Finally Posting on Here...

Alright, so I read chapters 13 and 14. Those are apparently the last readings. Good. Now I can focus on the book project as well as the community garden (which let me tell you- it needs a  lot of focus. PR kids, what do you want from us?!). Now even though I sound whiney, these two chapters could maybe be considered my favorites. Especially chapter 14, which was all about ways to sell yourself and your work. I find this to be really important. How else will one find a job or convince a client to use their concept? Chapter 13 was also helpful, but in a different way. It was about the execution of the ad campaign.

A great concept will never work out if the ad campaign can't be executed properly. At this point in my design career, I am a student. I felt that the most helpful part of this chapter was the list of things that are helpful for designs and portfolios. I'll summarize them with my own commentary-ish thing below:

• learn the computer inside and out. This includes the creative suite programs. It also mentioned freehand, which I remember using in high school. Alright learning the programs... CCAD has tutorial classes in each program. I wish we had those at Otterbein. The programs have so much potential that I don't know how to use. 
• learn photography and get a digital camera. I have a digital camera... not quite sure how to make my photos look good though. 
• Learn typography, collect typefaces, and experiment with them. I guess I should Google how to download fonts, huh?
• Be resourceful. Beg and borrow for props, locations, whatever. So far I haven't had to do much with this.
• Know where to get royalty free stock imagery. I knew of a texture site and now I know of the one mentioned in the book. 
• Borrow fellow students to make your ads look good. I did this! My theatre major friend helped me with a costume rendering. They have to make those as quick as possible, so what would have taken me a day or so was finished in under two hours. She's using it in her portfolio.

Other things not in the bulleted list were things like doing whatever it takes to get your stuff to look good. I needed an ice cream picture for Ecstasy Ice Cream. Yeah totally paid $6 for a double scoop chocolate-covered waffle cone mint chocolate chip with sprinkles from Graeters. Unfortunately, being a student does not get you discounts on ice cream. The rest of the chapter reviewed typography and went through things to think about (like grid systems).

Alright, and I mean it when I said chapter 14 was my favorite. I tend to freak out about the "proper" way to exhibit my work. This chapter gave ideas on how to present in ways that made it easy for the client to understand the concept. There were also tips about knowing whether or not they think your idea sucked. If they're looking interested and nodding, you're fine. If they're asleep and drooling, you're not fine. It helps to find out what things make the client happy and go with it. It's also important to be confident and keep eye contact. No one wants to listen to you if you're not confident and saying "ummm like umm" all the time. I like to think I'm ok at talking about my work, especially if it's a project I enjoyed. Although it was a pain and I had creative brain technical difficulties, the Ecstasy Ice Cream was one of my favorite things to present, and I thought that presentation went well. I wonder what it will be like presenting to clients in the real world...

Umm Whoops...

So I am behind on this... and behind on the reading. Easter happened, then my family had a second Easter this weekend and after having a midterm on Friday, it slipped my mind. Since this is a "free week" with no reading, I'll read and catch up, but not right now. Right now I'm designing a menu.

To make up for the lack of content, I give you this:

Info that may or may not concern this class.

It's Too Bad...

... That sparkling fairy vampires drive Volvos. For a cheap car, they have some good ads. I swear every chapter uses a Volvo ad as an example. Anyways.

I really honestly do not want to summarize this chapter. It's so long and there's so much information... ugh here it goes. Chapter 6 of The Advertising Concept Book is about how to generate strategies and ideas. It starts with a reminder about strategies. A strategy is the approach for how the product or service will be marketed. It seems like there are a lot of different types of strategies.

• Before and After ads show life without the product and life with the product. Of course, life with the product is better. Some ads will show just the "before" and let the consumer figure out how much better life will be when they have it. Others will show just "after."
• Advice strategies will show the benefit of a product and say some sort of "We can help you" message.
• Knowledge strategies are similar to advice strategies, but shows how knowledgable the client is about their product, the subject related to the product, or the market for the product. It can show how an item is of good quality.
• The Empathy strategy obviously demonstrates how empathetic the client is towards the consumer. Those are the ads that say "We understand and care about you."
• A Demonstration strategy is NOT the sort of demonstration you see in infomercials. It IS a clever way to demonstrate something about the product (Volvo ad)

... and the list goes on. Others include honesty, challenge, product positioning, price, and logic. 

The next section is about ideas. Perfect. I have a hard time coming up with ideas. My brain gets stuck. Good campaigns can use a variety of ideas. Some use metaphors or analogies. Others use similes...  

I read this. I swear. Brain is shutting off. I'll finish this later. 

MONDAY AND I'M DONE WITH THIS SH*T :D

It's Monday. I actually did my reading over the weekend. Crazy, I know.

Chapter four is about the campaign. It was a fairly short chapter in comparison to chapters two and three. The campaign is the series of ads that make up the concept. Basically, it's the ads that go together.  Campaigns are used to build up brands and get people to buy the product. Of course, that means the campaign has to be good. It's easy to just change the visual and show the same add over and over.  According to the book, "You want people to anticipate the next execution, not expect it." The executions should be related but not too much. It sounds like it takes a lot of work to come up with an amazing campaign.

Of course, to have a good campaign, you should probably have a tagline (but maybe not. Depends on what you want). Chapter five is all about creating good taglines. The tagline is important because it "helps to harness and support the campaign idea, and generate new executions of that idea." Supposedly when you have a good tagline, the ads will "write themselves." It should communicate the idea of the campaign. There are five different types of taglines.

• Summation- summarizes the campaign idea
• Explanation- explains the campaign. You need it to understand the ad.
• Proposition- a no-frills tagline that repeats the product benefit
• Brand/ Umbrella- sums up the brand more than the campaign idea
• Invisible- it isn't there

There are a lot of things to remember when coming up with a good tagline. Luckily, the tagline does not have to be perfect. There is a such thing as a working tagline, which is temporary and can be a bit longer. The final tagline is probably going to be a shorter version of the working tagline. So how can one tell if their tagline is good? Just put the words "Hey, Schmuck" before it! Very amusing. 

I felt a bit like a failure at the end of the chapter when I couldn't identify most of the taglines in the list at the end of the chapter. Do I need to watch more TV? D:

Ahh blog is out of the way. Now I have the rest of the week to worry about all the other busy work I have to do, plus making my portfolio look awesome. I may be asking for help with it soon....

Reductionism = Good

I really need to stop putting this blog off until the last minute... in my defense, I did read the chapters on Thursday, Equine Affaire was today and I literally just got back. I stayed late watching a performance that showed several different riding styles. Hmmm. Why didn't I post this on Thursday? Good question >.< Before I get in to the part of the blog that counts for a grade, I would like to say that the advertising I came across at Equine Affaire was not good. Most were the types of ads that screamed at you like the over-eager car salesmen and were not memorable at all. There has to be a better way to market horse products. Maybe I can get into the equine advertising industry. We'll see.

Chapter two was about strategy.  It is the first step in the advertising creative process. After strategy comes the concept and then the campaign. Strategy is defined as the thinking behind the concept, the overall marketing or selling approach. It sounds like one must put a lot of thought to create a successful strategy. It should come from the benefits of using the item, how it is used, the market, or the target audience and should have something setting it apart from its competitors. I love how this book gives examples such as the Flower and Plants association and the Apple ad comparing it to IBM. The Flower and Plants strategy was to get women to buy flowers while Apple's was showing that that Apple is as important as IBM. The chapter then explains some important things that we as designers should take into consideration when writing up a strategy (or "Creative Brief"). For example, is the idea to get non-users to use the product, or to get the current customers to use it more? I like how the chapter mentions the importance of research. I've been trying to research as much as I can about my projects before actually creating them.

Chapter three was really long. (How do I summarize it? So much information!) The main focus was on print. No, not print like going up to "file" and clicking "print." Print as in the type of ad, such as posters and magazine/ newspaper ads. There are different things to consider in print ads. Some ads, like billboards, are really only seen for about three seconds. According to the book, this translates to 8 words. How do they do that?! Advertisements in newspapers and magazines are seen a little longer, but they are competing with the articles that are actually interesting, so those ads must stand out. The chapter also gave advice for writing headlines. If it needs punctuation, it might not be that good. Putting a twist on a joke is good, while using puns is lame unless it has a double meaning and the same spelling. Asking a question can be good if it's not a "yes or no" question, uses and obvious answer, or is more rhetorical.

The best advice I found was the section on "reductionism." Reductionism is the practice of reducing the elements of an ad as far as possible, but still having the communication work. I feel like I might have trouble with that since people want to get as much information across as possible.  The maximum number of elements that should be in an ad is 6: headline, subhead, visuals, body copy, tagline, and logo, and even then, you might not need it. I'm going to try and follow the book's advice of asking yourself if something is necessary in the ad, and if the ad would still work without it. Simpler ads have more of an impact.

Boo 17 minutes late. Ok, I resolve to have the next post done by Wednesday. Time for bed. 

Beginning Thoughts: What?

"In order to get full credit for your blog posting, you will need to prove that you have read the material."

Reading? In a studio class? That's preposterous... WHY ARE WE BEING TORTURED?

At least this book isn't too bad. Like most textbooks, it has an introduction. The introduction was, well, an informative bit on what advertising is and why we need it. Advertising is everywhere. People encounter these adds and hopefully buy the product.  To put it simply, advertising helps businesses make money. An interesting point from this section is the emphasis on telling the truth. People don't seem to enjoy being lied to, and when the company is honest, they can make more money.

Chapter one is where it started to get interesting. I'd describe it as a chapter full of advice to people who are new at this whole creating clever advertisements thing.  It looks like there is a lot of things to take into consideration when coming up with an idea for a successful advertising campaign.  It's important to know the audience and to know what you want to say and how you want to get the message across. Once you know those things, say it in the simplest way possible. I liked the acronym KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. If an ad is simple and to the point, there's a better chance that the viewer will notice it.  That's something I'll need to remember. I have a tendency to over-think everything from the meaning of life to what kind of coffee to buy. Another acronym to remember is SLIP IT: smile, laugh, inform, provoke, involves, think. That's the response the advertisement should create and it keeps the KISS from being super boring. After the acronyms, there are some examples of advertising campaigns and some brief reasons why they work.  Some of them had great headlines while others had creative visuals. The rest of the chapter consisted of important things to take into consideration.  For example, using the word "best" is not a good idea because it's generic.  Symbols are good to use as well as anything that makes the viewer think for a second. Other boring things include using people in everything (good, I hate drawing them), and blatantly showing the product (because this is not memorable or creative). Good ads tend to find other ways to show what is going on with the product without using people or showing the product. Of course, it still depends on what the product is as well as the target audience and what you're trying to say. The chapter concludes with something we've been told since fifth grade: don't plagiarize. It's lame and uncreative.

Huh. That's a lot of information. Alright, I give in- this book is incredibly informative. It even references the movie "Elf."

Still doesn't change the fact that we're being tortured.