Our expert cures your ads
[b][h2]Patient History [/b][/h2]
Beaudet Fine Jewelry is located in Eugene, OR, and promotes itself as the town’s premier jeweler with its beautiful custom designs. Owner Charles Beaudet attached a sample of the store’s local television commercial, which also stresses the theme: “Yes! It’s a Beaudet.” In the commercial we see people in an art gallery looking at beautiful works of art while one person notices the beautiful work of art around another person’s neck. “Yes! It’s a Beaudet,” she exclaims at the end. These print ads are a complement to the TV campaign. The ads appear in Eugene Magazine — which claims to be “the premiere lifestyle magazine in the area.” The ads run as a series of three on consecutive pages.
[b][h2]Diagnosis [/b][/h2]
I like the consecutive placement. For what is probably a full-page price, Beaudet Jewelry is going for frequency in one important publication versus the full-page impact. But why not go for both — impact and frequency? The ads are not conveying what I assume Charles wants to convey — that he creates and sells unique, beautiful jewelry. Your eye is drawn to them because of all the black (and I’m glad to see they are placed to the far right on a right-hand page), but we really don’t see the pieces of jewelry. The photographs are disproportionately small, and they contain busy backgrounds. You are selling a piece of art–? a thing of beauty. Why do jewelers skimp on the one thing that will really help sell the piece in a print ad? The picture is worth a thousand words.
[b][h2]Remedy[/b][/h2]
Find yourself a good photographer and negotiate a price for several shots. Make the visual about one half of the ad — and it might be worth seeing how it looks without a border around the photo. Get rid of the backgrounds and consider putting the descriptive copy on each ad as opposed to all of the copy on one ad. I know the ploy. This way they have to flip back and forth to get information on the piece. But, truth be told, you’re just annoying the reader. After all, we want them to think “Yes, it’s a Beaudet!” not “What is this jewelry, and why am I working so hard to see it?”