As imposing as the new headline on Tye's ad is, often
readers simply will not read beyond those opening words. Think how
little you read of many ads apart from the headline and perhaps the
subhead. That's because most of us look at ads as if they were
miniature billboards--giving them a quick glance as we're on
the way to somewhere else. So no matter how brilliantly you may lay
out a sales argument in the body copy, it may not get read for one
simple reason: It looks like work.
Take a lesson from advertisers who deliberately ladle on great
steaming gobs of copy in places such as electronics and computer
catalogs to appeal to information junkies. They know they have to
do a lot of selling to motivate a reader to make an instant buying
decision on a expensive item. So despite their long copy, visual
relief is interspersed throughout so the copy appears in digestible
bites and is therefore easier to read.
You can fashion such copy bites or capsules in a number of ways.
One is with bulleted "blurbs" (such as in Tye's new
ad). Another is with "callouts," which are bits of copy
that surround and describe a picture of the item you're
selling. Each callout can make a sales pitch while pointing to the
item. Another way to attract readership is with photo captions.
Almost everyone is drawn to captions, so it's a perfect
location to make an important point. Lastly, in larger ads,
sectioning off two or more paragraphs into a sidebar is a way to
break up the copy and, at the same time, attract the eye to a
special and easy-to-read feature.
Content Continues Below
Remember: Your advertising is an uninvited guest in the
reader's editorial sanctuary--a good reason to make your
message read and look as enticing as possible.
Contact Source
Paradox 21 Inc., P.O. Box 480, Solon, IA 52333, http://www.nfnq.com
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