The growing exposure to adverts and the proliferation of vast amount of advertisements and branded items has led to the consumer’s conscious/unconscious resistance to advertisement. In the words of Carl Laemmle of universal pictures (1931) “I appeal to every producer not to release “sponsored” moving pictures… believe me, if you jam advertising down their throats and pack their eyes and ears with it, you will build up a resentment that will in time damn your business.

The obvious situation today is that the average consumer is inherently resistant to advertisement, the ability of an ad “creative” to gain the attention of prospects and appeal to them is dependent on the persuasive and creative appeal of the advert. No longer will people look at your advert just becomes your product is what they are interested in, what determines whether they look at your advert or not is the ability of your advert to communicate with them persuasively(through emotions, rationality or telling a story).

There are three important items needed to write highly persuasive, creative and attention getting adverts, these are:

Understanding your product:

The understanding of the product, fuels the mind of the creative strategists towards adequately presenting the case for the advert. The various features of the advert can be distilled into ‘benefits’, through a using the simple ‘so what’ technique.

Understanding the target market:

Using any of the many segmentation techniques will help the marketer segment the market for the product and choose a segment to target. The identification of the target market: understanding their demography (age, sex, income and social class etc.), their psychographics (lifestyle, spending habit, interest, attitudes etc.) and the various approximate behaviors. Adequate knowledge of the target market will help the creative strategist create better adverts that selectively appeal to their identified target market.

Creating the copy:

The copy includes the heading, the body and the image. The three important elements of the copy must be adequately combined to produce a persuasive creative. The heading can be a question, and assertion, a pun, etc. the goal of the heading is always to draw the prospect into the body of the advert.

The image of the advert must also be very catchy and attention getting, adequately complementing the body and the heading of the ad ‘creative’.

the advertising industry is changing and quickly due to the continued resistance of people to advertisement, creating persuasive and effective adverts is now more difficult than ever. this article explains the specifis of sientific advertising and achieving success as a reative strategist in this period of doubt.