Creativity plays a crucial role in the success of advertising, especially for graphic design companies. We delve into the significance of creativity in advertising and print media, with a focus on attracting the target audience and driving action to purchase. Why is Creativity Important? Building the Marketing Mix: Creativity acts as a pillar in constructing the marketing mix, influencing personal selling, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, and sponsorship. Brand Differentiation: It sets apart products from competitors, steering away from the “me too” mindset by shaping attitudes and feelings to position the brand as the preferred choice. Knowledge and Stimulation: Creativity provides knowledge, stimulating thought processes and encouraging thinking. Persuasion and Relevance: It persuades effectively, ensuring relevance and meaning in the eyes of the audience. Facilitating Purchase and Trial: Creative advertising facilitates the purchase decision and encourages trial usage. Building Loyalty: It contributes to creating loyal customers who connect with the brand on a deeper level. Transforming Ads: Creative advertisements have the power to transform mundane ads into engaging and interesting content. Objective Achievement: Ultimately, creative ads are more likely to achieve their objectives and drive desired actions. Use of Colour in Advertising The incorporation of colour in advertisements, despite contributing to production and placement costs, has proven to be worthwhile. Here’s why: Attention-Grabbing: Colour enhances the holding power of ads, capturing attention more effectively. Psychological Impact: People are conditioned to respond to colour stimuli, making it a powerful tool in conveying messages. Enhancing Product Appearance: Products, especially food items, look...

There are well over 1300 business to business publications published in South Africa. The choice narrows down significantly to what industry you are in and what your target audience is. Your advertising expenditure should be based on rand per reader and who receives the magazine. CEO's, managers and opinion leaders are normally targeted with the magazine circulated around the firm and staying at the reception for further reading by visitors. Some areas to consider on which magazine to advertise in:* What industry and market?* Is the magazine dedicated to your industry?* Who is it targeted?* What is the reach?* What is the circulation and is it verified?* Is it an official journal to the industry?* Does the publication come out timeously? * Is it a good quality magazine?* Does the magazine have a good format and look that enhances its credibility?* Is the editorial well written?* Are the articles practical and interesting?* Do they feature stories that benefit you and the industry?* Does it have local news or product updates so one keeps informed on the trends in the industry? Normally the advert only has 3 -5 seconds to attract the reader's attention therefore the campaign must work towards this time constraint.Some areas to consider when conceptualising an ad campaign. * The message should be clear and have an impact.* The creative work should not overshadow the message.* It must attract the audience attention within 3 seconds and gain an interest in the reader's mind.* Once interest is gained it should...

Advertising in magazines is a very powerful tool for the marketer. The style of advertising is uniquely different to any other advertising medium... Magazines deliver a cost-effective return on monies invested. When advertising is created for magazines it becomes a powerful advocate for the brand. Frequency is the most important media planning consideration, ahead of reach and size. Frequency is interpreted as frequent exposures to the brand with many different creative treatments (artistic work) to position the brand. Magazines build brand equity and create awareness. At its first exposure, a magazine ad typically performs 40% better than a television commercial in terms of creating awareness. An advert works or it doesn't and if it works, it does the first time you see it. If it doesn't work, hammering at it over and over again isn't going to make any difference. No amount of repeated exposure will make it work. To avoid wear-out and over-exposure, magazine campaigns should be conceived in the form of several complementary creative treatments. With regard to print pre-testing, most print advertising declines in impact with repeat exposure, a magazine campaign needs to be made up of a family of advertisements. The effectiveness seems to support the fact that, as time is under the control of the reader, more than one creative treatment of the same brand positioning is powerfully more effective in building advertising and brand awareness than multiple exposures of the same ad. Highly successful companies have learned to harness the power of magazines, they have...

To understand why print advertising is so effective, we have to understand what is happening in a reader's brain as they read. Brain activity is, almost by definition, extremely complex. It is understandable that much advertising research has not traditionally focused on understanding how the brain consumes different forms of advertising messages. However 'how' the brain engages in a particular task and how hard or taxing that particular task is, does have a number of effects on behaviour - affecting, for instance, how easily or well something is remembered. Some activities make the brain work harder - such as reading. It forces the brain into problem-solving activity. When you read you have to think. What we 'see' for the time when we are reading is actually a perceptual construction of the brain. The brain reads in 'gulps' of information, picking up units of meaning from the page at an average rate of 4 times a second. During such a 'fixation', the eye only picks up useful information for an estimated 1/20 of a second. For the rest of the 'fixation' time, we are processing the information through the brain. The very act of reading, then, has positive implications in terms of how receptive a consumer will be to a print message. Memory requires effort; therefore any task that requires effort is likely to enhance memory.The heightened level of arousal/attention which is inherent in a reading activity has to have a profound effect on the efficacy of advertising in print. In terms...