How To Write Simple Display Copy

Posted by Jo Murphy Jan 12, 2007

Ouch! Poor Lil Mango!

Look at these lil' mangos

in their chutney jar

Hottest lil' mangos

I have seen this far?

Nippy lil' mangos

you'll go

hah hah hah hah hah

When you chomp

on mangos

from the chutney jar

You will find this poem set out with illustrations here.

And more about its function here How To Make A Label For A Product

When students are engaged in an Arts Marketing Unit they will be required to use simple art and poetry

For this marketing example I have focused on the idea that this Mango chutney is hot. I have kept the idea central and the artwork and poetry feed from this idea.

The reason we keep our work so simple is that

• We want to convey a strong message
• We do not want to confuse this message by adding other little pieces in on top such as

Cheep cheep lil’ mango

you should sell real well

Your the cheapest chutney

I have seen the sellers sell.

• To add another concept like this would be to confuse the message.

The style of advertising has been sleek simple and attractive. This sleekness of message usually goes along with ‘designer’ brands. Purchasers usually spend a little more on designer brands. So I am not going to cross advertise

Originally, we had a darker green dot on the bottle with the price heavily felted on. This served to take away from the simplicity of design. It became just "one more thing" the purchaser would need to do before giving the gift - take it off! And so we omitted this for the sake of simplicity.

Students who are setting up displays as a ssessment for this unit are trying to get the best grades they can for the project. They might well ask.......

"Well what can I do to make my product stand out against the rest?"

• When labeling they could place a small jingle on the back of the card.
• It could also be matched on an attractively printed card beside the product.
• They could make a PodCast of this jingle and have it play on your MP3 beside the product.
• If they create a rap it could be burnt to DVD and play in a loop beside the display
• This could be fun and take the purchaser by surprise
• They could paint a large mango tree on board and have pine cases propped against it with jars arranged in straw
• They could make a large paper mache mango matching their label
• Gift wrap some jars so that the extra decoration added to the display

All of these ideas are simple so that they do not clutter up the visual plane. This allows the purchaser to see one clear simple message with no distractions. Some times these kinds of distractions are called visual noise or airwave pollution!

Students could have a class discussion about advertising and its annoying aspects.

This is a part of a unit based around this article Marketing Art Why Do We Teach Art? The Middle Schooling concept embraces the idea of real world experiencing. The students grow food, prepare it and take it to the table or the market more...

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