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Mission Possible: The Perfect Ad

By: Dwayne W. Waite Jr.

As communications professionals, we continually strive to send messages to our audiences. Not just the right message, but the perfect message. A message, a phrase, a creative piece that will totally make our audience understand what we have, what they are missing, and why we should work together.

But what does the perfect ad look like?

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a French novelist in the early twentieth century has been quoted saying, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." In context, he was talking about the airplane; the way it is built and how the builder of it knows that they are finished. A whole quote is found in his book about aviation, Wind, Sand, and Stars, and it continues with, "when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness."

Now, advertising itself has little to with the act of flying. But Saint-Exupery makes a beautiful point about how we can built a message or design a piece of creative.

When we begin crafting our message, whether it be a billboard, a tweet, or a full-scale advertising campaign, we must remember that the point is not to cram in as much information as possible. If the consumer needs more information than what we give them, they can search us out. The biggest point in advertising is satisfying the middle part of Saint-Exupery's quote; to make sure the message is simple enough to understand. As residents of AdLand, we sometimes get ahead of ourselves and create content that is so deep, with undertone after undertone, where creative directors act more like movie directors. That's not the point. We need to keep our messages undiluted.

Let's examine the last part of the quote and how that can be applied to advertising. When we think of naked, we think of primal needs and wants, vulnerability, and basics. What needs and wants are the messages we are creating targeting? What emotions, desires are we trying to trigger? What basic, logical argument are we helping our audience understand?

If we keep it simple, our audiences will be able to "take away" everything they need to connect with us, and motivate them to act. And that's the perfect ad.

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About the Author

Dwayne W. Waite Jr. is partner and principal at JDW: The Charlotte Agency, a marketing and advertising shop in Charlotte, NC. He enjoys consumer behavior, economics, and football.

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