Use Curiosity to Advertise More Effectively

Aug 20th, 2008
by Allan Aarons

Americans are bombarded with advertising in every part of life. They go to a movie and are given ads for more movies. They watch TV and find nearly as much time is spent on the ads as on the programs. They drive down the street and see billboards and shop signs. They read the news and find it surrounded with appeals to get their money.

All this is a challenge to the advertisers for they must come up with a way to get over the mental block set up by consumers for self-protection. How can you get others to notice your ad among the thousands of others? One effective way of doing this is through building curiosity with sights and sounds.

Sounds of course often involve music. Many ads on TV includes some type of music to set the mood for you to desire their product. Other sounds are also used to build curiosity and attract attention. It was said that the Superman serials on TV in the 50's were especially popular with kids because of the woosh sound when the hero landed or took off.

Visual anticipation is also used. A blanket over the newest model of a car builds curiosity. Women in ads sell more to both men and women than men do. Movie previews take a collage of clips to titillate the imagination and make people too curious about how it all falls together to miss the full show.

Many successful ads use both sounds and visual to attract attention amid the plethora of ads hoisted on the public in a given day. By using both the eye gate and ear gate, it is hoped that attention will be gained. Yet, after a while, the bigger and better fails to get attention because everyone is doing it, and, too often, at the same time.

One form of advertising uses sights and sounds to build curiosity, and eliminates the competition, all at the same time. This method is called banner ads. A long banner or a billboard is pulled behind an airplane over a large congregation of people. Since no other ads are in sight on a beach or music festival, the ad has the full attention of the audience.

Picture yourself sitting on a beach, basking in the sun when you hear in the distance the drone of a plane. You are relaxing so you have time and interest to check it out. Coming your way is a single engine plane pulling some type of banner. Your curiosity is pricked. You want to know what it says. You wait with anticipation until the banner is in plain view and you read it, probably several times.

The plane goes by but after a few minutes it has circled around and passes by again. You read it a second time. The third time, you have it memorized and recite the message in your mind before it is in sight. Perhaps you even comment to friends nearby.

The advertiser has done his job. He has built the curiosity of the audience, used sounds and sights to present the message, and repeated it so that it is fixed in your memory. To top it off, the message faces no competitors. If the product or service is of use to you, he will be confident that when you need it, his name will be the one you choose.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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