Informational vs. Image Advertising

From : http://www.nfib.com/object/IO_24912.html

Informational vs. Image Advertising

10/ 05/ 2005
by Jeffrey Moses


Well-known, large corporations use a certain type of advertising, known as image or institutional advertising, to put their name before the public. Companies such as Nike, Coca-Cola, IBM, Budweiser often place ads that contain little more than the company name, a slogan and a visual image that conjures up a positive feeling associated with the company. What do wild horses running through fields have to do with beer? Or whitewater kayakers have to do with Coke? Not much, except that these images project a feeling vaguely associated with freedom, health, adventure, youth, etc. Buy our products and you’ll feel like this, these ads seem to imply.

Image advertising may be productive for large, widely known companies, but it’s not a cost-effective technique for smaller companies without widespread name recognition. Instead, smaller companies would do better to place ads containing specific information about their products and services, the benefits of buying their products and perhaps even a little about the company.

Informational advertising is the bread and butter of small businesses. Why? Because small businesses must be able to justify every dollar spent for a marketing campaign and directly correlate the expense with revenue generated by the campaign. Ideally, small companies should even be able to correlate money spent on particular ads with the revenue generated by these ads.

Information breeds sales
Direct-response advertising is a perfect example of the advantage of image advertising for small companies. When mailing tens of thousands of direct mail packages, companies using direct-response advertising do not waste printing costs and postage on something with nothing more than the name of the company and a few attractive pictures. Instead, they cram each direct-mail package with all the information they can fit in—detailed information about product features and benefits, costs, potential discounts, loss-leaders, comparisons of benefits and costs with competing products, etc. The same is true for print ads placed in newspapers, magazines and journals.

People need this type of information to make a buying decision. Before putting money in an envelope or calling in to make a credit card purchase, buyers demand to know everything about what they’re buying. People don’t buy on faith. They don’t buy because of pretty photos. They buy only when they can make an informed decision about the purchase. Direct-response companies would go broke if they didn’t give customers enough information to make such a decision.

The myth of white space
Many advertising agencies tell clients that print ads must, above all, be attractive. They insist that no one will read an ad if it doesn’t have lots of ‘white space’––meaning unused space in the ad allowing the text to stand out. An ad must breathe, agencies say, or no one will respond to it. In doing so, ad agencies win awards for their artistic achievements, but they do a disservice to clients who place ads (and spend money for the placement) not to win prizes but to attract customers.

Research by direct-response companies proves that image advertising doesn’t motivate people to respond but well-written, informational ads do. Some informational ads may seem overly crowded with text (even to the exclusion of photos and all graphic elements), but if they are pertinent to what people need and want, and if the products advertised provide real benefit to people, these ads will be read––and readers will respond. The more information, the better. Readers respond not in spite of all the information included, but because of the information.