Indirect marketing

This section deals with the placement of generic advertising. This is usually the most

costly part of your promotional campaign, so it is vital to keep your target market in

mind when deciding where to place advertisements and what to say in them. 

Every advertisement you place should be aimed at a specific target market. For example,

who you are trying to reach by advertising in a daily newspaper should inform decisions

about what the advertisement says   and when and where it is placed.

Indirect marketing doesn't speak directly to a target group. Its reach is broad rather than

specific although with research, you can concentrate your efforts more effectively. There

are a number of avenues for this research:

  speaking with your venue manager

  speaking with other arts people in the region (e.g. festival organisers, producers)

  sourcing any relevant Creative New Zealand research reports, including Know Your

Audience: me mohio ki to whakaminenga. All research reports are available from the

Resources section of its website (www.creativenz.govt.nz)

  asking people within your target groups

  getting statistics from newspapers and radio stations on their readers and listeners. This

information gives you demographics such as age, income, geography and socio economics.

Another important statistic you can obtain from newspapers are the days of the week

that your target markets are most likely to purchase a paper

  using surveys you may have conducted during previous productions, recording which

advertising is seen by which target markets

  using your own knowledge and intuition.

Advertising copy

A good advertisement is informative, stresses a benefit, takes people to the next step in

the buying process and encourages them to do it now. You can learn a lot by looking at

4

the way the commercial world uses advertising.

Structure the advertisement according to the messages you want to get across. What's your

biggest draw card? Is it the title, the company name, or the name of the artist or writer? 

Keep your target audience in mind. The language you write for an advertisement should

speak to your target market in much the same way as your visuals. Language can be both

literal and emotive.

Don't crowd the advertisement with too much copy. It still needs to work visually and

this is not the medium in which to get across a lot of information.

When you're writing advertising copy, remember: 

  the language should be simple and address the reader (e.g. use  I  and  you")

  don't be clever for the sake of being clever

  the headline is the most important element 

  the most effective headlines appeal to the reader's self interest or give news

  long headlines that say something are more effective than short ones that say nothing

  specifics are more believable than generalities.

(Source: David Ogilvy, Foreword to Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, see

Appendix, page 73)

38

Smart arts

|

Toi huatau