Creating a successful media promotion of a product in a society driven by the capitalistic free market opportunities has become a severe challenge for many enterprises who feel pressured by an increasing competition rate. Moreover, rapid marketing segment digitalization has made businesses reassess their approaches to the advertisement, placing emphasis on the online goods promotion. However, while some business owners do not pay any attention to the print advertisement due to its irrelevance in the market, others exploit the lack of competition in the field by investing in successful advertising campaigns (Rizomyliotis et al., 2017). In fact, while online goods promotion might reach more potential customers in a small timeframe, it is the print ads that tend to last in one’s memory. A prime example of a company that manages to excel in the print media segment is the shaving razors brand called Dollar Shave Club. One of the most recent print advertisement campaigns of the brand looks as follows:
The following advertisement is an example of a holistic approach to the brand identity and major values, as this seemingly plain composition contributes to both the direct communication with customers and the celebration of the enterprise’s advantage. To begin with, the synthesis of the ad should be analyzed. The mustache-formed wallet provides the client with the primary message of the whole campaign: saving money on shaving while not losing the sense of quality and satisfaction. With some considerable competitors in the field, Dollar Shave Club, being a relatively young enterprise, accented the advantage of using ordinary yet quality razors without excessive preoccupation with their peculiarities. Moreover, as a company that provided its clients with a monthly $1 subscription for the razor delivery, Dollar Shave Club has a full-scale right to operate the aspect of finance in their campaigns.
Another significant aspect of the following advertisements deals with an impressive visual component. To begin with, the disposition of a major part of the ad is performed with adherence to the basic rule of thirds: if to divide the poster into a 3×3 grid, the focus will be placed on or near one of the lines. In such a way, the ad draws more attention to the content. Furthermore, the minimalism pursued in practically every Dollar Shave Club’s campaign successfully integrates into the following poster, keeping the emphasis on the most important message of the campaign. The color palette used in the ad serves as an example of how to use bright colors in a non-aggressive yet engaging way. Thus, taking everything into consideration, it might be concluded that today’s print advertisement is more about the visual appeal than it was ever before. On the example of the Dollar Shave Club’s campaign, it becomes apparent that a beneficial combination of minimalism and plain message statement might be the key to a successful promo.
Creative Brief
One of the secrets of successful advertisement is defining consistent brand identity and strategy in order for the enterprise to become recognizable in the market. Thus, before launching any campaign, the team is to define the brand vision, shaping the company’s primary aims and values, stating a problem that should be addressed by the management, relevance to the target audience, and visual representation of a brand. Without completing this stage, a company cannot consider itself a full-scale brand ready to provide quality service to the customers. All these aspects are usually included in the company’s creative brief, which later becomes the enterprise’s sacred document. In order to obtain a better perspective of the issue, PayPal’s creative brief presented below will be analyzed.
PayPal, as a company, which pioneered web money transfers, does not require any introduction in today’s world due to its worldwide reputation. However, in the genesis of its career, the small enterprise needed to develop an extremely convincing vision, as they were engaging people to organize their payments in a way barely experienced before. For this reason, the created creative brief concerned the key problems and definitions that might help customers understand what PayPal was about. The brief presented above consists of a few major parts: problem statement, insight, company’s goal, target audience, brand statement, and opportunities representation.
In fact, all these aspects are extremely relevant in terms of stating a vision for every company, as it helps enterprises define personal value and benefits for the clients. However, in order for the brief to be even more efficient, some additional components might be included. For example, providing the brand vision with a broader context would have helped enhance the overall product value when placed in a specific timeframe. Moreover, services like PayPal are quite complicated for some customers, so a detailed explanation of the company’s work patterns and finance exchange peculiarities should be considered more closely in terms of B2C further communication. Finally, more details in each of the outlined segments would be beneficial for the future marketing strategies formation, as they would have a precise target group, securing higher marketing efficiency rates.
References
Flynn, S. (2015). Dollar Shave Club: your new stash [Image]. Ads of Brands. Web.
Rizomyliotis, I., Konstantoulaki, K., & Kostopoulos, I. (2017). Business-to-business print ad effectiveness: some empirical evidence. In Business-to-Business Marketing Communications (pp. 33-68). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Turits, M. (2019). How to write a creative brief (with examples) [Image]. NewsCred Insights. Web.