As a professional marketer, you go by what your customers hope to sell. Sometimes it is a useful and valuable product; sometimes it is a dry and esoteric concept. Most of the time, it’s something that no one really needs, but it’s your job to sell it. The client has placed his trust in you and will pay you for your effort. No one said that marketing was always going to be fun and glamorous.
Given the task of creating an advertisement, website, brochure, or trade display, your goal is to present your client’s work for everyone to notice, regardless of whether they need it or ultimately buy it.
The first question I would ask is, who is your target market? If we’re selling a geriatric product or service, it’s very different from selling something to the tween segment. But a lot of the work we do in this field is far removed from the everyday knowledge of the mass consumer market. For example, selling a particular type of industrial technology to the world’s sewage engineers. Or present a series of books on the history of World War I to a small group of war buffs around the world. Each of these examples calls for a different approach to getting at what “moves” a given market.
I was recently contacted by the owner of a dance school who wanted her website to be redesigned to reflect her personality. She felt that by visiting her and observing her work, she would be able to capture the essence of her spirit and create graphics to match.
This is a common misconception among people outside of the marketing field. They all believe that they are truly unique and that they possess some kind of special quality that will make them an overnight sensation. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Working to package a marketing concept involves the use of a finite variety of typographical styles, textual content, colors, visual images, shapes and sizes dictated by the dimensions of the final product we are creating and has very little to do with whether the customer is a glamor. .queen or crazy military. If what we are selling is related to those last two descriptions, then there may be some reason to apply such ideas. But in my thirty-five years of experience, graphic design is most effective when it relates to current aesthetic trends, but surpasses the norm with innovation and surprise. It must be competitive with the best efforts in the world while also being meaningful to your target market.
What font styles work best?
This depends a lot on who we are addressing. Just as tweens wouldn’t appreciate the grace and elegance of a classic font used tastefully in proper balance with its surrounding elements, an older market may bristle at an edgy use of some cheeky typeface defiantly scrawled into a design. bold. However, there is a time and a place for each of these techniques.
What colors work best?
Based on multiple studies conducted over a fifty year period in several different countries, regardless of age or gender, the color blue was ranked as the most preferred color to wear for a variety of purposes and goals. The second options were green and purple. The least favorite colors were orange, gray and brown. However, each of the studies mentioned that cultural differences affected favorite colors due to emotional relationships linked to color, for example, associations with bereavement, depression, mental illness, terrorism, etc. Other studies also concluded that men and women react to color differently, with men being more oblivious to both color and subtlety, while women were more attentive and knowledgeable about both. Additionally, in studies done in laboratory settings to examine how color affected behavior, blue was found to have a calming and relaxing effect, while red motivated a quicker response. When age was examined more closely, the younger the subject, the more likely they were to prefer bright colors like red or yellow. Furthermore, in the presence of these same bright colors, all respondents’ perceptions and judgments of size or value tended to be higher and more favorable than when influenced by blues or greens which elicited slower and more realistic reactions.
What does this mean in terms of graphic design?
Much of what has been found through scientific or psychological studies basically appears to be common sense. Young people like bright colors and older people like colder and more conservative colors. However, a truism about color doesn’t quite work when reviewing the results of various preference studies. According to color theory, there are three primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, and the complementary color of each primary color is determined by mixing the other two primary colors. This means that the complementary color of red is green; the complementary color of blue is orange; and the complementary color of yellow is purple. What is striking is that most people did not like orange; however, it is the most complementary color to wear with everyone’s favorite color, blue.
So do we throw these conclusions out the window? Hardly. It’s a safe bet that if you were to use blue as the color scheme for women with breast cancer, men with a penchant for war, and shoe-buying kids, none would be repulsed by the presentation. I think the use of an accent color would be the trickier issue and looking at the results of the studies should provide a reliable guide here. Also, one should not overlook the fact that there are an infinite number of shades and shades of blue, which further complicates the matter. If the blue you choose leans toward green, it’s more likely to be described as turquoise, while a blue that leans more toward red could be interpreted as purple or magenta. These variations alter the assumptions about using secondary or tertiary colors to complement. Another major color concern has to do with contrast, which can affect the readability of text if used incorrectly.
What visual images sell best?
Years ago, before computers, desktop publishing, and the Internet, it was well known among industry insiders that babies and dogs were the images used on newsstands to capture the hearts of the magazine-buying public. In an extensive Google search, today I have not been able to back up that theory. Times have changed and with it the flavors of our culture. Another mantra from years gone by was that “sex sells.” Whether we agree with that or not, sex rarely has a place within the apps marketers must use.
Here’s what one expert, Dick Stolley, People magazine’s founding managing editor, had to say about which cover images sell the best for your magazine:
“Young is better than old. Pretty is better than ugly. Rich is better than poor. Movies are better than music. Music is better than TV. TV is better than sports… and anything is better than politics.” In 1999, he added, “And nothing beats the dead celebrity,” a fact that has been strongly endorsed with all-time best-selling newsstand front pages about the deaths of John Lennon, Princess Diana, and recently Michael. Jackson.
However, for those of us who sell widgets, these guidelines are irrelevant. The correct image to use in marketing obviously must be related to what we are selling. This does not mean that we must show a photo or illustration of the subject. Sometimes that’s not the best way to go. Instead, we must ask ourselves, what will best communicate to the ideal buyer why they should act immediately to proceed with a purchase of what we are presenting to them? The way we “package” that appeal will be the magic wand to motivate your response.
Well, that doesn’t give you much direction, does it? Having been in this situation countless times in my career, I have come to trust this as the best way to achieve this goal. After establishing the main characteristic of the market based on the relevance of age, gender, occupation, education or location, I assume that everyone wants to be treated as if they are the most desirable customers in the world. So I dress my presentations in the garb of the rich and successful, using sophisticated font, smart, color, image, and design choices. I don’t resort to gimmicks or blatant designs. Rather, I trust methods that use elegance and class.
One of the reasons I do this is because I have to please the customer first and foremost. Since you are usually wealthy and successful, you can immediately relate to this style. Second, typical of human nature, your potential market, regardless of demographics, wants to identify with the rich and famous and will likely view the presentation as something that type of person would want. So, with your curiosity piqued, the presentation has accomplished the first important step in the process. How well you delivered the message and tempted him to act will determine whether you proceed with a purchase.
While this methodology may contradict the logic of defining one’s target market if they happen to be kids or street gang members, in my experience most of those we appeal to are people with resources (hopefully) so they can pay whatever it takes. that we need they are selling; of a sufficiently mature age to understand and appreciate our proposal; and finally, a member of American culture with needs and desires shaped by current technology, events, and the national perspective. With that as a starting point, my forays into marketing have been largely successful for those who hired me, with the understanding that everyone prefers to go “first class.”