Advertising Styles

2/18/2015

By using these styles as your framework, you can start writing a draft built around your thoughts and sales ideas, in a more coherent fashion. From there, you can choose a specific style or a combination of styles, and create your very own direct response ad.

Style #1: Personal/Letter

This is an ad written in letter form, where you (the writer/advertiser) narrates his story to the audience. In its most common form, the story usually tells about the writer's fortunate discovery of a money-making scheme during a desperate time.

This style is usually loaded with tidbits of information impressing upon the reader how the writer had gone from being debt-ridden to becoming opulently wealthy. In my opinion, this style of ad writing usually borders on the "fantastic", with unimaginative scenarios found in many identical overused stories. Many gung-ho ads are written in this fashion, usually with outrageous headlines that claim extraordinary results. They are so ridiculous they are usually more insulting than helpful.

Style #2: Press Release

This is an ad written by an non-biased, outside person who narrates to the audience his observations and discoveries about the biz-op product being covered. Some of these ads resort to fancy tags claiming that they are an "investigative report" or "news breaking development". Unless the ad really has direct quotes lifted from popular publications, using such fancy claims can backfire in the area of credibility.

This is particularly true if the publication where the ad appears writes the word "advertisement" somewhere on the page, just to make sure that readers do not confuse the ad as an editorial.

Style #3: Brochure

Although the brochure format comes in a variety of shapes and fashions, it maintains a fundamental structure which consists of a headline, a subhead, a few paragraphs of copy, ordering information, supplementary offers, and closing tag line. In its most favored design, ads prepared in this style always carry a "cut-along" order form, boxed in broken lines to catch the attention of the reader.

Most professionals tend to favor this style because the order form automatically tells the reader that they have to do something after reading the ad. It is both a warning and a clarification of intent. It is the advertiser saying, "I have something to tell you. If you like it, I want you to order it - whether it be the actual product, or just information about a product being sold".

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