Effective Copywriting: Project Reflection
While working on effective copywriting and developing the print ads, I fought against my commonly occurring overthinking. I would develop a sketch, over think it or force it to fit a specific strategy. I ended up taking Professor Rogalle’s advice and pushed through it. I worked on the personas first and then started sketching all the ideas that I had. Eventually, those I was able to fit those ideas into the concepts rather than the other way around. Another take away was how to understand your audience as a whole, not just as a consumer, but a human being that has a life outside of the product. My last take away was understand how the product can influence someone’s life outside of use. This allowed me to look deeper into ads to see what else they are selling aside from the product. Felton suggested “always think about climbing the ladder; in addition to a product’s obvious solution to a need, what else is at stake? Always ask yourself, what is the highest possible benefit I can claim for this product?” (Felton 2013, p.23). I was able to look at the ads in two different ways, what is the actual product, and what additional benefit are they selling. If they were selling a hearing aid, they would also sell it as the hearing aid improving communication within relationships. This helped me when working with the ads and target audience profile for the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
For the target audience profiles, I really tried to focus on having a variance of ages – a younger woman and an older woman. One woman already has her career in place while the other is barely starting to focus on her career. I did this intentionally because domestic violence occurs to people of all ages and stages in life. I tried to write their personas in a deeper sense and really try to see how or why they would be interested in contacting or learning more information from the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
Taking what I learned about selling the highest benefits and channeling the personas, I created several testimonial ads that used different strategies, such as “President/CEO, founding mother or father, employee”, “Just Plain Folk”, “Not the person, but something associated with the person”, “Celebrity”, “Ironic Testimonials”, and “Expert Testimonials”. With these strategies, I really tried to show how that the National Network to End Domestic Violence has various resources available to help families experiencing domestic violence. The three that selected to develop further were the “Survivor/Advocate” ad, the “Fearful Shadows” ad, and the “Promises” ad.
The Survivor/Advocate focused on using the “President/CEO, founding mother or father, employee” strategy in order to “give the brand a human face” in order to personify and relate the brand to the target audience (Felton, 2013, p. 241). The ad was created so that the person from the target profile would be able to relate to the ad in saying that anyone who has survived domestic violence can hold additional positions in life.
The Fearful Shadows print ad is based on the concept of the “Not the person, but something associated with the person” strategy, which features a teddy bear, which is associated with children, witnessing the abuse of a child from an adult. Using the bear helps replace the use of a child, which is something commonly used, and instead uses something associated with the person (Felton, 2013, p. 243).
The “Promises” print ad uses the Ironic Strategy, which Felton describes as “making jokes on the idea of credible spokespeople (Felton, 2013, p. 244). This was difficult to complete since domestic violence is a serious topic, so instead, I focused on using situational irony.
I was asked to complete an additional ad for National Network to End Domestic Violence, and for the final concept, I used the “Celebrity” strategy. This concept features Rhianna due to high status as a celebrity but also focusing on her experience of domestic violence, which was highly publicized. As Felton mentioned in the readings, Rihanna’s image “would be used would be enough to grab the audience’s attention” (Felton, 2013, p. 245).
After working through the process of researching the organization and target audience, developing audience personas, creating sketches and then applying the concepts I learn to create effective headlines, I was able to overcome my overthinking problem, while also develop advertisements that I felt were fitting with the target audience. I am hoping to take the strategies that I have learned and applied to my future classes as well as career experiences.
Source: Felton, G. (2013) Advertising Concept & Copy (Third Edition), 3rd Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 20130805. VitalBook file.
