Someone at IAS Portfolio must be drunk when they approved this advertisement that can be seen in most MRT stations in Singapore.

When I first laid eyes on it, I thought, Nice layout, but for a book or flyer not for a billboard. You don’t have to be a marketing genius to know that hardly anyone will be so captivated by the artwork that he will stop read all the words plunked into one big paragraph and then smile and continue on his way into/out of the MRT station.

Seriously!Problem 1:

Any ad that want to be noticed (why else should it be and ad) must have a captivating headline. If it was accompanied by an equally captivating graphics, that would be even better.

In this case, the most obvious component of this ad is the graphic. A flying eagle…ok, so? The defacto headline: Aha!

Is this going to make me stop and think? Please Mr Adman, I got better things to think about, like the train I am going to catch.

Problem 2:
If you are doing an ad with a lot of copy (ie, text) then you need to break it up into visually bite sized portion.

Reading this ad as i whizz past, I could never make it past the first line, The Egyptian vulture is partial to eggs. Hmmm, do I really care?

Problem 3:

The product or service you are advertising must be made obvious. This is hardly evident in this ad. Even the logo of the school is represent with a relatively small logo.

Maybe Maybe

The irony of it all is that the advertiser, IAS Portfolio School, teaches copywriting and creative thinking and art direction. Maybe they are too creative to use the tried and tested rules of copy writing. Maybe they are saying that if you don’t take their course this is how bad your ad can be. Maybe they don’t realise that if you but up a badly done ad nobody is going to read it and therefore being clever will not work.

Maybe they just need to practice what they preach in their classrooms. I must say, however, that upon reading closer, some of their lines are quite witty. For example, The ostrich egg’s skin being as thick as a lawyer’s skin was quite funny, I thought.

Here is another one…

If only IAS had spent the money on these ads on better things. Maybe an outreach programme or even a copywriting competition.

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