The Power of Print Advertising

We are now in a world where most of us have either own a laptop or computer and have access to the internet. As soon as you start surfing the web you are inundated with digital advertising, some of which you subconsciously take in. Despite the increase in digital printing over recent years, print advertising can still be the most powerful medium to grabs people’s attention and get the message across. Whether it’s a small scale magazine or a massive billboard advert, it should be recognisable at a few hundred paces, letting the average Joe know who it’s an ad for without seeing the brand name. We have found five innovative print adverts that will give any company some inspiration. 1. Penguin Books Last year, Penguin Books promoted its audiobooks with an excellent print ad campaign. The campaign featured illustrations of three world renowned authors, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde all of which, acting as headphones and whispering in the ears of their listeners. This campaign went on to win a Gold Press Lion award at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity. 2. Expedia For the majority of us, we have had the pleasure of crossing the pond and to ensure our baggage arrives along with us, we get lumbered with our destination in abbreviations on a big fat label. This label is an IATA code which is what Expedia have chosen to use for this ingenious campaign. The idea came about when the advertising team saw a woman walking through Heathrow airport with the word ‘FUK’ hanging off her suitcase. With plenty of airports and three letter codes to choose from, they came up with a series of prints, using the tagline ‘Find whatever floats your boat’ as a passport stamp. 3. Play-Doh Play-Doh is a fun and creative moulding kit for children and is a well-known brand name. This simple print ad works a treat on letting your imagination run wild; with its powerful product placement and old-school style. The use of the sticker effect has worked wonders for companies in the past and it’s been executed perfectly once again. 4. McDonald’s Whether you are a lover of McDonald’s or not, they fail to disappoint when it comes to their advertising campaigns. This is an eye-catching yet simple design, featuring a box of fries, carved into a potato, the ingredient to making their universally famous chips. 5. National Geographic Kids Regardless of the fact that National Geographic are one of the most well-respected nature publications in the world, children these days may not even take notice of them due to the games console and social networking generation they’ve grown up in. They decided to combine nature and technology, creating this show stopping print advert. The beautiful real life bird is amongst the instantly recognisable blue bird, making nature stand out for all the right reasons - such a powerful piece of advertising. We hope these prints gave you some inspiration and ideas for your next project. If you have an idea in mind and would like some advice, please feel free to contact us on 01603 488001 or send us an email at websales@col-print.co.uk