How to make ads that don’t suck. Part 4

Postmodern Advertising

Techniques I learned from George Felton

What is Postmodern Advertising?

An irreverent, I-know-this-is-an-ad attitude. An awareness that people are becoming increasingly cynical about advertising; an appreciation of advertisings past excesses; a critique of consumerism; a return to earlier advertising forms but now with an ironist attitude.

George Felton

Ridicule the productTraditional advertising thinks its job is to endorse the product. But consumer’s immunity is such that it may be more effective to call the products value into question.

Make fun of the audienceAds that tell the consumers that they are

not smart for buying their products.

Subvert the advertising format.

Appropriate the forms of one kind of advertising and apply them to yours.

http://youtu.be/bMJuF5I3nes

Speak with tongue in cheek.

Use the language of advertising and subvert the cliche.

Make old ads new.

Find an old form and breathe a new sensibility into it. Retro ads.

Import material from outside the genre.

Bring in stuff that’s not supposed to be in an ad.

Call attention to the ad’s artifice.

Make people notice that it is an ad.

Don’t make it looklike an ad.

People hate ads and distrust them.

OddvertisingAvoid direct, straight-ahead

selling, no matter how winsome.

Be deliberately primitive.Since ads have become too “slick” be so dumb it’s scary.