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Visual Scandal, Story Appeal, and Banner Ads
Steve Krug has famously compared Web pages to billboards, meaning that Web visitors are task oriented, and therefore on-the-move. They click through websites, sizing up any individual page’s content in about as much time as a driver takes to glance up at a billboard, roughly 7 seconds or so.
The difference of course, is that material in the active window is being actively and consciously engaged and evaluated by the Web visitor, who can then slow down and read material that has proven itself relevant, which is obviously not the case for billboards. This is where the analogy breaks down, and why most copywriters will slap anyone clueless enough to vomit up the old “People don’t read online” mantra.
But as useful as the analogy is for web pages, it’s far more so for online ads:
- Both are on the periphery of your vision/attention, and therefore both have to present a reason to shift your attention from the task at hand to their message.
- Both want to leave you hungering for more information or more contact with the brand.
So when my recent post on Apple’s Banner Ad Innovation provoked some Ogilvy-inspired comments that compared banner ads to magazine ads, I thought It would be worthwhile to revisit that advertising giant’s advice on billboards (or what he refers to generally as posters). So here it is:
- It Pays to make your poster a ‘visual scandal’”
- Your poster should deliver you selling promise not only in words, but also pictorially.
- Use the largest possible type
- Make your brand name visible at a long distance
- Use strong, pure colors
- Never use more than three elements in your design
Now, strong colors might be a toss-up, because while they can draw the eye, they also scream “I’m an ad, ignore me.” And you can take or leave the other bottom four bullets, but the top two are pure gold for banner ads and are exactly what Apple was doing in it’s New York Times banner/skyscraper ad.
1. A ‘Visual Scandal’ surprises and delights viewers
This surprise and delight factor causes a peripheral eye sweep to become a studied look, gaining you the web visitor’s/driver’s active attention and consideration. And it does it while leaving those people with a positive emotional response to your brand (as apposed to gaining attention through an annoying, dancing stick figure). Here’s an example of visual scandal that Ogilvy provided in Ogilvy on Advertising:
And here are some of my personal favorite examples:
Of course, the razor blade, kill bill, and Nike ads are probably better than the Makers Mark and Frozen Mars Bar ad because in those billboards the selling promise is implicit in the visual scandal, thereby following Ogilvy’s second point as well as the first.
Achieving Visual Scandal by Coloring Outside the Lines
Notice how often this idea of visual scandal requires the use of 3-D or “outside the lines” effects. So how did Apple do this with a banner ad? They had multiple space ads interacting with each other, extending the ad outside the lines/boundaries of what we are used to. Take a look:
Achieving Visual Scandal by Visual Pun
Another technique for creating visual scandal is to make creative and unusual use of a boundary, line, or element that is already a part of the environment, creating a visual pun, as these examples do:
This techniques works for a lot more than posters, too:
Story Appeal
Humans use stories to explain deviations from the ordinary. As Jerome Bruner writes in, Acts of Meaning:
“Stories seem to be designed to give the exceptional behavior meaning in a manner that implicates both an intentional state in the protagonist (a belief or desire) and some canonical element in the culture . . . The function of the story is to find an intentional state that mitigates or at least makes comprehensible a deviation from a canonical cultural pattern.”
So viewers create stories by speculating on the motives of the actors depicted (within a scene or picture); they use their imaginations to fill in the back-story. Needless to say, you can’t have a story element to your picture/billboard/banner ad unless it contains people, or more precisely, characters.
Just look at the ad Ogilvy used as an example of “story element”:
And here’s what Ogilvy wrote about Story Appeal (and this ad):
“The kind of photographs which work hardest are those which arouse the reader’s curiousity. He glances at the photograph and says to himself, ‘What goes on heres?’ Then he reads your copy to find out. Harold Rudolph called this magic element ‘Story Appeal,’ and demonstrated that the more of it you inject into your photographs, the more people look at your advertisements.”
“The eyepatch [in the Hathaway ad] injects the magic element of ’story appeal.‘”
Do you see how the odd characteristic of the Baron Wrangell character made readers curious. They speculated about his background, purpose in the ad, etc. And so they read the ad. In online terms, they’d click through to get the full story on your home page.
For most people this same story appeal now occurs whenever we see the Mac and PC characters – especially when we see them outside the confines of a TV ad. Viewers know there’s a story to the ad somewhere, and so look closer to find out what it is.
So all you Internet Marketers yearning for a creative renaissance in online advertising, follow Apple’s lead and employ these techniques to their maximum. Just try to remember that after you’ve surprised and delighted your audience, it will be relevance and scent that will determine whether your ad actually makes the client any money.
[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]
About the author
Jeff is a Persuasion Architect, Web copywriter, blogger, and instructor of FutureNow's Persuasive Online Copywriting workshop. Follow Jeff Sexton on twitter
More articles from Jeff Sexton
- Nobody wants to read your sh**!September 21st, 2009
- Redesign? Ask The Right Questions!September 18th, 2009
- Cross-post: How to Improve a Product Page, Part 1September 15th, 2009
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June 8th, 2009
8:33 pm
[...] Visual Scandal, Story Appeal, and Banner Ads [...]
June 8th, 2009
11:49 pm
That is an excellent collection of ads. Thanks for sharing.
June 9th, 2009
5:42 am
it has an excellent collection of advertisement, thanks for sharing information with us.
June 9th, 2009
9:41 am
Great collection, thanks!
June 10th, 2009
6:16 am
Great ads.
I would love to see them (and lot more) in some kind of book.
June 15th, 2009
2:41 pm
Loved the examples in this post. They are all great posts, but I wanted to send this one to all my friends because I had never seen any of those ads before (don’t worry, I did send it onto my friends).
June 16th, 2009
5:46 am
Some greats ads although a lot of these were concepts and didn’t actually get to see the light of day, unfortunately clients don’t always see things the way the designer does
July 7th, 2009
2:07 pm
Those are awesome advertisements. Creative advertisements increase conversion rate for sure. Can’t do this kind of advertising on AdWords unfortunately!
July 15th, 2009
9:26 am
[...] previous post comparing billboards to online banner and space ads garnered positive comments and reviews – for the ads rather than my [...]
July 15th, 2009
9:27 am
[...] previous post comparing billboards to online banner and space ads garnered positive comments and reviews – for the ads rather than my [...]
July 21st, 2009
12:40 am
Great shots and examples of real eye catching advertising. Something that makes you look, perhaps laugh or smile, definitely attracts more attention than standard advertising. Yes of course I am stating the obvious but many people just don’t have the initiative to make promotional jumps to excellent advertising from boring and standard options available. Love the Kill Bill advertisement!!
July 23rd, 2009
12:24 pm
[...] month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of [...]
July 23rd, 2009
2:33 pm
[...] Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate [...]
July 23rd, 2009
4:13 pm
[...] Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate [...]
July 23rd, 2009
4:48 pm
[...] Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate [...]
July 23rd, 2009
6:42 pm
[...] Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate [...]
July 24th, 2009
6:59 pm
[...] Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate [...]
July 24th, 2009
8:52 pm
[...] Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate [...]
July 27th, 2009
6:25 am
I love these advertisements and billboards, they are so original and really catch your attention. I remember seeing some of them years ago and being impressed with the idea at the time too.
July 28th, 2009
10:20 am
[...] I’ve dealt with Story Appeal in previous posts, but let’s talk about headlines before diving into why Ogilvy’s favorite arrangement continues to stand the test of time. [...]
July 30th, 2009
5:30 am
[...] Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate [...]
July 31st, 2009
5:40 pm
[...] Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate [...]
September 8th, 2009
4:25 am
‘visual scandal’ – just stunning. Love those ideas and definitely these kinda ads will attract everyone’s attention.
September 9th, 2009
10:04 pm
[...] I’ve dealt with Story Appeal in previous posts, but let’s talk about headlines before diving into why Ogilvy’s favorite arrangement continues to stand the test of time. [...]
September 10th, 2009
2:25 am
very funny banner ads, quite creative ads..
September 23rd, 2009
7:47 pm
Incredible collection that creatively depicts the design of an effective piece of advertising. Congratulations!
September 30th, 2009
4:56 am
Great article, some incredible attention grabbing banner ads. My personal favourites are the Kill Bill and Naval Museum banners.
October 13th, 2009
1:11 am
[...] that this content is a re-hash of one section of my previous Grok post, “Visual Scandal, Story Appeal, and Banner Ads.” I’ve reproduced part of it here to better explain the term “story appeal” [...]
October 15th, 2009
2:53 am
Hehhehe some pretty cool photos here, had to bookmark this.
October 18th, 2009
4:25 am
Nice ads
And thanks for the sharing.
I think we need creative advertisements to increase conversion rate.
October 28th, 2009
6:29 pm
Some great, legendary advertising in there.
October 30th, 2009
5:05 pm
My favorite is the razor through the grass! brilliant!
November 2nd, 2009
4:47 pm
Amazing how the little things make such a big difference when it comes to advertising.
November 17th, 2009
8:03 am
It’s amazing how simple are all genous ideas.What a talented people create such things! Personally I’m very tired of an amount of ads that I see every day. I can call them trash.But after watching the ads above I’m in an excellent mood.
November 17th, 2009
4:38 pm
Nice collection of ads.The best is the ad with the fitness company.
November 18th, 2009
8:15 am
Great ads! THe one with “Mars” is the one I like most.