I like a highly visual presentation of information. I'm more attracted to it; I will spend more time with it. It appeals to the magpie in me. I tend to assume that other people are like me. However, I'm wondering if this is or is not actually the case, as well as when the context of the information directly impacts our preferred consumption.
Two things got me thinking about this.
The first prompt: Arieanna on blogginghelp.com recently conducted an (informal and unscientific) efficacy test of the Google referral program. She came to the conclusion that the text ads were more effective than the banner ads. Intuitively, this seems correct to me, especially her comment that people tune out graphic banners. We all do it when we're surfing - especially flashing emoticons, flashing "you've won!" proclamations, hell, flashing *anything*. If we bother with ads at all, text ads *appear* more trustworthy (or, we couldn't distinguish between an ad and content - something that can easily happen). OK, so graphics "less-good" in ads? Though I don't know if I would really call this a "graphic heavy" graphical ad.
The second prompt: the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Bloggers Rights campaign. They have a great image (the first image) for this campaign. I love this picture. Not just the style of it (which is something that appeals to my asthetic), but the combo of the patriotic admonishment and the URL (which I view as an implicit Call to Action - some may disagree). Once you click through to the campaign, you are able to add a badge to your blog to advertise the campaign and drive some traffic/membership to the EFF. My issue is that these badges (the second one is an example) are, well, ugly visually uninteresting. As a blogger, I'd much rather use the first one as a badge/banner on my blog. It's sexier *and* it gives my blog a bit of visual cachet. Now, the second one may embody the EFF's ethos a bit more, but, if I don't know who the EFF is to begin with then my motivation to click is lower; the EFF's logo is a prominent part of this message. So, in this case (where, as a marketer, I want to get individuals' personal blogs engaged in my cause), is more graphics "more-good"? Personally, I'd much rather put the prettier one on my blog.
So then, as a marketer, if I want to target bloggers to take up my cause and devote a portion of their space to it, what kind of "badges" should I be creating? The Red Cross does a bang-up job of providing a number of options. They offer at least 8 different sizes of ad. And in one of their most popular sizes, there are over a dozen different creative executions appealing to different points on the "visual information" scale. When a specific disaster campaign is running (e.g. Katrina), there are even more choices. All geared towards making it as easy as possible (both operationally as well as from a design sensibility perspective) to get bloggers to put a badge on their blog. Bono's ONE Campaign is another example of a non-profit that does a good job providing various options to bloggers.
So, why aren't marketers doing more of this? If I were doing any kind of viral promotion, I would absolutely create a series of sexy, fun, visually interesting blog badges that would allow bloggers to participate/promote my campaign and dress up their blogs at the same time. But not something with a corporate logo and tagline on it. Something like the first EFF graphic (which isn't actually intended to be a blog badge). Something that *isn't* corporate shilling, but rather something that speaks to the idea behind the campaign and lets individuals engage in the idea.
Bonus link: Signal vs Noise (whose interface is so simple and elegant that it brings me to tears) has a quasi-related article on the positive effect of big text on a page.
Technorati Tags: eff, marketing, advertising, prettyads, causemarketing
The Pink Book
