How To Sidestep Marketing Invisibility: Communicated Power

When you read a newspaper or magazine, there are two unique types of material in the publication.

And they are:

the editorial content, or the articles written, and then there are  advertisements, which are blatantly promoting a product or service.

These are usually seen as a “they are there to sell you something” to your subconscious, which makes you more likely to skip over the advertisements and read only the articles themselves- unless an advertisement sticks out at your and is powerful enough to draw your attention and took you into reading it further.

Let me give you an example.

If you’re in the market to buy a new deep freezer, You’ll notice in the newspapers the ads that are placed selling appliances.

Whenever you see such an ad, you will stop and study what makes and models of freezer are being advertised, and for what price.

If you have no need for a freezer, when you leaf through the paper, those ads will be practically invisible to you.

After scanning the page and a half second or sell you’ll simply turn the page to get the next article.

Now, when someone becomes interested in buying a freezer, the very next day when they read the newspaper, suddenly they will notice many advertisements in the newspaper from many different appliance vendors.

What happened?  Is the fact that suddenly you’re in the market for an appliance make different vendors suddenly started advertising their wares?

Not at all.

It’s just until now, you were not in the market for a freezer; and therefore did not even see these advertisements. Now, you suddenly have an awareness about that particular type of product, which suddenly lead you to seeing ads for appliances literally everywhere.

So, it should be pretty clear to you by now that editorial (let’s call it unpaid content) is seen by the reader as something worth paying attention to; and advertising (let’s call it paid, sponsored content) as something worthy of ignoring most of the time.

Now, there is a way to make your advertisements almost more over into editorial content in your prospects mind.

How is that done?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

It’s called an advertorial. Ever see articles about a new product or service that have the word “communicated” or the words “a special promotional feature” used above the heading?

What this is, is advertising that is conditioned to seem article-like, which increases its response many times over. (in a test a while back done in Reader’s Digest, an advertorial style ad outperformed a regular ad by something like 80% more responses- for the same cost of the ad!)

Many advertorials in newspapers and magazines actually written by the newspaper staff themselves, but usually without a byline. Many publications will only allow advertorials to be published on condition that the headline is a different font than the one the publication uses for articles.

I actually came across a magazine today called “Oilweek” which targets the oil industry.

I found something fascinating in their advertorial guidelines.

(from: http://www.junewarren-nickles.com/pdf/guidelines_advertorial.pdf)

Now I ask you, why do you think they charge 20% more for advertorial than for a “regular” advertisement?