Real-Life Communication

Creative directors need to communicate their ideas to a wide variety of audiences. "Advertising, especially, requires excellent communication skills," says Steve Williams, a creative director working for an advertising firm.

"You have to get your point across to clients, co-workers and consumers. If you can't communicate clearly and memorably, you won't succeed because your clients won't succeed."

You are a creative director developing an advertising campaign for a national chain of video stores. The client wants you to create a series of advertisements to run on the Internet. Rentals of family films and video games have been dropping in recent months, and the video chain hopes the ads will turn things around.

This is a tough assignment. Research tells you that the Internet isn't the advertising gold mine that companies originally hoped it would be. In fact, people often ignore the ads. Your creative juices will be working overtime on this assignment.

Since the target audiences for family films and video games are different, you decide to create two separate ads. One ad is designed with adults in mind, while the other ad will (hopefully!) appeal to teenagers.

Working with your design team, you quickly create the first ad. The banner is split into three equal boxes. The background is pale yellow. The boxes on the left and right each have one of the cute, cuddly animals from the Disney movie Bambi. The middle box has the words Family Films in light pink, flowing script. The video chain's logo is tastefully placed on the upper left-hand corner of the middle box.

The second ad is more of a challenge. After tossing around several ideas, you and your team settle for a bolder, in-your-face approach. This ad has two pages. The first page contains the message: "Fun -- we've got it."

Like the other ad, the words are in flowing script, but they are striped, like a candy cane, in shades of butterscotch, crimson and green. They are set on a royal blue background. A box in the lower right-hand corner tells you to "click here." When you do, a second page comes up with a list of several hot video games, in the same striped flowing script. The video chain's logo is in the lower left-hand corner.

Now comes the hard part. You need to pitch the ads to the client. You'll have a visual display ready, of course. But you also need some dialog to use in your presentation.

This is the information that you need to include in your written comments.

1. A visual description of the ad
2. The target audience for the ad
3. Where the ad will appear

There are two terms you'll need to explain to the client during your presentation:

• Banner ads: The ads that appear across the top of many commercial Web sites.
• Interstitials: These are the advertising windows that pop up unexpectedly, blocking the site behind them. Most people look at interstitials just long enough to turn them off. Advertisers know this, so they try to design a knockout ad that will leave an impression in the fraction of a second it takes to remove it.

Write a brief explanation of each ad to accompany the presentation.

• Want to learn more about web advertising lingo? Check out this URL:

  Marketing Today
  Internet:http://www.marketingtoday.com/
  

  • Want to see what you could write?