Print Ads : 30 Creative Advertising Ideas - Effective print ads provide a clear message – a reason why potential customers should buy certain goods or use certain services. Having an eye-catching, concise and punchy headline is one of the best ways to get this message across in a print ad, but in all forms of marketing, you should aim to convey one simple, focused message to achieve the greatest impact. In this post , I have collected some of the best creative adverts which could make you think & smile. - by Henri 

Google: Did you mean Battleship?

Délifrance: Ready to bake at home

ThaiHealth Promotion Foundation: Kid

Romanian Road Police, Autoshow Magazine

Terra Viajes: City - Country (Holidays 2)

Xenon: Deer

Jelly's: Dragon

Ricoré: She-Bear

Epson: Ants

Pepsi Max: Periodic table
 

 Tide: Checkmarks
 

Courrier international newspaper: Moon landing 

Alcatraz Live Music: Rock till the end 

Height adjustable kitchen lamp
 

CIN Woodtec: Pinocchio
 

Rolling Stone: Yellow submarine
 

Lego: Taj Mahal
 

 Canon Surveillance Camera: Robber
 

KTM: License Plate
 

City of Nettuno, Drink or drive campaign, Staying Alive
 

Today Condoms: Atleta
 

 Mais Printing House: Surgery
 

McDonald's: Ghost
 

ENPA Society for the Protection of Animals: Penguin
 

McDonald's: The M
 

Fiat 500 Black Jack: Black bear
 

Ducati for ANCMA: Less than a second
 

Tooth Avenue Dental Center: Wolf
 

Nori: Japanese food from 11AM
 

Asonor: Baywatch
 

Boomer Women and Affluence – One huge, affluent segment wields more spending clout than any other: Baby-Boomer women. Born between 1946 and 1964, these women represent a portion of the buying public no marketer can afford to ignore. With successful careers, investments made during the “boom” years, and inheritances from parents or husbands, they are more financially empowered than any previous generation of women. – Mary Brown, Carol Orsborn, Ph.D., Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer—The Baby-Boomer Woman

• Senior women age 50 and older control net worth of $19 trillion and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth. – MassMutual Financial Group–2007

• Fifty-plus American women are the healthiest, wealthiest and most active generation of women in history. - Demographics by Mark Miller

• Of the 743 women of wealth interviewed with at least $3 million in investable assets, 61.2% accumulated their fortunes through corporate employment, their own or a family business or a professional practice. Only 38.8% of the women had married into or inherited their money. – Women of Wealth, 2004, by Russ Alan Prince and Hannah Shaw Grove

• High-net-worth women account for 39% of the country’s top wealth earners; 2.5 million of them have combined assets of $4.2 trillion. More than 1.3 million women professionals and executives earn in excess of $100,000 annually. 43% of Americans with more than $500,000 in assets are female – MassMutual Financial Group–2007

• Over the next decade, women will control two thirds of consumer wealth in the United States and be the beneficiaries of the largest transference of wealth in our country’s history. Estimates range from $12 to $40 trillion. Many Boomer women will experience a double inheritance windfall, from both parents and husband. The Boomer woman is a consumer that luxury brands want to resonate with. – Claire Behar, Senior Partner and Director, New Business Development, Fleishman-Hillard New York

• The more mature luxury consumer places the highest priority in making memories and experiences. They don’t buy things to have more things; they want the experience to go along with it. Luxury consumers expect superior quality and are extremely discerning. – Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing

• The 55 to 75 year-old female has seen her role change from homemaker to purchaser of security, convenience and luxury items. – Barbara Kleger, president of 55+ Consulting

• Wealthy boomer women are the marquee players in our country’s culture and commerce. They are educated, have a high income, and make 95 percent of the purchase decisions for their households. – Karen Vogel, The Women’s Congress and co-founder and president of New Generation Event Solutions

• Once the college bills are out of the way and children launch their own households, the discretionary spending power of 50-plus women soars. They spend 2.5 times what the average person spends. Women are the primary buyers for computers, cars, banking, financial services and a lot of other big-ticket categories. – Marti Barletta, Primetime Women

• The Baby Boomer Generation has more money, leisure time and technology than any other generation in history. They can not only stay in touch with family and friends but actually continue to pursue their careers while traveling. Thanks to Wi-Fi, satellite Internet hookups, e-mail and cell phones, baby boomers can continue running businesses from RV’s from just about anywhere in the United States. – Baby-Boomer Magazine.com

• Affluent women juggle demands of career and family, are concerned about the environment and are discriminating shoppers. – The Affluent Market in the U.S., Dr. Robert Brown and Ms. Ruth Washton

• The number of wealthy women investors in the U.S. is growing at a faster rate than that of men. In a two-year period, the number of wealthy women in the U.S. grew 68%, while the number of men grew only 36%. – The Spectrem Group

• Affluent working women with family incomes of $75,000 or more are growing in number, and 94.3 percent access the Internet during an average month. About half are now considered heavy users of the Internet, while heavy use of radio, television, newspapers and direct mail has declined within this group. – Ten Marketing Trends to Watch, Kim T. Gordon, Entrepreneur.com

STATISTICS

Women account for 85% of all consumer purchases including everything from autos to health care:

• 47.2 % of major league soccer fans
• 46.5% of MLB fans
• 43.2% of NFL fans
• 40.8% of fans at NHL games
• 37% of NBA fans
• Women purchase 46% of official NFL merchandise
• Women spent 80% of all sport apparel dollars and controlled 60% of all money spent on men’s clothing
• Women comprise about one-third (34%) of the adult audience for ESPN sport event programs

In older groups, women make up a larger percentage of the audience:

Women in Motorsports

- Stephanie Holland

Credit: Wasim Raja on Flickr

Throughout my career, I’ve had three freelancing phases interspersed between staff positions. The first time, I edited with a red pencil on hard copy, jotted queries on sticky (Post-it) notes attached to the margins, typed out my style sheets and invoices on a typewriter, and mailed them along with the manuscript via the U.S. Postal Service or delivery truck.

Fifteen years later, I finally bought a computer (after using computers at on-site jobs through most of the intervening period), edited in Microsoft Word using tracked changes and commenting functions, compiled style sheets and created invoices in Word, and returned assignments along with them via email.

Returning to Freelance

A year ago, after a five-year stint as an employee, I returned to freelance work (writing as well as editing) — and to a brave new world. The technology hasn’t changed much, but the market has, and one of the most distressing aspects of this dystopia was mentioned on this site in a recent off-topic comment, which I quote in part here:

“I’ve tried hiring some bloggers but I can’t believe just how infantile the examples have been from people that claim to be professionals. I really don’t expect perfection, but, just like with SEO firms, there are few people these days that are not spinning content, farming work overseas, or simply not interested in putting in real work to earn a buck. I would love any feedback, suggestions, or referrals. Thank you.”

I’ve got your feedback right here. My response is cliched, but buried in cliches are gleaming truths, and here’s one of the shiniest nuggets of wisdom I’ve ever seen: “You get what you pay for.”

New Opportunities

Internet commerce has opened up a vast new realm of opportunity for writers, because hordes of online entrepreneurs are desperate for people to populate the Web with content that drives visitors to their sites. So now you have content farms — sites like eHow.com — that act as clearinghouses for anything you might ever (more likely, never) need to know. And you have SEO spinners: freelance writers who churn out multiple versions of short articles about how wonderful World Wide’s widgets are.

What’s wrong with that? Nothing. Markets are markets. But when I investigated writing for content farms and read ads seeking writers for SEO articles, I was insulted: $5 for a 300-word SEO article? (“Must pass Copyscape!”) $10 for 500 to 750 word essays? (“No additional pay for rewriting!”)

Folks, look at this site, which explicitly lists pay rates for print-media writing. (The site is Canadian, but we’ll let that go.) A ballpark figure is $1 per word. Most online writing pays pennies a word.

There are exceptions, of course. But the overwhelming majority of assignments for online writing (and editing) aren’t about good or great writing — they’re about search results. I edited briefly for such a client — $12.50 per piece, keywords x times in every paragraph — and I was terrible at it, because I was trying to help produce good writing, and that’s not what they wanted; they wanted data, not prose. I quit before my soul had been reduced to a smoldering lump of carbon. I don’t know how other people do it.

I have written for several content farms; I still contribute occasional articles about films and filmmaking to a couple of them. The pay is minimal, but I write about what I want, when I want, and I enjoy it. But content farms get a bad rap for the inept writing that populates them — which is unfair to competent writers like me who contribute to them; however, I’ve read some of the articles by other contributors, and well, let’s just say the point is often valid.

Getting Wise

Some clients are getting wise, they are seeking: “Native English speakers only” and “Professional writers only.” Thanks to a frontier mentality, the market is glutted with people who have only a rudimentary grasp of written English, and the more savvy businesspeople understand that what they want is not just data, but prose — real writing by real writers, and skilled editing that polishes diamonds in the rough.

SEO, as many site publishers are learning to their chagrin, is not only about keyword saturation; it’s about good content. People read the posts at this site not because the posts are peppered with grammatical and publishing terms, but because visitors know they will find useful, coherently presented information — content produced not for pennies per word by somebody who knows how to type, but for a decent wage that allows the writer to share his love of writing, language, and knowledge to earn a living.

If you are hiring writers to produce online content, understand that anybody can type an article in a matter of minutes. But it can take an hour or more — up to several hours (if extensive research is involved) — to write an article like the ones you see posted here on FreelanceSwitch. I don’t know about you, but although I live a simple lifestyle, I can’t live on only $5 or $10 per hour.

Offer a living wage, and you’ll get prose that’s alive, that writers can actually live on, and that will engage your audience, while delivering positive results.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Wasim Raja.

-Mark Nichol