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To Teach or Tap Dance
Attention and action are what every advertisement hopes to achieve. Brands must constantly evolve to be successful, and tweaking their approaches requires in-depth evaluation. Along the way, it’s vital to weigh how much you’re teaching and informing versus how much you’re appealing to emotions with the tap dance of marketing. Finding the right inform/entertain balance is remarkably valuable because the process of getting you there helps to refine your understanding of the audience.
The Balancing Act
When advertising content teaches, it’s informative, providing offers, features and the nitty-gritty elements of what you’re selling. Content that leans toward the entertaining approach focuses on emotions like thought-provoking taglines or visceral imagery.
There aren’t evergreen rules for when a painting needs a brushstroke, and the art of advertising is also caveated with “it depends.” Advertisements can fall into both categories. It’s rarely an either/or decision when it comes to informing and entertaining your audience. To find an equilibrium and keep your brand authentic, you’ll want brainstorming to be highly collaborative.
Timing is Everything
We’ve all seen ads that left us thinking, “ugh, so salesy,” when it’s over –the top with offers, or “I don’t even know what they’re selling,” if it leans overly avant-garde. When the inform/entertain balance is off kilter, you ostracize would-be buyers. It would be comically suspicious to walk up to someone you were interested in being friends with and greet them with your phone number and address.
That’s what it’s like when you hit a potential customer with too much information, too early. And on the other side of the spectrum, if you were to repeatedly try a back flip on a crowded dance floor, you could be in danger of coming off as desperate to entertain.
To get advertising content choreography in step with audiences’ needs, reflect on how often they see offers and prices. Some industries are highly regulated, so people need a lot of information up front—there can be a stress on information, but emotional appeal shouldn’t be entirely forgotten. If your product is the first of its kind, education messaging is invaluable. Help your audience understand products so that they have what they need to take action and embrace your brand with a click or buy.
Name It, Talk About It
It’s healthy to facilitate discussions that specifically analyze the inform/entertain balance with all involved teams. Naming it (inform/entertain balance) and spending time discussing it openly ensures that your content direction is planned and not just happening by default. Collective assumptions about creative work lead to stale outputs.
Creatives do their best work when they look at every piece with a sense of wonder. Remind everyone that there’s no such thing as “just another touchpoint.” Think about what your audience saw in the last touchpoint and what they will see next time. Understanding content from an analytical perspective like this is wildly important because it provides a reflection of the overall sensation that a brand radiates. We are more likely to remember how people make us feel, and less likely to remember the specific things they say.
Brands, like friends, are remembered fondly because they make us feel good. As advertisers and marketers, no matter how large or small a project is, nothing is truly “stand-alone” when it comes to brand messaging. Like a good song or delightful conversation, the ebbs and flows give us the variety we need to stay engaged. Give them a mix. Don’t be too predictable.
Stepping on Toes
Differing opinions surrounding the inform/entertain balance might be department based—sales might love those prices, while creatives want to enchant with witticism. Many writers and designers especially want to entertain while other departments feel that there’s more to offer on the informing side of the spectrum. It’s in their word choices—creatives call people “the audience” while sales executives refer to them as “customers” or “clients.”
These differences can manifest in many rounds of edits and departmental tug-of-war games, with well-meaning people caught in the middle. But when you give everyone the chance to openly discuss this messaging balancing act, you reduce extraneous rounds of edits and avoidable clashes of personalities. Fundamental differences in how everyone sees the messaging hierarchy are best explored, rather than argued over.
Disagreements over approach are common in our industry, and that’s okay, it’s part of the job. Making space for diverse perspectives to come to life fosters an atmosphere of trust where creativity can thrive.
Find a Tutor
If you’re curious to learn more about where your brand is on the inform/entertain spectrum, hire an agency. Creative ad agencies come with a wealth of experience along with fresh perspectives. Heinrich can support your brand and show you how to teach and tap dance into the hearts of audiences no matter the industry—we have over four decades of experience tutoring brands to be their best.