Where Are You Headed? Sometimes it's not as much what your headline says as where you place it.
By Jerry Fisher
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
An advertising guru of considerable stripe once made thepronouncement, "Copy is king"-meaning the sales messagein an advertisement is more important to its success than thevisual component. But today, in an era filled with dancing bannerads and animated e-mail, words go down better when they'represented in an arresting visual setting-even in print ads.That's certainly the case for the ad highlighted here, wherethe provocative composition of the headline draws readers in for alook-see.
Produced for the Office of Economic Development inOakland, California-an organization whose purpose is to attractbusinesses to relocate to the city-this ad gets an A+ for the wayits unique, stacked headline blocks attract (or, one might say,distract) the eye. Because it's hard to lasso racing readers,especially with a long headline, it takes a mold-breakingcomposition like this one to pull the prospect in. You can'thelp but be drawn to follow this headline's stagger, withdifferent-sized stepping stones, from the top left corner of the adto the middle. Equally important is the way it's broken intofragments of phrases and individual words, each offered in adifferent type size. But make no mistake, this mosaic wasn'tjust thrown together. A lot of thought was put into making wordslike "heck" and "Oakland" leap out of thepack.
That said, the question always remains: Does this ad do the jobof getting businesses interested in moving to Oakland? To behonest, I'm not crazy about the oblique message in theheadline, even though I know what it's getting at. But theheadline graphic made me quite willing to read the body copy, amessage that makes persuasive points about the benefits Oakland hasto offer over its more celebrated-and costlier-sister city:"People tend to be more familiar with a famous neighbor ofours. But as 300 new businesses will tell you . . . office rentsare lower than San Francisco."
What should you take away here? Before assuming that the bestpresentation of your headline-which is perhaps the most importantelement of any ad-is three lines of horizontal verbiage stacked onthe top shelf, stop and ask: "Is this the most compelling wayI can present this headline?" The answer will probably beno.
Jerry Fisher is afreelance advertising copywriter and author of CreatingSuccessful Small Business Advertising.
