Common types of advertising strategies

Liam Heeley

Before and After

• This technique is used mainly on adverts that are promoting weight loss or cleaning products to show they effect that the product has before it is used and after.

• This technique usually shows a negative image first, for example a food stain on an item of clothing, then it will show a positive image so that item of clothing without the stain, which therefore is promoting the product because it gets rid of stains.

Advice

• This type of advertising is ambiguous as it is promoting a product, as well as advising people about needs that they may not have in their life. For example if the advertisement is advertising fruit, the slogan could be ‘do you have enough protein in your life?’, this then makes the audience think and therefore could persuade them to buy the product.

Empathy

• This technique is used to make the audience feel empathy, so then they are persuaded to donate to the charity being promoted for example.

• This technique is usually used in adverts that inform people about the lack of recourses in poorer countries or the way smoking effects children and ways it can be prevented.

Testimonial

• This technique mainly uses famous, well known people to promote a product. For example if Adidas might get David Beckham to wear some new Adidas football boots, which will therefore allow the audience to see that famous players wear them, so therefore they must be good. This is an effective technique because if the audience is a fan of the celebrity being used, then this will further persuade them to buy the product.

Demonstration

• This technique can be used with the before and after technique as it is demonstrating a product and how it works. For example a football player will kick a ball wearing a pair of boots that are old, then they will be shown kicking a ball with a new pair of football boots representing the difference.

Competitive or comparison

• This technique represents how one product is better than another, for example in a washing powder advert this technique is used to represent how one brand gets stains out better than other brands. This creates competition between brands to create the better product, which will overall end up forming a very effective product. Samsung and Apple are competitive in their phone features as they always try to beat each other in what their new phone can do.

Negative to positive

• This type of advertising turns a boring or negative subject into a more positive subject. For example if politics is being advertised, which to most people is very boring, it will be turned positive by adding bright colors or adding facts that could benefit the audience. This technique uses mainly images instead of a lot of boring text, this is so the audience have something to look at instead of lines and lines of text.