gender that watches Sky Sports is male, also the average of people that watch Sky Sports is 15 – 65. Our target audience was always going to be male, however finding out there average viewing ages helped us decide what our target age would be."

Upon reading this, I knew the poster would target males.

Some tips given when making a poster using text and image is you either use 2/3 space on image and 1/3 on text or a full size image with text on top.

I also did some research on the Premier League and the word 'unmissable' came to mind:

"The principal objective of the Premier League is to stage the most competitive and compelling league with world-class players"

I then looked at existing ads for Premier League and for Amazon Prime:

These were my notes of me trying out different things that could potentially work:

I also consulted with my friend Junaid who loves football to see if the ad would appeal to him as a football fan.

These were the mockups I created:

I thought just the word unmissable worked well on it's own. Through research of trying to use football language, I learnt of the phrase 'play to the whistle' and just changed it to 'watch to the whistle'. 'No other competition' was used to say there's not other competition like this. 'We've only gone and took it' uses football language and teases on the fact that they took BT and Sky Sports' customers. I also tried different versions of the small copy for the prime video part in the bottom left corner.

After some thought, I decided to change 'no other competition' to just 'competition?' because it worked even better with fewer words.

We then shared our ads with the class and Jon Ryder and Brian gave us their feedback.

Jon and Brian said that with 'prime time' using a pun isn't bad, it can work.

Football language works well - 6 pointer nutmeg, only gone and took it, unbelievable Jeff

Unmissable (mine)- you can’t miss the event, but also available on demand so u can’t miss a way of watching it

See the moment, feel the moment, watch it now - watch now could be changed to seize the moment to make it better.

Meet your match - play with the concept of a dating app

Repetition has rhythm if done well

When using quotes you can say something random like '- my grandma' and it could work.

With mine having 4 different options can work when presenting to a client like building blocks and it also backs up each one and why they’re different to the client.

Big font size - good for billboards

Our next step was to either make a tagline or call to action for our headline posters.

The feeling of a call to action - don’t miss - buy now click now do now

Make it urgent- sign up now buy now

Only on is just a statement of fact.

With Jon's help and from my notes I came up with this tagline.

We shared with the class our taglines and call to actions:

Good taglines were:

Every game is a home game

The ultimate season ticket

You can’t miss a game

Good call to action:

Buy now - it's aggressive but suited to some products

Generic call to actions can be boring but it works

Try not to use puns

If there’s an urgency then use it

Stream on, sign on instead of sign on now too pushy

What I learnt from this task was headlines convince people to act. When writing copy, cut down lines. If you can take a word out, do it if it’ll still make sense. Envision someone speaking your lines aloud to see if it actually sounds right and ads aren't about taste, they're about craft skills and defending your creative rational.