I ran into (and almost went flying past) a Nuveen ad today that nicely illustrates how easy it is to mess up an extraordinary ad.
In this case, the headline was fairly straightforward: “If you’re looking for additional monthly income, it helps to increase your choices.” Okay, that makes sense. And it’s fine, even recommended, that an ad have a straight line if the twist is going to be in the visual.
So I looked at the visual and was surprised to see no twist. Huh? And it was at this point I almost turned the page, but something made me pause.
The something wasn’t the ad, it was the train coming to a stop. But I’m glad it did because when I looked at the visual again, I finally noticed what the twist was. It was a shot of a guy in the back of a cabin cruiser leaning back in his chair looking out to sea and on close inspection, you could see he has four fishing poles instead of the normal one. Oh, now I get it…
But the problem is, the art director was a) so familiar with the idea of the ad, and b) so enamored of this beautiful shot, he or she framed it so fully seven-eighths of the shot is just blue sky, a cloud on the horizon and the deep blue sea. And the four fishing poles, being by definition very thin, vertical objects all but disappear in the shot. Unless you happen to be looking very hard for them, which I don’t think the average reader would. Thus rendering what could have been a pretty decent ad and plain, old ordinary one.
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