When I was an advertising student, my professors said that one of the ways of learning the art of advertising is to study the work that’s out there and figure out why in your opinion any given ad is good or bad. What I’ve learned from this exercize over the years is that headlines fall into one of three types: complimentary, contrasting, and straight forward.
Complimentary headlines are ones where the headline and visual work together in a mutually reinforcing way.
An example of a complimentary ad is one for a airline (the name of the particular carrier escapes me). The headline reads: “Our planes are easier to catch.” The visual is photo still from the original King Kong movie (1931, RKO Pictures); in the visual, Kong is atop the Empire State Building swatting at the biplanes that are attacking him.
Contrasting headlines are ones where the headline and visual are opposites, but they work together in an ironic way, i.e. the headline is not what one would expect to go with the visual.
An example of a contrasting ad is for timetotalk.com, part of the Partnership for A Drug-Free America. This ad is copy-driven, so there is no visual in the picture sense, but the same effect is conveyed as if the ad had a headline/visual structure. The headline reads in distorted type: “Mood swings? Sweaty palms? Loss of appetite? Dry mouth?” The pay-off body copy reads: “You must be trying to talk to your kids about drugs. We can make it easier.”
The contrast lies in the initial perception of what the ad is going to be about; based on the headline, the reader is led to think that ad will be for a product to deal with menopause (O.k. I was led to believe that, you may believe something else.)
Straight Forward headlines are exactly that, they spell out exactly the intended message of the ad is. An example of this is an ad I did for the restaurant client of a marcom agency I freelanced for. The purpose of the ad was to promote/drive business to the early bird hours of the dinner service. The USP was the extension of the lunch menu into the early-bird hours of the dinner service, i.e., during the “early-bird hours, 4-6 pm, the customer could get any item from the lunch menu as a dinner meal at the lunch menu price.
The headline read: “Have lunch for dinner;” the visual was a picture of a meal.
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