All over the world, China has the largest number of digital signage usage and the number of NASDAQ IPOs. The country’s biggest signage firm, Focus Media Holding alone operates over 120,000 screens. The total revenue coming from digital signage equipment including the hardware, installation, maintenance and software grew by 33% in the year 2009 in the United States. Here are some of the common purposes where digital signages are used:

• To display public information like news, weather, traveler information, fire exits and other local information.
• Used by company for brand building in the forms of digital signage.
• To enhance customer experience by displaying the perceived wait time in bank queues, restaurant waiting areas, demonstrating a recipe in retail outlets, etc.
• To display inside information on health and safety, corporate messages in a company, etc.
• It helps to influence customer behavior by directing them to a particular area through digital display.
• To enhance the relationship with the customer by putting up interactive screens.

It is important to update the content of the digital signage on a regular basis to pass on the correct information or message to the customers. You can change the content of the digital signboard manually or by a scheduling system. There are varied options for the hardware used for digital signboards; it includes the use of one or more digital screens, media player and content managing server. There might be cases, where more than one such component is used for a single device depending on the need. Each content management server is capable of supporting multiple media players and each media player can support multiple screens.

One of the main reasons for growing number of digital signages are the rapidly dropping prices of large plasma and LCD screens. The advanced digital signages allow mobile phone interactivity with the exchange of SMS and Bluetooth devices. Your SMS message can be displayed on the digital screen and allows direct interactivity with the audience. The digital advertising signs are tremendously useful for social media interactivity; the users can send the Twitter and Flickr messages directly to the displays. Some digital displays make use of autostereoscopy technology for 3D displays in which a user can see the 3D image without using 3D glasses.

• Decide on the key idea you want to communicate with your audience, you can use an image or sentences that are completely different. MAKING USE OF METAPHOR will bring two different ideas together to create a new creative idea. A simile helps you create a metaphor and it is powerful tool to display your message. Try creating metaphor by keeping a key concept in mind.
• While displaying your product message you can PROMISE A BENEFIT to the users. A promise of what a product can deliver. Be very specific while stating the importance of the product to grab attention. You can state complete features of the product and how the product will benefit them.
• Talk about the REAL STUFF; do not be unrealistic about the details that you state to your audience. Make use of real situations and show people how they feel, what they feel, what they like, what they prefer, etc. Display people’s thinking, attitude, and mentality in your ads that will attract attention.
• Create an INTERESTING CHARACTER that will interest people and help them recognize your brand. You can make use of an actor, cartoon characters playing a role or can also create your own brand character. The best popular advertising characters make use of invented characters and sometimes these characters do no depict or reflect the brand of the profile or the targeted audience.
• Make use of DRAMATIC CONFLICT that will bring focused attention. You can create a role-play between husband and wife, mom and the child, client and the company. Create a goal or an objective that people will look forward to. Make them sense that they need the product by showing real situations.
• Form a basic idea that you will communicate with your audience and then EXAGGERATE IT. You can exaggerate the benefits you stated for the product, or the real situations you showed. A bigger exaggeration makes the case interesting and helps in getting attention.
• Add HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS to your product; you can create a feeling of a product being human. You can make a creative ad by giving human elements like speech, thought, action into the products.
• Create a tagline for your ad that POSITIONS YOUR COMPANY in the minds of people. It will help create brand awareness amongst the people.
• Give your audience AN OFFER that will make them compulsive of buying your product. This includes putting attractive discount offers, freebies, extra accessories with the products and others.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has set up a regulatory committee to end all the misleading or deceptive claims made by the companies. The FTC describes the incidences were there is potentiality of getting deceived by the existing claims made by companies in advertisements. If you are a deceived customer, you can submit the copy of the original ad and claim made by deceiving company to FTC or your State Bureau. You cannot probably sue the company for making such false claims but reduce the probability of them making such false claims in the future.

Usually, there are many forms of false advertising the manufacturers use to deceive their customers with false claims. The most common forms is INFLATED PRICE COMPARISON, the retailers tend to raise the price of the product and then offer the products at a lower sale price to the customers to which customers believe that they are getting a good deal out of merchandise sale but supposedly they are paying the same cost. The inflated price can be practiced when the customers have loyalty cards to shop at grocery stores or other retail outlets. The inflated costing saves them a little money. The other forms of false advertising are selling the products with a rebate. The companies do not give rebate at the point of purchase but needs to be claimed by the customer. Some companies do not give rebates on time and so customers are made to pay full price later on. Some other forms of false advertising used by manufacturers and retailers are:

• Bait and Switch advertising is used to lure customers with attractive offers and then trying to sell them more expensive products.
• Customers often get attracted to Buy one Get one Free, in this form of advertisement; the price of the product is doubled or inflated to a specific amount to cover the cost of free item.
• Most of the advertisements make use of misrepresentation techniques by falsely claiming the actual origin, the use of the product, the benefits, the quality, etc. Let us take an example of a manufacturer using a beauty model to showcase that she reduced weight using their products.

People get lured by the false claims made by companies, the best way to stay alert is: compare the different product’s pricing, their uses, benefits, facts, claims made, etc. You can report any cases of mal-functions or misrepresentations by companies to the Department of Consumer Affairs.

• One on one appeal

  While most of the firms make a bigger mistake to write the titles that are too many which may lead to brand or product confusion amongst people. While you sit to design a title or slogan, keep in mind that you are talking to an individual. Give your audience the feeling of getting possessive to the product. You may write slogans that they may relate to. Communicate your message, thinking just one person in mind.

• Pain or pleasure

  The title is one element in ads that draws maximum attention and you can grab that public attention either through pain or pleasure. Have a feeling to conquer your audience by hook or by crook, write slogans that triggers a passionate feeling amongst your audience.

• References

  The best way to design a slogan for your advertisement is to refer popular advertising slogans you see on televisions, outside banners, newspaper ads. As you closely watch them, you will get some idea as to design your own. Do not copy them blindly, but use your own creativity.

Given below are some of the popular advertising slogans that have created history or rather influenced consumer buying:

Pepsi-Cola

“The choice of a new generation”

Carlsberg

“Probably the best beer in the world”

Levi’s

“Quality never goes out of style”

Nike

“Just do it”

Marlboro

“Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country”

Folger’s Coffee

“The best part of waking up is Folgers’s in your cup”

Budweiser

“This Bud’s for you”

Kit Kat

“Have a break. Have a Kit Kat”

Nokia

“Connecting People”

Master Card

“There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Master Card”

American Express

“Don’t leave home without it”

Avis

Nike

Advertising slogans play a vital role especially when you have to create your brand image in front of the customers when there are other rival companies vying for attention. A highly effective slogan would generally state: the benefits of the product, compare the product with other products, a simple statement describing the product, a witty statement, makes the consumer feel good, its memorable one, creates a desire to buy the product. There are different industries catering to particular products and then there are umbrella brands having all types of products, some create individual slogans for each product while some have common slogan for all. Given below are list of advertising slogans that created history and are still remembered after centuries :

Intel

DisneyLand

These are just some of the famous slogans used by advertisers in varied industries; the actual list of advertising slogans goes much bigger than this. Worldwide, each company creates their own slogans to spread awareness about their products. Some slogans are remembered for ages, like the above stated and some are recreated using the brands.

BMW

Coke

The companies make use of catchwords as their motto to help people identify a particular brand. Creating your own brand in market is a huge challenge where there are several other products competing against each other. The best famous advertising slogans create a beautiful lasting memory in the minds of the people that they remember them for ages together. Let us have a look at the famous advertising slogans followed by companies:

McDonalds

Dell

Slogans are especially made to create a company brand position in front of the customers. The best creative advertising slogans provide an overview of a company brand image stating the company’s aggression and passionate goals to the customers.

Bernmobil: Airport Bus

Head&Shoulders: Mona Lisa

Onitsuka Tiger: Shoe

Samsung: Express Yourself, Creation

The concept of creative advertising ideas goes much beyond then what we can think of, it is a mix of entertaining words and the real goal of advertisers to put forward the message across the audience. Some of the best ideas are remarkably great in its own terms given the fact that they are remembered for ages together. Lets have a quick look at some of the best fascinating, awe-inspiring creative ads of all times. These are just some of the best ads images I came across:

Career Builder Advertisement

Cingular Advertisement

Pepsi Recycling Advetisement

Let us discuss, some creative advertising ideas and techniques which when applied, gives you a classic, timeless, simply memorable advertisements for the products:

a.    Keep it Genuine.

If you are looking to showcase a creative memorable ad to the people, show real people and real situations. They are more likely to grab public attention. Do not replicate other manufacturer’s ad, make your own and win hearts.

Hubba Bubba Advertisements

b.    Creating a Character.

The most effective creative idea that will attract audience is to introduce a character. This character will represent your product, so instill the desired value in your character while showcasing it to your audience. If you have a character in your ad, it will help people relate to your product.

Hubba Bubba Advertisements

c.    Introducing a problem.

Some artists believe in showing people the real problem and how using a particular product will solve all their problems. So for selling, there has to be a problem that people would agree to. Experiment with different ideas, problems and give solutions to people in your ad itself.

Nescafe: Aroma

Work upon your own business ideas and discover the world of creativity. There is no END word to creativity. The more you think, the more shall you reap. Advertising world is all about True Meaningful Creative Business Ideas!

Business groups are targeting a particular portion of the audience based on their preferences, the sex, the age, income and many such factors. The advertising methods and techniques are planned and executed as per the demand and also the preferences of the consumers. Here are some of the best-tested advertising techniques used by the advertisers of today:

• Emotional Appeal

  More than anything else that attracts attention of the people to the product is by emotional appeal. It is one the effective ways in marketing your products. People are willing to listen and try the products, if proposed emotionally.

• Targeted audience

  The advertisers design their marketing strategies keeping in mind the age group of the people. If a manufacturer wants to sell toys, the advertisements are designed to attract small children who will appeal the parents to buy the product.

• Endorsements

  People like to live a celebrity lifestyle. The advertisers hire the services of famous personalities to endorse their products. People like to imitate their icons and thus buy such products.

• Offer free samples

  This is very unique technique to grab much of customer base. It establishes a trust worthy relationship between the company and its customers. The free samples should not be spiced up with added comments or false predictions. The free samples are offered to let the customers understand the benefits of the product.

• Offering premium items

  This is also one of the effective ways to target your audience. People are attracted to collect premium items like key chains or coffee mugs. The premium items are limited to offer, so people hurry to collect them to the earliest.

• The consumer intelligence

  We cannot afford to undermine the consumer intelligence by false claims. They will do a proper research before buying the product. Many companies use consumer intelligence to their benefit by putting up only the facts of the product and offering premium items to the customers.

• Stating the benefits

  The best tools you can use in marketing your products are by stating the benefits to the customers. You can use comparisons with other similar types of products available in the market to showcase your product as the superior one. The television and radio are the most effective mediums to pass on the message to wider audience.

The companies are striving hard to gain a foothold in the market full of competitors. Many advertising methods and techniques are being proposed and executed each day. The most valuable advice to market your products is to provide right information to the customers and not misleading them with false pretensions.

No one wants to waste their time in lengthy conventional methods of advertisements, people are more than willing to spend bigger money for instant, smart, quick ideas which makes the perfect combination of creativity and sense of advertising. Lets discuss some of the hottest trends followed by people today that give the perfect buying appeal to people. The modern advertising methods have given a new strategy to people to revive their old passion of creativity that matches their products and services.

• Web Banner Advertising

  This type of advertising is very similar to banner advertising we use on the roads. The web banner advertisements are placed on the horizontal strip on the top of the web page. They attract attention due the images and graphics placed through javascript on the banners. These web banners ads when clicked, leads you to advertisers web page.

• Promotional Advertising

  This type of advertising involves giving away promotional items during business events or conferences to garner public attention to the product. It is one of the innovative techniques, which creates good demand for the product.

• Bandwagon Advertising

  It aims at convincing the potential customer to buy the product by telling him that every other person is in favor of the brand and are using it. People tend to buy the product if others are using it willfully. This advertising is based on the psychology of a consumer.

• Surrogate Advertising

  Some products are banned from public advertisements, companies resort to surrogate advertising by advertising their umbrella brand with other un-banned products. This reminds the customers of the actual product and thus indirect marketing.

• Pixel Advertising

  As in the newspapers, the amount of money charged depends on the amount of space utilized for ads. Similarly, the Internet advertising is charged based on the amount of pixels used. This ad was developed in the year 2005 by a British student Alex Tew who came up with the website, The Million Dollar Homepage.

• Contextual Advertising

  It is a very specific form of Internet marketing. Google adsense was very first form of contextual advertising. In this type of advertising, the advertisements are selected automatically by systems that are based on the content that is viewed by Internet users. The automated system scans the website for keywords and sends the ads that are relevant to the content that is being viewed by the user. Most of the search engines make use of contextual ads to display ads on the search engine results.

• Keyword Advertising

  The keyword-advertising concept is based on the cost per action advertising. This type of advertising is well known by pay per click advertising. Google adwords is one of the most popular forms of keyword advertising. Some well-known search engines also make use of keyword advertising.

• Blog Advertising

  Blogs are one of the popular mediums today for interactivity where a blogger writes his thoughts regarding a particular topic and audiences write comments on their thoughts. Advertisers are wisely using blogging networks to advertise their products. Companies are using corporate blog to reach out to their customers online by writing of new products feature, their working, their rates, comparisons, etc.

• Restroom Advertisements

  This seems like something out of box but restroom advertising is fast catching up with advertisers who are keen to present their product in a very unique and sophisticated manner. According to the survey, people are said to have read the restroom advertisements, which grasped their attention.

• Mobile Advertisement

  

  It may sound annoying for the people who get dozens of advertising messages on their cell phones each day. But it is one of the efficient and effective ways for companies to market their new products by messaging every time some new product is launched, or schemes going in the company. It attracts quite a bit of customers who do not get time visiting the stores to check out new items and schemes.

• Public Relations

  It is important to maintain a good public relation with your customers and employees for a healthy company-customer relationship. Many companies give utmost importance to pubic relations to maintain the company image in front of the customers. It is one of the effective ways to market your products genuinely. It helps to build good relations with your customers in longer run.

These are just few of the modern advertising methods people and companies are resorting to market their products. It gives them the added benefit of reaching their customers faster online than other traditional methods.

More and more companies are using outdoor advertising banner because it helps in gaining market exposure and customer awareness. With giant banners, people are more likely to get attracted and buy the product; visuals are the main elements that direct the audiences to use your product. Although oversized balloons, blimps with catchy word phrases, or company logos may create distraction for the people, it is important to take expert opinion before taking up any major outdoor advertising banner advertisement plan.

People often do impulsive shopping while they are shopping in the malls, 80% of people shop for the items they recollect as advertisements. People get more attracted with banner advertisements with creative designs and concepts. New companies are using banner advertising as a strong tool to market their products even before the products are launched. This type of advertising is getting popular with economical costs to the advertisers and the amount of attention it receives.

In an economy, where lives are fast paced people hardly get any time to read advertisements, the banner ads help grab the attention in a matter of just few seconds. You do not even have to convince the audience to look at your ads; banner ads are selective and made with a specific purpose and reason.  They are made attractive diligently because it is the very purpose of banner ads. Banner ads have always been popular methods to project your company’s image in front of the customers. Outdoor advertising is a growing industry with lots of benefits to the company as well as the customers; care should be taken to portray a clear message.