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Ad Creation Tutorial (Lesson 2)

Body Text

Supports, clarifies, enhances and explains the headline for those readers who want more information. It concentrates on benefits over features since (1) benefits are what really matter to the reader, (2) the ad does not have enough space or time to do justice to all product features, and (3) the best most ads can hope for is to begin the courtship rather than prompt the marriage (if it's love at first sight, all the better, but this does not typically happen with high-tech or more expensive products). Feature: inherent characteristics Benefit: what does it do for the customer?

Lots of space -- good ads usually have plenty of space, so our main points stand out and don't get lost. Therefore, we want to use as few words as possible in the body text to convey the messages we want our target audience to read and remember. To insure that your body text is concise, it is a good practice to revise it several times. A good rule to remember is when in doubt, cut it out.

For the readers convenience -- we also want to design the ad for the convenience of the reader.

Read like a story -- even though we will be highlighting the main points of the ad, we would like the ad to read like a coordinated story for those readers who choose to read the entire ad.

Tie-in with the headline -- we also want the body to flow directly from the headline and to tie in with the headline, the sub-headlines and the photos or graphics used in the ad.

Emphasize benefits to the reader -- the body of the ad explains and supports the main points.

Close -- Reinforces the headline (the main point(s) of the ad), ends the ad, solicits action and provides a marketing information system mechanism for measuring response and/or other factors.

Examine how the organization of the large amount of body text livens up the advertisement and emphasizes the events.

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