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Cool Print Marketing Ideas

By 16/11/2015February 25th, 2016Full Fat Blog

Despite being in a world that is becoming increasingly invested in making things digitalised and performed online, print still plays a big part in marketing, from leaflets and business cards to billboards and random printed items. One of the major advantages of physical printing is that, instead of being limited to a computer screen, anything can be printed on and there is so more that can be done with visual, graphic effects.

As humans are very visual creatures, a great marketing campaign needs to make a very memorable visual impact and to do this graphics can be very simple. Some of the most powerful advert campaigns use a very simple image used in a clever way to make the viewer think and to make a larger impact. For example, it would be seen as inappropriate to use photos of violence, severe disease and death in posters for charities and campaigns as they can easily be seen by young children and, due to the shock factor, the viewer is more likely to mentally ‘gloss over’ what they’ve seen, but using clever imagery such as children holding guns or tape over people’s mouths makes people stop and read what it is about and is therefore, more memorable. As printed adverts can be placed anywhere, anti-war campaigners used this to their advantage with posters with the message ‘What goes around comes around’ posted around street columns and lamp posts to show guns and tanks going in a full circle, therefore showing that war creates more unrest. Imagery, of course, also works for less severe causes, such as the recent ad campaign by The Guardian where they used the simple and recognisable image of a pie chart broken into three sections noted as ‘the’, ‘whole’ and ‘picture’ to depict that their readers get the whole picture with their newspaper.

Print Marketing Campaigns can be used to promote film and television

Print campaigns can also be used to promote film and television; in America there were fake campaign posters for vampire equality circulated to promote the TV series ‘True Blood’.  Using something that looks realistic is both interesting and makes people want to find out more information, so they will use a search engine to look up what they’ve just seen so it gets the marketing campaign moving.

An advantage that print has over a computer screen is that you have more control over how the image looks so you can make colours look as vibrant as you want and use photography and art to give 3D effects, visual illusions, and so on. It also isn’t just limited to paper; printing images on to vehicles, pens and even the backs of bus seats. Most lines on the London Underground have escalators and this is another opportunity for an unusual and effective marketing campaign as you can show images progressing as people move up or down and create plenty of visual illusions.

Clever print marketing campaigns don’t just show the functionality of your product or the basic message you are trying to convey, they add an extra level of emotion and make a deep, lasting impression.