Study Task 04: Triangulation

Now that you have had a chance to explore some relevant theoretical texts and considered their impact on graphic design. In addition establishing your research question, it is a suitable time to start planning your written piece.

At this stage you will have found a number of books, articles, websites, etc. that relate to your research question or general area of interest. This task will asks to identify the most significant ones and to discuss their relevance and how the relate to each other.

By using the the form to help your triangulation (Triangulation exercise form) you can use this to organise your research and identify the relevant points. By using this guide to write your references correctly for the Harvard Referencing System.

It is also key to keep an up-to-date bibliography of all your research thus far.

Once you have completed the triangulation form you should write a 500 word triangulation of the relevant literature. This triangulation should form the basis for your written piece so you should consider how the texts relate to your research question. 

My Research Question: 'How important is style to Graphic Design for successful advertising, particularly on social media platforms?'

Triangulate three texts based on the question above.

The three texts:

• Advertising Design and Principles, (Diana Burns, 2015)
• Social Media Advertising: The complete guide,  (Christina Newberry, 2016)
• The right brand style is more important than creativity and advertising, (Christoph Hack, 2011)

Triangulation

In these three texts (A,B,C) triangulate how important is style with advertising, especially depicted through the use of Social media platform. Text A, called 'Advertising Design and Principles, by Diana Burns this will be the Primary document of this main triangulation. In this document Burns, explains the steps on how to make a successful advertisements by the use of the strategies she uses and develops.  Advertising is ‘The dissemination of information concerning an idea, service or product to compel action in accordance with the interest of the advertiser’. This definition tells us about advertising being a kind of communication about a product, service, or idea, and is being goal-oriented. Advertising can be best defined as: ‘any paid for non-personal communication used with persuasive intent by identified sponsors though various media to promote goods, services and ideas, etc.’ The message of advertising is incredibly affected that it reaches us and easily influences us. Most of the time, it is always subconsciously in the back of our minds. But once we encounter a product that we desire to purchase or a specific function that we need. That is the art of advertising persuasion. For example - “From morning to night, we are using advertised goods and services. We start the morning with a cup of tea or coffee, use toothpaste and toothbrush on our teeth, at breakfast we have bread, butter, etc. our workplace is also full of machines, computers, etc. which are the advertised goods”. 

Appeals of an advertisement , anything that motivates a person action. Human beings are called bundles of wants. A human being is a unusual combination of hopes, ambitions, needs, interests, goals, etc. All these things work as motivating factors. These are also called motives. Numerous amounts of advertisements try to appeal to some of these manifold motives that force people to take action. An advertising appeal is nothing but a promise of a benefit the advertised product will provide to the buyer. For example, the possible promises or appeals for a home appliance could be - comfort, convenience, economy of installation, economy, cleanliness, dependability and durability, safety, multiple operations, many varied features, trouble free operation and smart look Advertising appeals can be broken down into two categories informational/rational appeals (hard sell) and emotional appeals (soft sell)

Informational/Rational Appeals (Hard Sell)

These appeals focus on the consumer’s practical or functional need for the product or service and emphasize features of a product or service and/or the benefits or reasons for using or owning a particular brand. Many rational motives can be used as the basis for advertising appeals, including comfort, convenience, and economy.

Emotional Appeals (Soft Sell)

These appeals use an emotional message and are designed around an image intended to touch the heart and create a response based on feelings and attitudes. Advertisers can use emotional appeals in many ways in their creative strategy. Humor and sex appeals, or other types of appeals that are very entertaining, upbeat, and/or exciting, affect the emotions of consumers and put them in a favorable frame of mind. Fear appeals can be equally dramatic in arousing emotions but have an opposite effect on the viewer’s frame of mind. 

Making an advertisement, advertising is a combination an art and a science. The art comes from writing, designing, and producing exciting messages. The science comes from strategic thinking and planning, including research. The creative specialist or team must first deal with the problem of coming up with a concept. From start to finish, the process of ad creation involves a multitude of decisions that require understanding of both the product and the consumer as well as knowledge of the various formats and media. Behind every good advertisement is a creative concept, a big idea that makes the message distinctive, attention getting, memorable. These methods include the ‘incubation’ technique, the process of lateral thinking, and the storytelling process.

Whereas, in Text B, called 'Social Media Advertising: The complete guide, by Christina Newberry. Newberry looks into more depth of advertising but within a social media background and points out the importance of this. A social media ad is any kind of paid content on a social media network. The options run from a one-off promoted Tweet or Facebook post to a full-scale campaign with major budgets attached.

The first step is take advantage of targeting features, traditional ads are inefficient. One of many social media advertising benefits is that social platforms offer very effective targeting capabilities to address that problem. From targeting social media managers on LinkedIn to Stranger Things fans on Facebook, take advantage of this very useful targeting for more efficiency in advertising. Next rotation of frequently ads, though it’s annoying to see the same TV ad in every commercial break, repetition is an effective way of hammering home the message using one-way communication. But on advertising channels where engagement is key, and ads appear directly in users’ feeds, fresh content is the name of the game. Overly repetitive messaging may end up losing you more business than you gain.
Thirdly the use of small samples to test the text and images used in your ads - one of the great virtues of social ads is instant feedback. You can gauge the effectiveness of a sponsored post in minutes and follow up with advanced analytics reports. The best practice is to test several ads with small audiences to determine what works best, then use the winning ad in the primary campaign. Lastly, design ads with mobile in mind - currently more than 80 percent of social network users are accessing social media on a mobile device in 2016. This means most social media ads are being viewed on mobile devices as well. Your mobile ads should be specifically designed for the small screen, incorporating images that are easy to view on a pocket-sized device. 

Nevertheless, the only way that an advertisement that can live up to it's full potential is due to the 'Brand Style', which is explored by the Text C which is an article called, 'The right brand design style is more important than creativity and advertising' by Christoph Hack. 'Consumers only spend a few seconds on brand contact. To be noticed in that short amount of time, a distinct brand style is vital importance. Many brands around the world are actively advertised, that means what all consumers are seeing everyday is an age of information and imagery overload. To summarise, that brand communication/brand style is a vital part of making an advertisement on display boards or on social media platforms. The design must have a visually strong attraction that pulls the consumers viewing to be influenced by the advert. i.e. 'style beats advertising', 'brand style increases effectiveness of advertising', 'consistency is more exciting', 'style creates perception' and 'the number of style elements is not relevant'.