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Out of all the entertaining ads that played during Super Bowl 53, there’s simply one commercial that I woke up thinking about the next morning: Pepsi’s “More Than OK”.
“More Than OK” poked fun at how Pepsi generally takes a back seat to Coke, especially at restaurants. And by featuring a star-studded cast that included Steve Carell, Lil Jon, and Cardi-B( who hilariously and fervently backed up Pepsi’s OKness) their boldness to call people out for undermine Pepsi’s quality got a lot of titters and coaxed a massive audience to reconsider their own perception of the soft drink.
As marketers, we know that if we want to persuade an audience, we need to evoke an emotional replies from them. But how do you actually do that? Below, we’ll examine six persuasive ad techniques you can use in your circulars, five examples you can reference if you ever need some inspiration, and three informative advertisement instances that are surprisingly just as compelling as the persuasive publicize examples.
Persuasive Techniques in Advertising
The Carrot and The Stick
The Scarcity Principle
One Message Per Advertisement
Write In the Second Person
Give Your Audience a Sense of Control
Use a Call-to-Value Instead of a Call-to-Action
1. The Carrot and The Stick
Humans are hardwired to move towards pleasure, like a pony towards a carrot, and away from pain, like a donkey avoids a protrude. When people read or watch your ads, “carrots”, or promises of gain, can fill your prospects with hope and oblige them to pursue that potential feeling of amusement. “Sticks”, possibilities of loss, rekindle horror in your potentials, which will compel them to is removed from that potential feeling of pain.
Both tactics can pull your expectations into a narrative and provoke excitements that stimulate your desired action. Carrots, like a product’s benefit, entice people to take a wanted act. Lodges, on the other hand, like anti-smoking campaigns, evoke anxiety in people to stop doing a certain action and start doing the alternative. To better understand how to craft advertisements that feature a carrot or stick, check out these insurance copywriting lessons below.
Carrot: “1 5 minutes trying to save you 15% on vehicle insurance.” — Geico
Stick: “Get All-State. You can save money and be better protected from Mayhem like me. ” — All-State
As you can see, Geico’s ad employs a small time investment that could potentially produce large-hearted gains as a seduce to get you to buy their product. Conversely, All-State’s ad uses the character “Mayhem” to provoke horror into people to stop using their “inferior” insurance and start using All-State’s.
2. The Scarcity Principle
People value objects and experiences that are rare — having something that most people want, but can’t have, increases our feel of self-worth and strength. If you use words and words that imply scarcity and evoke a sense of importance, like “Exclusive offer” or “Limited availability”, you can skyrocket your product’s comprehended dearth and consumer demand.
3. One Message Per Advertisement
To immediately hook people and persuade them to read or watch the rest of your circular, try lodging to only one content. Spotlighting your product or offer’s main benefit or feature will make it easy for your customers to understand its value and increase the probability of their conversion because you’re merely conveying one message to your audience: your product’s main feature will benefit your customer’s life somehow, someway.
4. Write in the Second Person
Since your expectations primarily are worried about how you can help them, and pronouns like “you” and “your” can engage them on a personal level and help them insert themselves in the narrative you’re creating, writing advertisements in the second person can instantly grip their attention and help them imagine a future with your product or service bettering their lives.
5. Give Your Audience a Sense of Control
According to a research study conducted by three psychology professors at Rutgers University, the need for control is a biological and psychological requisite. People have to feel like they have control over their lives.
If you want to give your audience a sense of power, you need to give them the ability to choose. In other terms, after read or watching your advertisement, they must feel like they can choose between the alternative you hint or another path. If they feel like you’re trying to force them to buy your product, they’ll get annoyed and withdraw from your message.
To give your audience the ability to choose, and in turn, a sense of control, use phrases like “Feel free” or “No pressure” in your advertisings, like this example from Hotwire.com below.
6. Use a Call-to-Value Instead of a Call-to-Action
Call-to-actions are crucial for getting prospects to take the next step, but a “Download Now” or “Call Now” CTA isn’t ever going to convince the more skeptical prospects to take your desired action. You need to make sure your ad’s last-place line of copy or quip is the best of them all.
So instead of writing an uninspiring, final cable of facsimile like “Download Now”, write one that clearly communicates your offer’s value and imparts a peek into your prospects’ potential life if they take your desired action, like this call-to-value prompting readers to download a blogging eBook: “Click today and be a blogger tomorrow.”
Persuasive Advertising Examples 1. Nikol 
Image Credit: Brilliant Ads
Showing — not telling — your audience about your product’s benefits is one of the best ways to capture attention and get an emotional response. Patently, Nikol’s paper towels can’t actually turn grapes into raisins, but this ad highlightings the product’s absorbent abilities in a such a clear and clever way, they didn’t need write a single line of copy.
2. Heinz -9.png?w=450&ssl=1)
Image Credit: Brilliant Ads
In relation to food, the word “hot” has multiple means: having a high temperature and being spicy. Heinz brilliantly utilized the meaning of high temperature to highlight the spiciness of their ketchup, and their creative technique of communicating the value of their product helped them instantly attract people’s attention.
3. Mondo Pasta -6.png?w=450&ssl=1)
Image Credit: Brilliant Ads
With this wily application of guerrilla marketing, Mondo Pasta perfectly aligns their print with their creative — the guy slurping the noodle literally “can’t let go” because its a rope tied to a dock. By designing such a visual, unexpected, and literal ad with a apparently one-dimensional prop, people’s eyes can’t let go of this ad either.
4. Bic -5.png?w=618&ssl=1)
Image Credit: Brilliant Ads
Another example of guerrilla marketing, Bic takes advantage of an unkept land to highlight the strength of their razors. By simply mowing a small strip of grass on a arena, this ad is an unconventional, simple, and highly creative space to catch people’s attention and spotlight a razor’s shaving capabilities.
5. Siemens -5.png?w=618&ssl=1)
Image Credit: Brilliant Ads
Siemens’ skillful ad shows the benefits of their product by accidentally placing their washers and dryers in a library to show you that they’re so quiet, even a librarian wouldn’t need to shush them.
Informative Advertising
Compared to persuasive ad, informative advertise focuses more on the facts, and less on emotions. It highlight how your product’s features and benefits solve your customers’ problems and can even compare your product to your competitors’ product. Although this type of advertising relies on realities and figures to trigger a wanted act, the ad’s message is usually framed in a compelling way.
Informative Advertising Examples
Drink Responsibly
Miller Lite
Siskiyou Eye Center
1. Drink Responsibly -3.png?w=618&ssl=1)
Image Credit: Bloggs7 4
Even though this ad might seem like it’s only aiming to evoke fear in its target audience, it actually bends on the facts of the case to get their message across. If you booze and drive, your risk of gate-crashing soars 11 fold. And by focusing on this alarming reality, this ad can persuasion people to get an Uber or Lyft home after a nighttime out instead of getting behind the wheel.
2. Miller Lite 
Image Credit:
After Bud Light took some pokings at Miller Lite for using corn syrup in their brew during the course of its Super Bowl 53 ads, Miller Lite decided to throw a few perforates back. A period later on Twitter, they revealed that their beer actually has less calories and carbs than Bud Light, which helped them persuade people that boozing Bud Light and Miller Lite actually have similar health benefits.
3. Siskiyou Eye Center -2.png?w=450&ssl=1)
Image Credit:
There’s an old folk tale that carrots can improve your eyesight, but science has actually debunked this myth. That’s why this Siskiyou Eye Center ad is such a creative informative advertising. While it pokes fun at this common fable, it’s still relying on the facts of carrots not being able to improve your vision and the Eye Center’s ability to provide quality treatment for your eyes to persuade people to do business with them.
Persuasive ad vs. informative publicize: which one is better?
Persuasive advertising and informative publicize emphatically focus on different aspects of persuasion, but they still aim to achieve the same goal: persuasion your audience to take a desired activity. So whether you prosecute one publicize strategy or the other, remember that if you can trigger an emotional response, regardless of the stimuli, your ad will be a success.
Read more: blog.hubspot.com
