Here’s proof!

Right now there are a plethora of adverts from schools in both metropolitan and our local newspapers imploring parents (and no doubt cashed up grandparents) to come to their Open Days to inspect the school and the facilities.

These adverts certainly confirm my well stated belief that Principals and teachers should stop writing their own advertisements in exchange for me undertaking not to take on the Principal or teacher’s role at the school. There are two reasons for this..

They don’t know the good old AIDA formula for writing adverts. You remember it don’t you… attention, interest, desire, action.

The aim of a good advertisement is firstly to get the reader’s attention. This is usually done with a great headline, sometimes supported by a picture or illustration. And normally they miss out on the first bit. They don’t get attention because generally their headline is the name and logo of the school so if the reader doesn’t know that school or isn’t interested in it they don’t look at the rest of the advert.

So the advert is wasted.

Then they do their own artwork (or belt their designer into submission) so they have a picture of some students and the school or even, heavens to Betsy, a photo of the Principal!! None of which adds to flagging the target market down! They then compound the error by having different type fonts and sizes or, instead of the error of giving too little information, they give too much.

The advert below takes the cake though. It’s a double page spread in our local paper and it has far too much info on too wide a range of topics. It uses a small font which is hard to read and they compound the error by having a blue background with the print in white… just about the hardest thing for anyone to read! Now, I know I have reduced the size of the advert but blow it up and see what I mean.

You can make most of the mistakes I have catalogued here but if you use that silly “white print” on a dark background (which designers love), you’re bound for disaster. Lots of money to pay for a double page advert… I wonder what the results were! Well no, I reckon I know!