Octarine

Make your ad easy to read

2009-08-12T18:33:00.000+02:00

Have you ever deleted an email because it was written entirely in capital letters? It might actually have had something worthwhile to say, but so what if you didn’t read it?

The same principle applies to advertising and design. Look at the countless ads crammed full of text, large fonts and lots of capital letters, with every line of copy competing for attention. And the final result is that nothing stands out and everything fades into insignificance.

Firstly, I blame the client. The one who believes that the bigger the font, the more attention people will pay to their ad. That every little bit of blank space has to be filled. (After all, we are paying for the space by the column centimetre, so we need to make sure we use it all.)

Secondly, I blame our industry. I blame those who don’t give the client good advice, who know the client is making a mistake, but couldn’t be bothered to make their point. An AE once told me it was just too much trouble to argue; simpler to take the money and run. (And yes, we’ve probably all felt that way at some point, but would you actually admit it?) Of course you have to respect that the client is spending his or her money, and is entitled to make the decisions, but surely we should at least try to guide them?

I blame employers who let incompetent designers loose without adequate training or supervision, and I blame publications who hire “designers” who have no design training or ability, but simply know how to drive a Mac, to put ads together at virtually no cost, creating the impression that there is no need to spend money on good design.

Evaluation of layouts is often subjective, but there are a few things we know for sure:
· Open space is not wasted space
· Crowded ads are difficult to read
· Bright colour will not necessarily attract more attention
· Black and white does not necessarily mean dull or lacking impact
· Copy and headlines set in capital letters are harder to read
· Light coloured headlines are harder to understand
· Full stops in headlines are not a good idea
· Body text set in serif fonts are easier to read

To find out more about reader-friendly copy and layout, visit www.octarine.co.za or contact ann@octarine.co.za .

Marketing can only do so much

2009-05-06T10:11:00.004+02:00

In the village of Sevelen in Switzerland, a nuclear bunker has been converted into “the world’s first zero star hotel”. I'm confident that it is not, in fact, the only hotel in without a star but then again, I'm equally sure that it is the only one that has built their entire brand around this claim!

If you are looking for comfort and amenities, or even just a little privacy, this hotel is not for you. Launched to the media late last year, The Null Stern Hotel has two bedrooms that each accommodate seven guests and you choose your bed by spinning an old bicycle wheel hanging on the wall.

Wake up time is 7am, and a common bed time is agreed with your room-mates, then it's lights out! The bathroom has a row of toilets and simple shower heads protrude from a wall.

Developed by brothers Frank and Patrick Riklin, who say they’re “just taking a society obsessed with more and more amenities and giving it just the basics”, the Null Stern Hotel has already spawned a spin-off, the Zero Star Hotel, who cites its mission statement as “Zero Star Hotel – Where the Only Star is You.”

Now I have to confess a certain admiration. Google reports in excess of 2 million searches for the Null Stern Hotel, and there are close on
14 000 search results. Quite a lot of publicity for a hotel that doesn’t have much to offer.

But on the other hand, the Null Stern was due to be fully operational by March 2009, but I can find no mention of the hotel more recently than January. Perhaps a quirky marketing notion can get you noticed, but I wouldn’t bet on the Null Stern being a big success.

I can't promise you 2 million Google searches, but I do promise a sane and sustainable approach to your marketing and advertising!

To find out more, visit http://www.octarine.co.za/ email ann@octarine.co.za or call Ann on 031 564 6921.

Consistency doesn't preclude excitement

2009-03-26T12:53:00.002+02:00

The whole point of branding is to create a memorable and credible personality for your product. And consistency is the key. Brands become trusted friends; you know where you are with them. You know their strengths and forgive their weaknesses, you know what to expect and you are disappointed if they let you down. (Of course, just like people, there are also brands with very strong identities that you just don’t like!)

But creating a consistent image and personality is not the same as being boring. I mean, a good friend that you have known for years can entertain you and be an interesting companion. Consistency doesn’t mean running the same ad in perpetuity, and it doesn’t mean you can’t introduce new ways of doing things or create exciting promotions.

KFC comes to mind. (Their advertising definitely falls into my “I wish I’d done that” category.) Their target market is very broad, and they are big enough to be able talk individually to various market segments. But regardless of who they target with their various ads, they have a consistent image: Great taste, and fun! Their ads are polished, but still tongue-in-cheek. Their characters are always lively, energetic, sociable and cool. And no matter whether they are selling chicken pieces, a “healthy” meal option or kids’ milkshakes, KFC is always fun, energetic, sociable and cool too.

They constantly innovate by bringing out new lines, which is consistent with this brand image. The look and feel of their retail outlets is consistent, and their fast order turnaround times are consistent too.

And whether your brand is a fun, big budget brand or a complicated technical product, you can still be consistent. Take a look at our portfolio and see how we have helped to build consistent brand images for our clients, or contact Ann Druce for more information.

Give me some breathing space!

2009-03-13T08:15:00.003+02:00

Have you ever noticed how the some advertisers seem to try to pack the most information into the smallest possible space? That it seems that unless every single millimetre of space is printed, they aren’t satisfied?

I understand that advertising space is expensive, but why don’t small advertisers look at big budget advertisers and learn from them. By crowding their ad, the message is so often lost and by making each line of copy bigger than the previous one, nothing stands out.

And sometimes those ads are run repeatedly in the same media. Why don’t they simply create a range of ads, and include one message, one key piece of information on each ad, giving it the space it needs to stand out. I mean, do we really need the fax number of a retailer on their ad? Give the address and one phone number, not half a dozen.

But this morning I saw this little ad. Look at it, tiny, black and white, and it still leaps off the page. I'm talking about the ad for Hoot. The name is bold and clear; it manages to credit the playwright and the actor and still boast about the awards it has garnered. And the dates, venue and booking details are big enough to read. Althought it could have done without the venue logo.

Now compare it to the more costly two-colour ad above it. I can only make out the photo when I inspect it closely, and the 12 lines of copy are cluttered so I don't read a thing. The email and web address are so small I battle to read them even with my reading glasses, and it is a damp squib.

It’s not the size of the ad that matters as much as what you do with it. And if you can’t fit everything in, leave something out!

Which ad do you think works harder?

Consistency of brand image is more than a consistent logo

2009-02-25T08:37:00.002+02:00

Any junior brand manager can tell you that it is absolutely essential to maintain a consistent brand image, but sometimes even major brands can get out of synch.

Take Vodacom, for instance. I’m not sure exactly why there is a Vodashop and a Vodacom4U shop at my nearest shopping centre. The both seem to provide identical services, so why do they need two different names? Clearly Vodacom4U targets the youth market while the original Vodashop aims for a more established target, but then why are the two shops selling exactly the same product range?

I suspect that Vodacom4U was initially a promotional concept with airtime packages designed specifically for teenagers, and that somehow it morphed into a retail chain without any real retail strategy. But Vodacom is an immensely strong brand, so this is hardly likely to impact on their shares.

But have a look at Ferrero Rocher chocolates. On one hand, they try to present an exclusive, top of the range image, and on the other, they are forever on promotion in Clicks. And while this is a great retail chain, and no doubt gives them wide distribution across South Africa, Clicks isn’t exactly exclusive. In fact, surely the appeal of Clicks is quite the opposite; an accessibility and value proposition.

So I, for one, never see Ferrero Rocher chocolates as a luxury. In fact, because they are always “on special” I harbour a suspicion that they couldn’t possibly live up to the Food for the gods message of their TV commercial. And I’d certainly be loathe to buy a gift for a friend that looks like it might only have been chosen because it was at a discounted price!

Kulula.com, on the other hand, is very consistent. Next time you fly Kulula, make a particular point of listening to the on-board safety messages – even these are whacky and irreverent. Who’d have thought aviation regulations would provide an opportunity to entrench an impudent and innovative brand image?

Maintaining a consistent image is not just about making sure the integrity of your corporate ID is in place; it is also critical to ensure that every touch point with your consumer is consistent. At Octarine we focus on creative and strategic marketing solutions. To find out more, visit http://www.octarine.co.za/ or contact ann@octarine.co.za for more information.

Does ambush marketing have long term benefits for your brand?

2009-02-16T15:16:00.002+02:00

Checking my blog this weekend, I discovered 2 new comments on my most recent post. Except that they had nothing to do with my blog. Instead, a company purporting to be a thriving, reputable company simply used my blog as a public space on which to graffiti their name and web address.

At first I was a bit irritated, but then I realised that I really didn’t care. In fact, I’d argue that it would be to their detriment, not mine.

Instead of building a reputation for integrity or adding value in terms of intellectual input, they have clearly demonstrated their inability to tightly define their target market or communicate in a way that will develop a relationship of trust.

At best, they have positioned themselves as opportunistic. They might get short term benefits from such opportunism, but they are selling themselves short in the long run.

Of course, the most notable error was selecting Octarine Opinions for their ambush marketing. This is a brand new website and a brand new blog, and has not had time to establish a massive readership (yet!) Surely if you are going to embark on a ambush marketing campaign, your objective should be to reach the broadest market in the shortest possible time. And to do that, you’d have more success if you linked to a major international player.

SEO is more than just having random links to your website. If you’d like to find out more SEO for technophobes, contact me at ann@octarine.co.za .

Who owns your advertising?

2009-02-11T10:40:00.001+02:00

You retain an advertising agency and brief them to create an advertising campaign, and then you pay them for their services. So you own the work, right? Well, no, actually. According to South African law, the advertising agency retains the copyright. The same way an architect owns the copyright on the plans for a house he designed for you.

In theory, what this means is that if you have a fall-out with your advertising agency, they could use the same campaign for another client. In practice, that’s clearly unlikely. No respectable ad agency would be so short-sighted, even if they could find a client foolish enough to want to run a campaign that someone else had already used! (Much easier, of course, for an architect to re-sell the plans of a house to a different client.)

But if you decide you no longer need your ad agency and decide you can do it yourself, this could be an issue. If you run ads that were created by an ad agency without their blessing, you are infringing their copyright. Even though you paid for the time they spent creating the campaign.

In practice, your agency is unlikely to object to you running their campaign with a new agency. After all, it is a small world. But if ever you change agencies, it does make sense to address this issue.

It's not easy letting go

2009-01-28T07:44:00.003+02:00

Entrepreneurs tend to be control freaks; it’s the nature of the beast. Corporate life might entail reporting to the Board or having some Group Financial hotshot examining your results, but you are probably a harder taskmaster than any corporate executive. It might have something to do with the fact that your own money is on the line!

And this has consequences for your ad agency. You are probably concerned that the agency doesn’t quite understand what you need, or that while you might not be an expert in advertising, you do have broad experience and proven acumen. And you’ve given the matter quite a lot of thought. You might find it hard to trust that they will be able to deliver, or secretly believe that, given enough time and a little effort, you could do it yourself. You may look at their proposals and wonder if they really added any value, and nitpick and challenge along the way. You may be anxious that you are spending money for something that might not work and your supplier can’t really prove that it will until you are way down the road.

I know this first-hand! When we decided that Octarine really did need an internet presence, we contracted a specialist web company to help us. We knew we could do the design – it was the technical issues with which we needed help. So we designed our site, and handed it over to the specialists to translate it into a living web site. And then we stressed.

We learned that just because we had used a beautiful font in our design, it didn’t mean it would show up on your screen. And that it was best to stick to the basic fonts installed on most computers. But we would really have preferred our fancy font.

We knew that the resolution of any image has a dramatic impact on the loading speed of the site, we didn’t want to compromise the quality of the pictures. After all, we are an advertising agency; if our pictures look blurry our work won’t look good. But we still wanted a fast-loading site.

But we were right on a couple of issues too. For instance, our meta-titles and meta page descriptions were better than the ones suggested by the techies, so we used the ones we came up with.

So when a client finds it hard to relinquish control, and criticises when we need to do things they don’t quite understand, I get it. And we never get precious about being the advertising "experts".

Visit www.octarine.co.za and discover some of the other reasons our clients like working with us.

Is your logo blurred in print ads?

2009-01-21T10:11:00.001+02:00

I once had a client tell me I was being obstructive because I wasn’t willing to use a jpeg of their logo in a corporate brochure. I had suggested that she ask her previous design agency to send it to us in Freehand (it was before InDesign) or that we could re-create it for her, but there would be a cost attached. In the end, we re-created it at no cost. I wasn’t about to lose a good client because she thought I was being difficult, but equally, I wasn’t about to go ahead and give her something that would look fuzzy around the edges, leaving her with the impression that not only was I obstructive, but I was incompetent too!

Almost every time I open a newspaper, be it a national title or a community free-sheet, I see at least one piece of retail advertising where the logo (and sometimes the address and contact details) is all blurred and distorted. It is very common with government advertising too. (You know those Government Department ads? The ones wishing you well for Workers’ Day or Women’s Day or, better still, wishing some politician a Happy Birthday.) The South African coat of arms is an all-too-frequent victim. Next time you see one of those ads, stop and have a look and see what I’m talking about.

If that is your ad, don’t you look at it and wonder why the print quality is so poor on only one section of your ad? Have you asked your advertising agency to explain why your competitor’s logo looks fine but yours doesn’t?

Or did you simply ignore them when they suggested the logo you supplied wouldn’t look great?

By the way, that client I mentioned is still a client, several years later. And the time we invested in recreating her logo was well-worth it in the long run.

To find out why our clients trust us with their advertising and graphic design, visit www.octarine.co.za

Leveraging your Advertising Dollar

2009-01-05T10:16:00.000+02:00

South African banks weathered the recent international banking storm with equanimity, but the South African Rand has nevertheless declined in value against the major international currencies since September 2008. Economists have attributed this to investors, suddenly risk averse, fearing the stability of so-called emerging markets. Ironic, really, since no South African bank needed government intervention. Government bail-outs of American banks and the outright government purchase of European banks were dramatic international news rather than an immediate economic or political reality.

Few of us relish the declining value of the Rand against the US Dollar, the Euro and other major currencies, but it is good news for South African exporters. Suddenly our exports are more cost competitive, more appealing to foreign markets. Competing in the international arena has never made more sense.

The South African advertising industry enjoys a healthy reputation internationally. Executives in local offices of multi-national agencies have frequently been appointed to senior posts in North America, Europe and Australia, South African creatives are invited to serve on the judging panels for major advertising awards, and our work regularly wins international awards.

And while there can be no argument that the best way to develop a client/agency relationship is face-to-face, it is possible to work around a long-distance relationship! Technology is on our side. International phone calls are clear and are no longer cost-prohibitive, emails circumvent many of the challenges of international time differences, and while presenting a campaign personally is always my first choice, the quality of PDF documents mean creative concepts are easily transported across the world.

It is both possible and realistic to use international exchange rates to leverage your advertising dollar. Major international companies outsource IT to India and call centres to improbable locations around the world, and professional services such as architectural design are regularly rendered on an international basis. Advertising and graphic design is just another professional service that can be supplied on an international basis, using the wealth of talent and expertise that exists in countries with relative weaker currencies to maximise your advertising budget.

Do you expect me to work to read your ad?

2008-12-22T13:59:00.000+02:00

Today I saw another one of those double page ads. Have you ever seen them? The ones that are designed as a double page spread but inserted as a full page ad. Just as they are. Now the only way to do this is to insert the ad side-ways, so if you want to read it you have to turn the magazine sideways too. You haven’t seen one? I’m not surprised. Happily, they don’t happen too often, but it might not be just that; perhaps you just haven’t noticed them. Since I am in the advertising industry I pay attention to ads, but despite that I really couldn’t be bothered to rotate a magazine so I can read an ad.

I have to wonder about the arrogance of a creative team that puts an ad together with complete disregard for the media strategy. And the strategic input of the Client Service team who let it happen. (Of course, in a way, I also have to admire the salesmanship of the AE who convinced the client it was a good idea!)

If your budget dictates that you can afford a full page ad, then your agency needs to design an ad that fits a full page. End of story. Not simply force a DPS into a single page by rotating it by 90° and reducing it to half the size.

Of course, I might be laying the blame at the wrong door. Perhaps it was the client who announced that he wanted to use an existing double page ad, but only had the budget for a full page. It’s possible he insisted that he had a beautiful ad and no budget to re-create it in a full page format. Maybe he even believes that being different will make his ad stand out from the rest.

And perhaps his advertising agency advised him that you can’t expect your target market to do any work to read your message. That his audience wouldn’t care how stunning his execution was if they would only take the time to turn their magazine around. That in reality your audience doesn’t really care.

If you’d like find out more about using creativity strategically to grab the attention of your target market, visit www.octarine.co.za TODAY.