Page 102 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

In it, Wheildon systematically reveals the effects of such art directors’
favorite devices as sans-serif body copy, body copy set into unusual
shapes, images and captions, ragged versus justified setting, bright
color headlines, column width, and so on.
In what is, for me, probably the most telling example, he researched
the effects of setting ad headlines in black, versus low and high croma
colors (dark blue and bright red for example). Poor comprehension
of body copy jumped from 14 percent of research subjects for ads
with black headlines to 65 percent for ads with red headlines. Good
comprehension dropped from 67 percent to 17 percent when the
same color switch was made.
Giving a worked example, he says that if an ad in a national newspaper
gains a million readers with a black headline, it will gain 1.6 million
readers if you set the headline in bright red. Great, so job done?
Er, no. Because, although it has more impact, the red-head ad only
delivers 240,000 people who understand it thoroughly, compared
to 670,000 for the original. And if they don’t read the body copy,
they miss the selling message.

In practice

• Color does attract additional readers for your ad, but try using it

in non-type elements such as backgrounds or photographs.

• Your designer will probably never have heard of Colin Wheildon

and will, in any case, dispute his findings. Run a test.

100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS • 93