My route to the office takes me underneath a railway viaduct and I pass the same advertising billboard everyday. There are a number of billboards just underneath the viaduct and the space gets bought up by smaller local businesses and the larger national corporates. The quality of the posters is generally pretty good and the environment has been been considered. I make a point of the environment as the street gets lots of traffic and passing pedestrians but as you can see from Google Street View below, the road is not that wide:
There has been a poster up recently which caught my eye. The poster is for a local Fruiterers and Florist called David Rhodes and David has a few outlets around Brighton including one on the street where I live. I know he sells good stuff as I’ve seen the quality of his stock, but if I didn’t know that and the poster was the first experience I’d had of his business, I wouldn’t get that message.
The poster is so overloaded with text content that it’s pretty hard to even see what it’s advertising. Even the web address forms a kind of optical illusion and makes reading it impossible because it’s so long.
Can the poster be improved?
So we have an idea of what’s wrong with the poster:
- Too much text content
- Too little emphasis on what is being advertised
- Incorrect importance given to key information
- Small images
- No directions to shops
- Hard to find contact details
The first thing I’m going to do is strip the text content right back. My new main text content will be as follows:
David Rhodes – Award winning Fruiterers and Florist
Supplying Sussex with Fruit, Vegetables and Flowers for nearly 30 years
The secondary ‘next step’ information will be as follows:
Drop in to your nearest store for a full range of fruit, vegetables, flowers and fresh organic produce (arrow right). 300 yards and second right on Preston Circus. Others stores on Portland Road and Western Road in Hove too.
I would word other contact information like this:
Shop online at drfruit.co.uk (new domain) or call 01273 325998. Wholesale to caterers also available.
Now that I have my first draft text written, I’d start to think about the design. I already know that I want to use much bigger and better quality photos. Close up professional photography of fruit and veg would make it much more obvious what was being advertised and get the message across quicker. With bigger budgets you can get your own photography commissioned which would probably produce really good results, but as this is a hypothetical experiment (I haven’t been commissioned by David Rhodes), lets head over to istockphoto.com and see what stock photography is available: http://www.istockphoto.com/search/text/fruit/source/basic/#/f40ac8
I’m happy with this photo. It shows a good range of fruit, looks fresh and has plenty of colour. I’m not going to worry too much about the flowers, nuts and garden centre items as I’d like to concentrate on the main aspect of David Rhodes’ business to keep the message clear.
The first draft of the new poster looks like this:
Conclusion
Most of the tweaks have come about from re-writing the copy. Whilst I’m not a marketing expert I did feel the original poster had too much copy. I also felt the the ‘next step’ or ‘call to action’ points were non existent or unclear in the original. The main problem though was the first visual experience of the original poster didn’t suggest what the advertisement was about. I’m hoping that by simply using a bigger image of the focus of the business, the poster has more impact.
Let me know what you think by commenting below.
I think it’s nice
And did you propose this poster to the company?
I haven’t actually. It was more of an experiment for a blog post.
Do you think I should?
You should definitely contact the shop
i like this post very much, taking something that doesn’t work well and adding your talent to find a better solution.
The one thing I would add is that I find the name “david rhodes” to not read very well (i think it’s the red on black that does it). alternatively make one of those funny faces using fruit.
did you send them a link to this post? I did
Thanks for the comment Mike.
As you can see in the original poster there is a lack of a strong logo and identity. It’s just green on white text. In my re-design I wanted the ‘Fruiterers & Florist’ to stand out more but a good logo would have helped at the top.
I haven’t sent them a link – I hope they get where I’m coming from.
I like your work Mark and think your comments are bang on
with a very simple message
Thanks Nick.
Thank you for this post. I loved it!
I like this very much. I think the color you chosen are best. Its really help me.