Stand Out from the Crowd: How to Make Your Advertising Work

By Jenn Clark

In today’s digital age, we are on information overload, and advertising completely saturates our lives. Whether it’s listening to the radio, browsing the world wide web or even simply walking down the street, we are overrun with bits and pieces of everything. One might argue it would be worthless, then, to bother to try to promote your business through paid advertising. But, we beg to differ.

With a great storyline and excellent messaging, you can make your brand stand out from the crowd. This always has been the challenge with businesses; and in the next decade, a new extreme will present itself, such as learning how to target Generation Z.

Making your business stand out has always been a challenge.

We see it all the time; thousands of marketing dollars put into tactics with no real strategy, simply because it’s a common source of broadcasting a company or service. Renting billboard space can be effective, believe it or not, but not if verbiage is off or the drivers don’t have time to even see your logo due to all the unnecessary text and useless messaging slapped on the 14’x48′ rectangle passed by thousands of vehicles a day.

A perfect example of an engaging and entertaining ad turned story is the Amazon Echo campaign, featuring Jason Swartzman and Alec Baldwin. Of all the Super Bowl ads, this stood out to us the most. Why? To begin, they launched their narrative a couple of weeks before the big game, then continued it after, keeping it relevant and fun. If you missed the emergence of the campaign, the creators made sure you knew its existence during Super Bowl 50.

Not all strategies you create for your brand will be a hit as this seems to be when advertising; campaigns will come and go, but with a little testing (and help…ahem), your brand’s story will not only come to life but will also stick.

So, before you cough up $1,200 on your next ad set, do a creative brief and really think about what makes you stand out from your competitors; why someone should choose your company. Then, turn it into a story.