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When, some little time ago now, I first descended upon the advertising scene,
we were a good deal more concerned than most people seem to be today about the
nature of the business we found ourselves in. We were always holding debates
– in the saloon bar of the Coach & Horses in New Bond Street, to be
tiresomely precise – about the meaning of advertising, the significance
of advertising, and the past, present and future of advertising. And an unconscionably
serious lot we no doubt were. Not to mention drunk.
Among the hardy perennials of our debates was the relevance of sex in advertising,
and also the question of whether the copy element in ads was more important
than the visual or vice versa.
Of course, these were the days when it was possible for agency personnel to
slope off round the pub during working hours and nobody on the management side
of things turned so much as a hair at our absence. Just so long as the work
got done on time, nobody gave so much as a tinker’s cuss whether you were
doing it in the office or down at the dog track. These days, agencies are a
little more sanguine in their approach to creative people; and I recently heard
of a designer being sacked on the spot for turning up at a client meeting wearing
jeans – and I kid you not.
But back to our hardy perennials. The ‘sex in advertising’ question
was a hotly debated topic, mainly because the copywriters and designers in my
milieu were always anxious to attend the relevant photo-shoots, and not because
sex was liable to help sell anything. Thus, we were constantly coming up with
speculative ad campaigns that featured semi-clad females so that we might catch
a glimpse of a naked thigh or better. Few of these concepts saw the light of
day, but it was always worth a try.
As to the copy versus pic argument, this has still not been resolved to this
day. Then, as now, I was on the side of the angels, holding that around 80 per
cent of ads could, at a pinch, do without illustrations, whereas only about
2 per cent could do without words. (In regard to the other 18 per cent, you
can make your own arrangements.)
Such an argument, as you’d expect, was met with widespread alarm by the
designers, who saw that I was presaging their redundancy. Then as now, they
would do everything they could to give their illustrations the prominence they
thought they deserved. This usually resulted in a design in which the pic took
up four-fifths of the ad, while the copy was relegated to eight-point solid
and rendered practically illegible.
My attitude, obviously, was simply a debating stance – true though it
undoubtedly is. I am not suggesting for a moment that 8 out of 10 ads should
be wholly typographical. But if you take a dispassionate look around you, you
might agree with me that a whole lot of ads (and brochures and websites, too,
come to that) carry pictures for pictures’ sake; and that in quite a few
cases the pictures, far from helping the transmission of a message, actually
hinder it.
The biggest offenders in this respect are what might be describes as semi-industrial
ads. Just leaf through a trade mag (or brochure or website) and you’ll
see irrelevance in illustration well carried out. You’ll see, for instance,
pictures of the factory or, as they call it these days, the production operation.
You’ll see pics of two obvious male models in white coats staring idiotically
at a computer screen or a blueprint. And you’ll see pics of two obvious
male models, plus a female model, in white coats staring idiotically at a computer
screen. The female is included in the latter pic because the designer had originally
planned for her to be shot with her clothes off.
Here’s what I think. With today’s wonderful digital photography opportunities,
with an instant replay of whatever has been shot, one might hope that illustrations
in ads, brochures and websites might be made more relevant. They might actually
show the product in action – demonstration is, after all, the soul of advertising.
But, no, we still get pics which have nothing whatsoever to do with the product
or its benefits.
I don’t mind admitting that there can be few people in the whole wide
world who know less about photography than I do. What I do know, however, is
that promotional material is far better off without an illustration if that
illustration does not augment the sales message. So, in this respect, copy is
more important than illustration.
Mind you, there is a lot of copy around that doesn’t augment the sales
message either. But that’s another story.
About the Author:
Patrick Quinn is an award winning copywriter with 40 years' experience of the
advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. He publishes a
FREE online monthly newsletter, AdBriefing, designed for those who have a very
real interest in producing good advertising. Subscriptions are available at:
http://www.adbriefing.com |
