Effective advertisement and the non effective advertisements

Perusing over advertisements looking at what makes an ad effective and what makes an ad non effective seems to be something that's entirely up to a persons preference, after all "know your target audience" is something any ad designer would know before hand and with the target audience comes a certain set of likes and dislikes. I have seen many advertisements that did well at making themselves look approachable to someone in the market for their product but left me clueless as to what their product did or what was the point of the product.

The following three advertisements were ads that I found to be very effective in the way they catch the eye in a way that was related to the product while still leaving no question as to what your getting.

1 A fine advertisement for hats

This image is effective due to it's use of two very recognizable symbols (Those being Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin if you didn't know), stripping the two people down to their facial hair and choice of head ware which draws attention to the hat. It's a very minimalistic style of ad drawing upon peoples vilification of a historic figure while using a figure that many cherish to promote their head ware.

2 Sex sells best when it isn't about Sex

This ad is effective due to it's use of lighting and product placement to instill the suggestion of an image that isn't there. This image catches the eye and makes the person either take a close look or in the case of glancing past, makes the person look again. Closer examination of the image leaves no illusion of the product while still being pleasing to the eye.

3. If it looks like a duck

A nice use associative imagery makes this ad another good contender for an effective advertisement. The vacuum cleaner is used in such a way to draw a comparison between itself and the power of a hunting rifle, while the colours ensure that the vacuum cleaner is blended in with the scenery as though it belongs there.

How not to make an effective advertisement.

1. Lack of focus equals a lack of attention

This ad suffers from being far too convoluted to be effective, they've opted for a lot of cut-aways, cutting away the face and even their own logo in an attempt to get people interested with the phrase being the hook that there's more the person doesn't know. All it leaves the viewer with is a wall of information that is more in line with an article then an advertisement leaving the viewer not really sure what it is their even selling. Facts and figures are well and good but they need to be presented in an appealing way, they can't just be dumped on the page when you have other elements pointing to them.

2. Don't show what you're selling

If you can beleive it this is an add for a pet memorial service though you would never guess it by just looking at it, it's a graph with the same dog in two different poses and reverted in some to show an increase in revenue although why anyone would think of putting that as your main drawing point for something that is suppose to sell business to a memorial service does seem to be a bit on the low side of class. This ad also suffers from the same issue as the one above it suffering from a lack of fouc that further obscures what their trying to sell.


3. Some things should never be mixed, while other things are a bit much, some manage both.

Definitely an interesting advertisement campaign, meant to highlight an infusion between two separate elements into something good, and that's where this advertisement falls flat. While this advertisement works on the weird factor that makes a person look twice if their glancing by, any time spent staring at this ad seems to cause revulsion from the creatures pose to the way he's licking his lips and the way every element on this advertisement is pointing to it's crotch.