In an earlier post we said that posters aren’t textbooks. There’s only so much your public needs to know.
The cries of outrage echoed from the hills.
Marketers argue that the old adage of “Sell the sizzle, not the steak” has gone out the window with the advent of the Internet. They’re only half right. Selling the sizzle went out because of stupid marketers who didn’t understand the difference between sizzle and snake oil salesmen.
Seriously.
Please, please, please give me information I WANT to see!
The Internet opened the door for hundreds of sales pages promising the sun but never actually bothering to tell anyone what they were going to be buying. For example (and this is my personal favorite) take a look at some of these MLM businesses out there. About 7 or 8 years ago a representative of one of the more well-known MLM corporations approached me about becoming a part of their organization. Six meetings later I knew exactly how the sales pyramid worked and what tiers of involvement there were and how much I could benefit.
What I didn’t know was what our product was going to be. Boom. Too much sizzle, not enough steak.
That’s the fine line between giving too much information and not giving enough when you’re printing posters. You need to tell them what you’re selling. If they don’t know, they’re not going to bother to find out. What they don’t need is all the fine print up front.
Lemonade
Fresh Squeezed.
50 Cents Per Cup
Boom. It’s the perfect poster. You know exactly what you’re getting, but they didn’t waste the entire page telling you it’s delicious or they spent all day squeezing it or it’s made from the freshest lemons the supermarket had to offer.
Sound familiar?
X+Y=Z, my friends. Let X be the sizzle and Y be (just a little of) steak when you’re printing posters and Z will inevitably equal Success.