Year-end advertising copy issues

The end of the year is here. It is the time when many individuals worldwide recover from their shopping sprees. At least those who did not do so during Christmas or Thanksgiving’s Black Friday shopping spree.

They’ve purchased loads of presents and goodies for their family, for themselves, for their friends, relatives, and loved ones and for various people who are in some way important to them. It is precisely at this time of the year where advertising as made a lot of sense. Much care should be taken when crafting messages destined for their clients but brands somehow seem to miss this. It is now that the ads must be more appealing and persuasive. It is now that people will pay attention to a theme perfectly suited to the season and it is now that spelling and grammar mistakes make an impact and steal brand equity.

To be clear, poorly crafted advertising copy is a waste of a company’s advertising spend and should be viewed as such. It is tantamount to theft/fraud on the part of the business’ staff. Internally, employees would be reprimanded and externally, outsourced contracts would be affected if companies perceived themselves affected in a detrimental way. But they’ll let poor spelling go unnoticed. And, it must be said, what makes this worse is that online the messages could still be fixed and republished on the fly! That makes this almost criminal.

Yes, the periphery has crossed the bounds of print media and marketing, those working people who should not be online reading blogs are in doing so and watching these adverts and web banners on websites and in magazines it is critical that the advertisements reflect the brand images companies are trying so desperately to convey.

Luckily, it is not only the advertisement copy which speaks to the viewers or only the content. The photographic elements should be appealing and impressive. In this respect, most marketing departments are less likely to make errors.

For as long as people can read and they want to read English, words will play a very important role, sometimes as important or more than the picture. It’s the picture which mainly speaks draws the attention but then the words take over. It’s quite a tough and expensive job, attracting the reader and persuading him or her to linger on and read the ad. The least we can do is speak the English language proper.