Marketing and Advertising 101v Messy Face®

Advertising and Marketing 101 - Version Messy Face®

Why reinvent the wheel when inspiration is out there right in front of our faces? On any given day, society is inundated with marketing messages through advertisements. Just drive around the freeway and electronic billboards light up like the Vegas strip cheering for our attention and hooking peripheral vision. Then there’s the old fashioned static billboard that comes in a variety of sizes throughout even 2 lane neighborhood streets. Oh, and what about all the junk mail and complimentary magazines? Advertising and marketing pays the bills to print these forms of mass communication.

Okay, so if you’re still reading this blog you’re probably wondering where I’m going with all of this??? At least I hope you are…as a small business owner I could hire a firm to help me with my advertising and marketing needs – generally at a great expense or cost that is so out of reach that the proposal is laughable. This reminds me of a meeting I had at the beginning of MFD where I did consult with an advertising person – their rate was 30K for 10 hours of billable work for a ¼ year project. Hello??? The best part- they were a referral!! Laughable yes. But the only solution?? Well, if you’ve been following my blogs then you already know about my “chocolate chip cookie” mindset.

So, off to that – while these forms of advertising and marketing may seem like junk mail or a driving nuisance, they are FREE ideas of inspiration to spark marketing and advertising innovation for your own company. NOTE: I do not suggest nor am I suggesting plagiarizing OR violating any copyright or trademark owned by another company.

What I am saying is that these billboards, postcards, and magazines provide examples of advertising and marketing to be studied and ask questions like: what’s the overall message, what does the message say to the consumer, can I identify the target audience, what is the benefit of this company’s service/product, what colors are used, what colors are not used, what is the font, are there photos or other images, what is the overall layout like – AND how do these advertisements compare to similar companies within MY industry AND their industry?? What are the differences?

For Messy Face®, I needed to create an ad and I wanted a rockin’ ad…well, I was stuck in my office with writer’s block and decided to go for a drive…that’s when I started noticing all of these billboard ads and I went back to my office, brainstormed ideas, wrote them all down, did some sketching and contacted my graphic designer…to which we created an awesome ad (and I’ve already gotten a fair amount of feedback confirming the fact) – so, go for a drive, save that junk mail, browse through a magazine and hopefully, you’ll find some inspiration!