7:5 Word and Image (2) - Ad Rewrite

Our next task was to take an existing ad and rewrite the headline, tagline and body.

It was recommended that we choose press ads that does something as they're most likely to have the three elements.

A methodology that Brian shared with us was to use headlines:

Each category should explore different creative territories like tone of voice and it helps because you break your work up into categories.

I chose this ad by Barclays for student banking:

The following are my notes for this task:

I tried different categories and different potential headlines. I also looked at language for students, or trying a cheeky tone of voice.

I then looked at tips for writing good headlines and copy I got from online and 'The Copywriter's Handbook'

I also looked at existing ads for student/normal banking:

A lot of them use this tone of voice that suggests they're seen as the bad guy but they're not - they're on the customer's side.

I also asked my friends how they feel about banking as a student/in general and if they're trustworthy, one particular response was that students find banking confusing and that they could make a mistake that has long term affects.

So I looked at it with the concept of second chances and from the angle of the bank having messed up and relating it to students made me think of relationships. It was to help students who have made a detrimental mistake in banking.

The problem with this was that I didn't want the concept to stem from a negative point. "I messed up" or "Take me back" just doesn't work because personally, if a bank screwed me over, I wouldn't use their services again. But I felt there was something in banks being confusing.

Still using student language and the relationship theme, I thought of Relationship Status: It's complicated, like you have on Facebook. I tried out different taglines and headlines.

And settled on Relationship Status: It's not complicated.

I couldn't use 'it's complicated' because I didn't want to sell the message that the service would be complicated to use, especially if you have people who would just skim the ad and that's all they see.

The tagline I had was, 'With Barclays, it doesn't have to be'. What doesn't have to be? I felt I needed to put the service in the tagline, so the target audience could recognise straight away it's for them. So I changed it to 'Student banking made simple with Barclays' as I feel it conveys exactly what the copy is going to expand on and what the service is.

I wrote the copy over and over and over and over again:

My final copy became the following:

I rewrote the entirety of the small copy because I thought it was not good. Particularly the line ‘we will give them….for you to use whenever you like’ because of the change from ‘them’ to ‘you’. I used the main information from the original ad, the only thing I changed was that through research, I found out they offer 24/7 customer support, which I thought ties in eliminating confusion because you can always give them a ring. So I added that point to the original offer of an interest free overdraft. I also wanted to link the copy to the headline, so I ended it the copy using the same concept of relationships.

I also tried writing my copy in the space of the ad and just kept rewriting as some lines looked too long for the space or just didn't fit well. Out of the four images above (the toothbrush, slippers, pillow and teddy bear) I felt the toothbrushes fit the best because the image shows a cup with one toothbrush and toothpaste, illustrating the relationship between them isn't complicated. However, if I'm honest, none of the pictures really work, this was just the closest.

This is my final ad rewrite and the original:

The original:

I'm really proud of what I've created.

We shared our ads with the class and the feedback I got from Paul Burke was that the toothbrush doesn't work but out of the four it was the best choice. He said I should change 'when you sign up to' to just 'with a Barclays account'. 'We will give' to 'you'll get a...' and that my headline works with the student target audience and that it's good I did research and that overall, my copy is better.

This is my ad rewrite with his feedback:

With this task, I learnt that everything needs to tie together, the headline to the copy to the image. And how important research is on your target audience and rewriting copy till it just sounds right, because there were so many times where I thought I got it but I swapped some words around and realised I hadn't got it just yet. But also, it's taught me to judge if copy on other ads I read is any good or not, if it conveys the message as clear as it could.