Advertising is both an art and a science. Both content and means of delivery can vary widely. Today's advertising can entail anything from brochure printing yielding quality full color brochures all the way to the most cutting edge interactive social networking stealth campaign. There are many tricks of the trade employed by advertisers that have been developed over the years.



The first is associations. Advertisers seek to associate their product with another non related attractive entity. This explains the commonality of pretty females in advertisements. Advertisers seek to associate their product with elements representing success and glamour. Celebrity endorsers are obviously used significantly to this end.

Another trick is expert association. We have all seen many commercials with an actor wearing laboratory outfits or other authoritative garb. Advertisers seek to utilize a facade of a trusted image in order to vicariously gain the viewer's trust in their product by association. One must be very careful, though, of any tangible claims made whether by an actual or actor expert. All must be able to be backed up in reality.

Many advertisers employ optical techniques. However, the urban legends regarding subliminal advertising using hidden words are mostly untrue. The full color brochures you receive do not have hidden hypnotic text. However, the sizing of images and text are highly scrutinized by advertisers to be geared to innate psychological triggers within the human psyche.

The ad copy itself is obviously very important. Certain words are used often while others are avoided at all costs. Tonality of given words is analyzed to ensure it creates the right feeling. There is a deep pool of research behind advertising copy decisions. Different products require varying pitch types.

Unless the subject matter disallows it, most advertisements seek to entertain. A commercial with great copy and associations is worthless if it has a boring presentation. Copy and images only have effect if heard and seen. To that end, advertisers seek to entertain while effectively delivering their desired message.

Regional cultural preferences must be taken into consideration. The famous story is the introduction of the Nova car in South America. The car company failed to realize that "no va" in Spanish means "doesn't go". Needless to say, the Nova was not well received in the local marketplace. It is imperative that advertisers do localized market research and take heed of regional customs and preferences.

Market research is a needed first tool for all advertisers. Sophisticated focus group technology now exists, allowing advertisers to gauge response prior to a full scale roll out. Different tricks work with different market segments. Deciding which combination of techniques to use for a given product sold in a given locality is a task which often perplexes even the most seasoned ad executives. When dealing with the human mind, nothing is ever certain.