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Marketing Essentials: Designing For Your Audience
If you’ve mapped your way to a destination in the last two weeks using Google Maps, you may not have noticed some recent design changes it has undergone. They are the first changes to the core design of Google Maps in almost five years.
While there were many incremental changes – none particularly earth-shattering on their own – what the Google Maps overhaul shows us are four simple design principles that are just as important for the effectiveness of any displayed brand communication – both in digital and in print:
1. Put relevant content where it belongs.
Taking a look at some of the higher zoom levels, relevant secondary highways and arterial roads are now also visible. The result: easier planning of alternate routes between cities, rather than only being able to see the expressways and main roads.
For branded communication this holds true for your specific campaign target; is my ad sending relevant information to the target audience at the right time? It this the right channel for this information?
If it is not, perhaps it isn’t the right media vehicle, or perhaps it belongs on a different page on the site.
The right information for the audience, at the right time and place.
2. Reduce clutter.
Google maps now features narrower city streets, and a more subdued colour scheme to make it easier to pick out your destination quickly, especially in city details.
Applying this same sensibility to branded communication, is there a single message ringing through loud and clear? Are there extra visual elements that are clouding the communication?
The more single-minded the communication, the better the chances that the intended message is the takeaway.
3. Make it easy to read.
Names and streets in the new maps are in a darker font, and are aligned with street directions, making things easier to read quickly.
For brands it may sound simple, but it can often be overlooked: is the copy – in both length and legibility – appropriate given the placement?
Strong long-format content may work well on a microsite or in a magazine, but 5-7 large, legible words are optimal on a billboard or in an online banner. High contrast between background and copy is always better too.
Make it easy for the audience to read the message and consider the time you expect them to have to view it.
4. Regionalize your message.
For certain cities, elements of the new maps design are adapted to the local customs of signage and mapping in those cities.
Applying this idea to a campaign – did we check to make sure this is locally relevant? Is there a regional piss-off factor we might be overlooking?
Because, as hilarious as that headline may be in one region, you may be putting your foot in your mouth in another. Coors Light’s misstep a few months back (and Bud Light’s retort) provide a particularly poignant example.
Together, these four principles help makes Google Maps easier to use, and will make your branded communications more effective.
Are there other considerations for designing for your audience that you would add?
Ryan Roberts
November 4, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
Couldn’t agree with you more Mr. Budd!
David from Twitter « pronking
November 5, 2009 @ 3:58 am
[...] @grahambudd: What are the design keys to great display advertising? Ask Google maps: http://bit.ly/23u5brWorking for a company or working for your own [...]
Bob Goulart
November 5, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
Graham,
Nicely done.
We should be more critical of outdoor advertising, and not just because so much of it is bad. The real issue is that it’s an unwelcome intrusion in our lives. Unlike opening a newspaper, tuning in to a channel or clicking a web site, outdoor denies the viewer the freedom of choice to engage. I can turn the page, turn the channel and click away if I don’t like what ads have to say. And even if I don’t like what they say, I forgive the attempt because they pay for the media I’m engaging in. Outdoor neither pays for media I want to engage in, not does it give me the option to opt out. All the more reason to do it brilliantly, so that viewers, hopefully, forgive the intrusion. As long as this medium exists, it needs to be held to the highest standard. Marketers forget that brands can inherit the ill will that the medium itself creates, especially when its done badly.
There’s a movement afoot in Toronto to tear down illegal boards. The real issue is more than just a zoning by-law. What’s inherent in the discussion is the medium’s reason for being. Its a debate that’s as old as the advertising industry itself. Howard Gossage, one of the funniest and smartest admen this industry has seen, was questioning the very existence of this passive medium in the 60’s. Beyond the reasons stated above, he happened to believe that an ad should be “one end of an interesting conversation”. He believed in a little concept called “interactive”, decades before the internet helped us understand what the hell he was talking about. For him, outdoor was the antithesis of that “conversation”. He joked, “I like outdoor advertising. I just think it has no right to be outdoors.”
The attached link is an article for Harpers magazine, Feburary 1960. It’s a provocative, albeit amusing read. http://howtolookatbillboards.com/
Bob
Dave
November 6, 2009 @ 12:57 pm
The Harper’s article is genius. And reminded me just how much I viewed The Book of Gossage as a bible when I entered in to this business – even though it was already more than 30 years old! What Howard Gossage had to say then, all those years ago, could not be more relevant now as we navigate how to evolve our media models to better satisfy the appetites of evolving consumers (especially online!)
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Gossage-Howard-Luck/dp/0962141534