Introduction
Advertisements are used to inform, persuade and influence an individual’s decisions regarding a product or service. They are also designed to remind one about the availability or existence of a certain service. Advertisements are conveyed through print, broadcast, and display media. Ads should not have many specific objectives so as to be clear.
The message conveyed in the advert should be rational, morally acceptable and able to elicit the intended emotional feeling. This paper seeks to identify an advert regarding a tourist destination or hospitality company in print media, establish the target market, source, purpose, message, content, execution style, and layout and design. The paper will then discuss whether it’s a good or bad advertising and how it can be improved.
Advert description
The selected advert was in an airlines travel guide magazine. The ad was about the Nairobi’s Hilton Hotel. It was made of four pictures: the first, an aerial picture of the towering golden lit building that houses the hotel; the second picture showing a spacious luxury carefully furnished room; the third picture shows an executive club lounge that is located on the 15th floor; the fourth picture shows a high class wine bottle and glass that are in scripted with the word “Hilton”.
The heading large is large black font and reads “Executive life at the Nairobi Hilton”. The advert also describes the executive features that are located on the executive floors of the hotel building. It also gives a description of the club room, the meals, and other services that are offered by the hotel. The advert takes a full page and is too wordy.
Advert analysis
It’s clear that this advert is targeted to the high end travelers who may wish to travel to Nairobi at some point of their lives. The advert is posted in a magazine and therefore enjoys advantages such as higher geographic and demographic selectivity, reproducibility in high quality, good pass readership and long life.
The purpose of the advert is to persuade, inform and remind high end international travelers of the availability of executive services at the Nairobi Hilton Hotel. The message contains pictures of how the different facilities within the hotel look and describes the quality of services provided.
The headline “Executive life at the Nairobi Hilton” is big, eye catching and attractive. The message elucidates a positive feeling in the reader who begins to imagine how it is to stay at the hotel. The advertisement is executed in a lifestyle version targeting the elite and high spenders in the society.
The layout of the advert is consistence with high class. A golden picture of the towering cylinder shaped hotel building against a dark background. Carefully lit and furnished rooms that will appeal to the targeted market segment. There is also a picture of a luxurious wine in a bottle and wine glass.
The pictures are the most eye-catching elements of this advert. The wordings are not that neat. The heading is written in a large bold and black font and almost takes a fifth of the page. The description of the hotel, its facilities and services offered is done in a small black font that is neatly arranged alongside the images. The descriptions offer detailed information about the hotel and the services offered.
Ads effectiveness
A good ad is often required to have congruity and synergy among all its parts. The source, the content, the style, the layout and the design should agree with each other. The current ad has everything right except in some aspects of the layout. The pictures and the heading are all eye catching. The only thing that was not done correctly is the wordiness of the descriptions and the small font used.
The fonts are too small to attract the interest of any person who would like to know the finer details about the hotel. Anyone seeing the ad is readily attracted to the nice pictures and the eye catching headline. However, one does not get motivated to read further due to the tiny font used to give finer details. The descriptions are also given on an ordinary font of black writings against and white background. Due to this malfunction, the overall effectiveness of the ad has been greatly compromised.
In order to change or improve the ad’s effectiveness, the wordiness needs to be done away with and replace with a clear concise description of the important elements of the hotel. The font style, color, and background needs to be improved to ensure that it is readily readable. For instance, one can use bright orange large font against a dark back ground. This will rhyme well with the other elements of the advert.
Conclusion
This paper sought to analyze a hospitality advert in a print media and discuss whether it’s good or bad advertising and give recommendations on how it can be improved. An advert on Nairobi’s Hilton was chosen in a traveler’s magazine. The ad had everything writer except for its long message described in a small font. Congruency and synergy can be achieved by removing unnecessary details and enlarging the font.