Writing Advertisements

You may get asked to write some sort of advertisement in the exam. An advertisement is an announcement or notice that is concerned with promoting an event, product, service or opportunity. Because of this, all advertisements should always have a purpose to persuade. An advertisement can refer to a number of things, such as:

• A poster
• A leaflet
• A banner
• A newsletter
• A television/radio advertisement

The images are examples of some common forms of advertisements. The internet has altered the way we advertise products as there are now a number of e-publications, pop-up windows, links, videos etc. that advertise products and events.

Writing advertisements requires you to have a strong knowledge of the literary devices that were covered in Unit 1 of this course. You need to be able to write in a way that will grab the target audience’s attention. Some common techniques that are used in all forms of advertising are:

• Alliteration (the repetition of consonants to convey a particular mood, atmosphere or emotion, or to emphasise a point: ‘This season’s spectacular summer deals!’) – this is a good technique to use in your headlines and subheadings to help grab your audience’s attention and help them remember a slogan/heading.
• Exclamatives (‘You won’t regret it!’).
• Hyperboles (an over exaggerated statement: ‘millions are already benefiting from this product!’).
• Repetition (of sounds, words etc.).
• Similes (a comparison made between one thing and another that are connected using the term ‘like’ or ‘as’).

Posters normally include a lot of bright colours and images; however, when you write a magazine/newspaper article for an exam, you will not be required to illustrate any images on your advertisement and it should be purely textual. Nonetheless, if you want to you can indicate the positions of images using a rectangular box with the word ‘image’ (and maybe a brief description of the image) written inside. Do this if it is appropriate and will make your text clearer to the examiner. No matter the audience, posters are intended to be short and snappy in order to grab the reader’s attention quickly. This means that using a lot of simple and compound sentences to avoid appearing over-complicated is important. If your poster is too over-complicated, it will risk losing the reader’s attention and this is something you should definitely avoid in advertising.  Because you cannot add any actual images or colour to a poster in the exam, it is imperative that you emphasise the language using a number of different literary devices (refer back to Unit 1 of this course if you need to refresh your memory on the different range of literary devices) and rhetorical devices (a list of these and how to use them will be provided in Unit 4 of this course).

Leaflets are very similar to posters in the way that you will be required to emphasise the language using a number of different literary devices. However, in a leaflet you can include a lot more textual information. You still need to grab the audience’s attention with a snappy title but you are able to include a number of paragraphs that aren’t limited by the sentence types you can use.

Banners are very similar to posters as they are designed to grab the audience’s attention quickly and so cannot be too over-complicated. The main difference between a banner and a poster is in their size. A banner is a long strip of paper or cloth that is normally held across a building in a public place or carried in a demonstration. They normally bear a single slogan or design, and although larger in size, often include less images and text than a poster – you should therefore stick to these conventions if you are asked to write your own banner.

Newsletters normally consist of several different advertisements on one page. They require you to include a bit more information than banners and posters but not as much as leaflets. Like with any advertisement, your main purpose should be to persuade and so the audience’s attention must be grabbed quickly, and you can do this through the use of literary devices, such as alliteration.

A transcript of a television or radio advertisement will require you to follow the same rules as you would when writing a script. However, you will be required to use rhetorical techniques in order to persuade the audience (will be provided in Unit 4 of this course). These forms of advertisements normally use colloquial language and may have a jingle to help the audience remember the product or event (for example, the company ‘Go Compare’ have an opera singer singing their memorable jingle). You should therefore think about including these features if you are asked to write a transcript for a television or radio advertisement in the exam. These advertisements normally include a logo for the brand/product; this can be shown in the stage directions of a television advertisement or through speaking the brand name in a radio advertisement. These advertisements could also include a demonstration of the product (sometimes even by a celebrity figure) and often include spoken literary devices.