Grabbing the Eye is Not All You Need to Do

By Janice Jenkins

What are print posters supposed to do? Color posters are large; they are often colorful with big lettering and large titles and quickly get a person's attention. They have to be, because unlike most other forms of marketing, if you are going with poster printing you are accepting that people cannot take your advertisement home with them.

This is the main drawback to color posters, and the reason why they have to get a person's attention quickly or else your advertising will not have much of an impact on people. But the thing of it is getting a person's attention is far from the only thing you have to do, and you need to consider what message you are sending, and what a person is going to walk away with.
In the quest to form an interesting poster companies have walked down all sorts of different paths. Some go for risqué images that might invoke a certain mood or feeling and will instantly get a persons interested. Others go for very unique images and colors that make a person wonder what that poster is all about. Still others use giant wording to get right to the point so people will be intrigued by what the poster has to say.

All of these things can lead to effective posters, but only if they then follow up with the proper amount of information, or if they give the right message. For some of those risqué posters you might have their attention, but are you attracting the right audience, are you delivering your message in the best way possible? Are you substituting solid information for flashy images instead?

I have seen plenty of posters before that made me look over, but once I was looking I did not know what the poster was trying to say or do. The images did not really convey any kind of specific message, and I was left scratching my head as to why this company paid for poster printing if they did not have something of significance to say with their poster.

Posters need to accomplish two goals, and only the first one is getting a person's attention. It is true that if no one bothers to look over no one will ever read your message, but do not allow that to confuse you into thinking that you need to substitute a solid advertising theme for a catchy image instead.

You might simply run your posters by a group of people to see what they take away from them. Do they understand the message you are trying to push, or are they just seeing the image without understanding why the image is there?

Be sure that both image and message work well together and that both are delivering what you want them to. This is what the best kind of advertisements is always going to do.

Janice Jenkins is a writer for a marketing company in Chicago, IL. Mostly into marketing research, Janice started writing articles early 2007 to impart her knowledge to individuals new to the marketing industry.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit: Print Posters, Color Posters.