Image Advertising

Image advertising is a form of advertising that is all about selling the ‘value proposition’ or the dream. It works in a highly visual manner in order to ensure that your audience sees your product just the way you want them to see it. In this post, we will break down what that means in detail and how you can utilize it in your own business endeavours to stunning effect.

The concept behind image advertising, is that you are trying to create a desirable mental picture of your product or even of your brand in general. The idea is that you associate a certain lifestyle, or a specific set of values with the brand. So, this is an ‘image’ in the sense that it is a kind of reputation – as opposed to an image in the sense of an actual photograph. You are crafting your image and the way that you want your business to be seen by the general public.

We see this all the time in advertising and particularly when it comes to things like perfume companies. Perfume is a product that is very hard to explain or to sell in an advert. It doesn’t ‘do’ anything as such and smell is of course a very personal matter.

So really, the objective of this advertising then is to sell the ‘idea’ of the perfume. How does it make the wearer feel? What do people associate with you when you wear it? Thus the adverts will tend to show people running through the streets of Paris in the rain and kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Likewise, entire brands can attempt to promote their image in this way. This is clearly the aim of much of Apple’s advertising, which portrays its users to be hip, young, creative and professional and itself to be all the same things.

This comes down to the value proposition and to your mission statement. What is your business really about? Understand what it is that makes your business appealing and understand how to communicate that and to create the image you want.